Download Ethnographic Techniques

12
1
Ethics and Methods in
Cultural Anthropology
Anthropology:
The Exploration of Human Diversity
11th Edition
Conrad Phillip Kottak
McGraw-Hill
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
2
Ethics and Methods in Cultural
Anthropology
•
•
•
•
•
McGraw-Hill
Ethics
Methods-Ethnography
Ethnographic Techniques
Culture, Space, and Scale
Survey Research
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
3
Ethics
• American Anthropological Association
(AAA) Code of Ethics provide guidelines
for anthropologists as they plan and
conduct research
McGraw-Hill
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
4
Ethics
– Ethnographers typically do field work
outside their nations of origin
• Seeks permission, cooperation, and knowledge
from government officials, scholars, and people
being studied
• Before research begins, people should be told
the purpose, nature, and procedures of
research
• People also should be told of potential costs
and benefits of research before project begins
McGraw-Hill
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
5
Ethics
• The AAA Code states researchers
should reciprocate in appropriate ways
– Include host country colleagues in
research plans and funding requests
– Establish collaborative relationships with
colleagues and institutions
McGraw-Hill
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Ethics
6
– Include host country colleagues in
publication of research results
It should not be forgotten that researcher’s
primary ethical obligation is to the people being
studied
McGraw-Hill
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
7
Ethics
• Location of the Betsileo in Madagascar
McGraw-Hill
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
8
Methods-Ethnography
• Firsthand personal study of local
cultural setting
– Ethnographers try to understand the whole
of a particular culture, not just fragments
– Ethnographers usually spend extended
period of time living with group they are
studying and employ a series of techniques
to gather information
McGraw-Hill
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
9
Ethnographic Techniques
• Direct, firsthand observation of daily
behavior, including participant
observation
• Conversation with varying degrees of
formality
McGraw-Hill
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
10
Ethnographic Techniques
• The Genealogical method
– Detailed work with key consultants about
particular areas of community life
– In-depth interviewing, often leading to
collection of life histories of particular
people (narrators)
– Discovery of local beliefs and perceptions,
which may be compared with
ethnographer’s own observations and
conclusions
McGraw-Hill
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
11
Ethnographic Techniques
• The Genealogical method
– Observation and Participant Observation
• Ethnographers trained to be aware of and
record details from daily events, significance of
which may not be apparent until much later
McGraw-Hill
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Ethnographic Techniques
12
• The Genealogical method
– “Participant observation,” as practiced by
ethnographers, involves the researcher
taking part in the activities being observed
Unlike laboratory research, ethnographers do
not isolate variables or attempt to manipulate
the outcome of events they are observing
McGraw-Hill
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
13
Ethnographic Techniques
• Conservation, Interviewing, and
Interview Schedules
– Ethnographic interviews range in formality
from undirected conversation to openended interviews focusing on specific
topics to formal interviews using
predetermined schedule of questions
– Increasingly, more than one of these
methods are used to accomplish
complementary ends
McGraw-Hill
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Ethnographic Techniques
14
• Key Cultural Consultants
Every community has people who by accident,
experience, talent, or training can provide the
most complete or useful information about
particular aspects of life
McGraw-Hill
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
15
Ethnographic Techniques
• Life Histories
– Reveal how specific people perceive, react
to, and contribute to changes that affect
their lives
McGraw-Hill
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
16
Ethnographic Techniques
• Local Beliefs and Perceptions and the
Ethnographer’s
– Emic (native-oriented) approach—
investigates how natives think, categorize
the world, express thoughts, and interpret
stimuli
– Etic (science-oriented) approach—
emphasizes categories, interpretations,
and features that anthropologist considers
important
McGraw-Hill
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
17
Ethnographic Techniques
• The Evolution of Ethnography
– Bronislaw Malinowski
• Generally considered the father of ethnography
• Did salvage ethnography, recording cultural
diversity threatened by westernization
• Ethnographies were scientific accounts of
unknown people and places
McGraw-Hill
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
18
Ethnographic Techniques
• The Evolution of Ethnography
– Bronislaw Malinowski
• Believed all aspects of culture were linked and
intertwined, making it impossible to write about
just one cultural feature without discussing how
it relates to others
• Argued that understanding the emic
perspective, the native’s point of view, was the
primary goal of ethnography
McGraw-Hill
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
19
Ethnographic Techniques
• Ethnographic realism
– Writer’s goal to produce an accurate,
objective, scientific account of study
community
– Writer’s authority rooted in his or her
personal research experience with that
community
McGraw-Hill
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
20
Ethnographic Techniques
• Ethnographic realism
– Interpretive anthropologists believe
ethnographers should describe and
interpret that which is meaningful to the
natives
• Geertz argues that cultures are texts that
natives constantly “read” and that
ethnographers must decipher
• Meanings in given culture carried by public
symbolic forms, including words, rituals, and
customs
McGraw-Hill
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
21
Ethnographic Techniques
• Ethnographic realism
– Experimental anthropologists, like Marcus
and Fischer, have begun to question the
traditional goals, methods, and styles of
ethnographic realism and salvage
ethnography
• Ethnographies should be viewed as both works
of art and works of science
• The ethnographer functions as mediator who
communicates information from natives to
readers
McGraw-Hill
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Ethnographic Techniques
22
• Ethnographic Present
– Early ethnographies often written in
ethnographic present, a romanticized
timelessness before westernization, which
gave ethnographies an eternal,
unchanging quality
Ethnographers
recognize
that cultures
Today, anthropologists
understand
this constantly
is unrealistic
change
this qualityportrayed
must be represented
constructand
thatthat
inaccurately
natives as in the
ethnography
isolated and cut off from rest of world
McGraw-Hill
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
23
Ethnographic Techniques
• Problem-Oriented Ethnography
– Ethnographers typically address specific
problem or set of problems within context
of broader depictions of cultures
– Variables with most significant relationship
to problem being addressed given priority
in the analysis
McGraw-Hill
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
24
Ethnographic Techniques
• Longitudinal Research
– Long-term study of a community, region,
society, or culture based on series of
repeated visits
– Has become increasingly common among
ethnographic studies, as repeat visits to
field sites have become easier
– May also encompass multiple, related sites
McGraw-Hill
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
25
Ethnographic Techniques
• Team Research
– Involves series of ethnographers
conducting complementary research in a
given community, culture, or region
McGraw-Hill
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
26
Culture, Space, and Scale
• Traditional ethnographic research
focused on single community or
“culture,” treated as more or less
isolated and unique in time and space
• Shift toward recognition of ongoing and
inescapable flows of people,
technology, images, and information
McGraw-Hill
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
27
Culture, Space, and Scale
• Ethnography increasingly multi-times
and multi-sited
• Anthropologists increasingly study
people in motion
McGraw-Hill
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Survey Research
28
• Anthropologists working in large-scale
societies increasingly use survey
methodologies to complement more
traditional ethnographic techniques
Survey
involves
drawing
studyand
group or sample
By
studying
properly
selected
from
the larger sample,
study population,
collecting
representative
social scientists
can
impersonal
data,
and performing
statistical
make
accurate
inferences
about larger
analyses
populationon data
McGraw-Hill
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
29
Survey Research
• Survey research considerably more
impersonal than ethnography
– Survey researchers call people who make
up their study sample respondents
– Respondents answer a series of formally
administered questions
McGraw-Hill
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
30
Survey Research
• Anthropologists rely increasingly on a
variety of different field methodologies
to accommodate a demand for greater
breadth of applicability of results
Hallmark of ethnography remain the
ethnographic method and emphasis on
personal relationships
McGraw-Hill
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
31
Survey Research
• Ethnography and Survey Research
Contrasted
• Insert Table 12.1
McGraw-Hill
© 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.