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Exercise 2: Participant Observation
81
3. Has the ethnographer adopted a scientific approach or a humanistic
approach to the study of this community? Is there a contrast between the
way the community was studied (perhaps using rigorous scientific methods) and the way it is reported (perhaps more humanistically)?
4. How does the ethnographer select where to conduct fieldwork and how is
entrée gained?
5. How does the ethnographer present herself or himself to the studied
community? What role or image does she or he have in the community?
6. At what point in the sojourn does the ethnographer appear to have
acquired rapport?
7. What evidence is there of the ethnographer’s impact on the community
being studied?
8. What does the ethnographer do about those impacts?
9. What evidence is there of the community’s impact on the ethnographer? Does the fieldworker appear at any point to be suffering culture
shock?
10. Are there aspects of community life that the ethnographer does not have
access to or chooses to ignore?
11. Did the ethnographer encounter ethical issues, or do you perceive ethical
issues that should be addressed?
12. Are the strengths and weaknesses of fieldwork discussed or illustrated?
Exercise 2: Participant Observation
This exercise provides a relatively brief, safe, and inexpensive way to acquire a
sense of what participant observation in ethnographic fieldwork is like, and to
evaluate its strengths and limitations as a method.
Select an event or activity to observe and, ideally, to participate in at some
level. The event or activity may be quite simple, common, small, or frequent—or it
may be elaborate, unusual, and different from your own cultural tradition—but it
must meet these criteria:
• You have a right to be there, or you have secured permission or an invita•
•
•
•
•
•
tion to attend from persons in charge.
It is not familiar to you.
It has a clear beginning and end.
It is limited in time so you can observe the entire event.
It is legal and risks little harm.
You are curious about it.
You have a trusted acquaintance familiar with the event—your key
informant—who will accompany you or host you at the event and answer
your questions about it.
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Chapter Two How Do I Learn about Culture?
To assist with your selection, here are examples of events on campus and in the
village that meet all these criteria for me, personally:
• Women’s rugby club practice (no scrums, thank you)
• Set building for the drama production
• Campus radio staff meeting
• A session of student video or computer gaming
• Sorority social event with outside guests
• Demolition derby (no driving, thank you)
• Seder celebration
Observe the event, taking a few notes on a small pad, if this can be done unobtrusively, to refresh your memory during debriefing soon after. Request to participate in some way: to throw the ball, wield a hammer, pour the punch, and so on.
During the event or the debriefing, ask your key informant to explain what you
observed.
After the event, after consulting your field notes and your key informant,
debrief yourself by composing a typed document of notes. Include in these notes:
• What happened at the activity. Include sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tac-
tile memories.
• How you felt during the activity.
• How people responded to you.
• What your key informant told you.
• Evidence that your presence influenced the scene.
Make a line across your sheet after your notes, and then answer the following
questions. Bring this sheet and your field notes to class for discussion.
1. What understanding was gained from participation compared to just
observing?
2. What did having a key informant add to your understanding?
3. What was learned from participant observation at this event that a questionnaire or interview about it might miss?
4. For what purposes might a questionnaire or interview be better than participant observation?
Exercise 3: Impact of the Observer
In both versions of this exercise you’ll observe a patterned behavior under two
conditions. You’ll compose an ethnography—that is, you’ll describe the pattern
and infer the cultural rules. You’ll also comment on the effect of the two conditions of observation.
Exercise 4: Inferring Culture from Behavior
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Version 1: Holding the Door
Observe door-opening behavior in a public place. Hang out with the smokers on
the sidewalk, for example, while watching a popular entryway to a classroom
building. For several minutes at a busy time and again at a slower time, pick out
individuals (“Observed1”) and watch them pass through the doorway. Observe
the etiquette during individual events of door behavior. That is, does Observed1
passing through the door hold the door for the next person (“Observed2”)? In
what manner does Observed1 hold the door, for whom, how long is the door
held, how far away from the door can Observed2 be and still motivate Observed1
to hold? Is there any visual or verbal communication between Observed1 and
Observed2 during the event? How often does Observed2 become a holder?
As a guide to what to watch for, an observation protocol sheet (jargon for
“form to write your notes on”) is printed in Table 2.1.
P HASE 1: B LENDING I N
This first time, take no notes in public, make no attempt to stand out. After
observing for several minutes, pull over an acquaintance emerging from those
doors and ask him or her the rules of door etiquette. Are door holders aware of
what they’re doing? Can they describe the shared understanding? Did your watching make door users self-conscious? (In this phase, they probably didn’t even
notice you.) Slip away to note down your observations and your conversation.
P HASE 2: S TANDING O UT
Repeat this observation with the protocol sheet, so that door users will notice that
a person with a clipboard is observing them. Watch for evidence that your activity
influences the door holding. Experiment with your location until you’re clearly
being noticed by many door holders. Compare what you’re observing now with
what you observed the first time. How does self-consciousness alter their behavior?
Version 2: From Chat to Interview
Here’s a smaller-scale version of the same type of exercise. Enter into an apparently casual conversation with a couple of friends on a topic of common practice
such as phoning home or decorating your room. When things are going along
nicely, produce a tape recorder or a clipboard and propose to conduct an “interview for class” on that same topic. Watch for changes in body language and verbal
responses by your friends. Is there evidence that they are now more selfconscious? Is the information you’re getting now different from what it was
before the tape recorder or clipboard appeared?
Exercise 4: Inferring Culture from Behavior
I have proposed that in its scientific mode, cultural anthropology seeks to generalize about humans, to build up a description of the understandings people share
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male(M)/female(F)?
Student(S)/Other(O)?
Entering(I)/Exiting(O)?
Eye contact (Y/N)?
Thanks (Y/N)?
Other (describe):
Interaction
Y
Y
O2 nods,
smiles
F
S
I
15 ft.
Duplicate this protocol for use during version 1’s phase 2.
O2’s arms
full of packages
male(M)/female(F)?
Student(S)/Other(O)?
Entering(I)/Exiting(O)?
Distance when door held
Additional notes on event
Y
M
S
O
Event 1
with shoulder
Observed2
Holding technique (describe):
Held Door? yes(Y)/no(N)
Observed1
Event
Table 2.1 Observation Protocol
Door-Holding Events
Event 2
Event 3
Event 4
Event 5
Event 6
Exercise 4: Inferring Culture from Behavior
85
by discovering patterns in their behavior. That pattern may be in what they tell
you, or in what you observe. Sometimes, people don’t know what to tell you, and
you have to puzzle it out entirely from observation. In this exercise you will look
both at what the culture’s participants say and at the patterns of their behavior,
to infer the cultural pattern.
Imagine how long it would take an anthropologist from a non-Christian
country such as Morocco to figure out when Easter occurs in the United States. A
brief inquiry will reveal that Easter doesn’t occur on the same calendar day each
year, as do Christmas or Halloween. So the anthropologist turns to you, the
informant, and asks, “What is the cultural rule for determining the date of
Easter?” You reply,
I haven’t a clue
I think it is . . . (fill in)
What proportion of students in the class don’t know?___%
How many students in the class think they know how the date is determined? ___ %
(Don’t explain it to us yet; we need to do some data analysis.)
It appears that the date of Easter is assigned by a cultural rule that most of us
don’t know. We’re quite familiar with the Christian holy day, even if it’s not in
our religion, but calculation of the date appears to be a cultural rule that we leave
to our ritual experts to know.
So, if the ordinary member of society isn’t much help as informant, the
Moroccan anthropologist will have to infer a pattern from behavior—in this case,
from the dates on which we have commemorated Easter. If the Moroccan were to
make a list of the dates of Easter for a number of years, noting also events in the
lunar calendar, eventually the pattern would emerge. It appears that the crucial
variables are the day of the week, the phase of the moon, and the first day of
spring (vernal equinox). Here are the Moroccan’s data:
Table 2.2 Calendar Dates of Easter
Year
Month
Date
Day
Moon Phase
Vernal Equinox
2001
April
15
Sunday
7 days after full
Mar 20
2002
March
31
Sunday
3 days after full
Mar 20
2003
April
20
Sunday
4 days after full
Mar 21
2004
April
11
Sunday
6 days after full
Mar 20
2005
March
27
Sunday
2 days after full
Mar 20
Source: The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2001 (2001); U.S. Naval Observatory (2004);
http://Scienceworld.wolfram.com (2005).
There is a formula; what is it? Your answer has to be precise enough that only
one day a year qualifies.
Test your formula: when is (was) Easter this year?
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Chapter Two How Do I Learn about Culture?
For those of you who thought you knew how Easter was calculated: were you
right—should the Moroccan have believed you?
Even omitting highly sophisticated technology such as putting a robot on
Mars, there is much that we in the United States know and do—that is, there is
much in our culture—that we can’t explain. For example, which side of a man’s
shirt has the buttonholes? which side of a woman’s shirt? Why?
In what other areas of culture—areas much more important than buttonholes—do participants share experience or awareness but can’t explain it to the
anthropologist?
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Chapter 3
Chapter Three What Is the Context for This Practice or Idea?
t
EXERCISES
Exercise 1: Economics in Ethnography
Even if the ethnography that you are currently reading does not focus on economics, it cannot help but provide clues about how essential goods and services
of the culture of the group are produced, distributed, and consumed. This is so
because these economic activities are linked systematically to social, political,
religious, and other spheres of group life—or even embedded in them, if the society is not fully industrialized and market oriented. In this exercise you will collect
evidence for those links or embeddedness. Identify the best examples of linkage
in the current ethnography, and note them in Table 3.1. To assist you in taking
this holistic perspective, consider these questions as you search:
1. What social groups labor together, or produce or consume goods
together? Parents and children may garden together, for example. Vegetable production is thus linked to family.
2. What social relationships are involved in the exchange of goods and services? A man may be expected to give much of his wool harvest to a particular kinsman, or the temple priests, or his landlord. Kinship or debt
relations thus channel the exchange of goods.
3. How is the economic activity linked to the exercise of power or differences in status among participants? Collecting the resources for village
feasts might be the sole responsibility of one leader, for example, and a
successful feast increases that person’s power. Distribution can thus
influence political power.
Table 3.1 Holistic Connections of Economic Activity
Page
Production
of goods and services
Distribution
of goods and services
Consumption
of goods and services
Economic activity
Linkages
Exercise 3: Holistic Approaches to Jokes
115
4. How are religious beliefs and activities linked to economic activities? A
religious ceremony may require extra production of dress cloth, for example, or exchanges of livestock, and so forth. Or, only persons with certain
religious credentials are allowed to make or trade beaded belts.
Exercise 2: Reciprocity
In this exercise you will act as cultural informants for a test of Marshall Sahlins’s
analysis of the linkage between acts of reciprocity and social relationships
(1972a). To review, a group can distribute goods and services among the members by the market, by redistribution or pooling, and by reciprocity, an exchange
between two individuals or groups. This exercise focuses on acts of reciprocity.
In small groups, draw from your own recent experiences an example of reciprocity that fits each of the terms in column 1 of Table 3.2. Fill out the rest of the
columns as suggested by the two examples.
Before turning to Sahlins’s published analysis, on a sheet of paper answer this
question:
1. What is the pattern in these data? How do variations in economic reciprocity follow or make certain kinds of social relationships?
Your instructor will now introduce Sahlins’s analysis of the linkage between reciprocity, morality, and social relations. Discuss these questions with your group
and report the answers on the sheet you started above:
2. How well do your cases sort into his types?
3. In what ways don’t some of your cases fit Sahlins’s model? Why don’t they?
4. Select one of the cases for consideration here: How might altering the
terms of the transaction be considered a social blunder or a proposal to
change the social relationship? How might that alteration strain our tolerance of what is moral in that transaction?
Exercise 3: Holistic Approaches to Jokes
A joke is extremely culture specific, requiring listeners to be familiar with so
much context but alluding to all that context with just the barest of clues. A joke
requires such artistry and subtlety in its design and delivery that when it is dissected, it disappears.
In this exercise you will select a cartoon and provide the holistic context, the
cultural information that its audience must know to understand it. You will
compare your study to others’ to identify the importance of context.
Why do all cultures have humor and jokes? What makes a particular joke
funny, and why do we laugh? These are appropriate questions for anthropologists, along with other social scientists, to tackle. Anthropologist Mary Douglas
developed a cultural explanation from Freud’s psychological theory of humor
(1968). Jokes are basically subversive, she proposes; they challenge control and
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Chapter Three What Is the Context for This Practice or Idea?
Table 3.2 Analysis of Cases of Reciprocity
Transaction type
Who (EGO)
Transacts what good or service?
With whom (ALTER)—
what relationship?
A sale (example)
Me
Bought motorbike
A guy my roommate knew
A gift (example)
My roommate
Gave box of chocolates
His girlfriend
A loan
Haggle/barter*
A gift
A sale/purchase†
Help
A deal
A trade/exchange
A con/dupe‡
Hospitality
KEY:
“EGO” refers to the informant.
“ALTER” refers to the other person in the reciprocal transaction.
* In haggle/barter, the terms of the exchange are negotiated with one’s self-interest in mind.
† This refers to a sale or purchase other than a conventional transaction in a commercial establishment.
‡ In con/dupe, one party fools the other party into giving more than it gets.
formality. They reveal that what we accept or take for granted is not inevitable or
necessary. We find such a revelation exciting—we “break out” in laughter. Applying Douglas’s explanation to a specific joke in a specific culture, the anthropologist’s next question is What is the control—the structure—the “system” that is
being subverted?
In this exercise you will explore how embedded in the culture a joke may be,
how a single joke relies upon much cultural context in order to challenge that
context. Although its message may contain themes common throughout the
Exercise 3: Holistic Approaches to Jokes
117
When, where—
the context?
Return time
(never, immediate, delayed)
Return type
(identical, similar, unrelated)
Return quantity
(equal, more, less)
at college
Immediate
Unrelated (cash)
I returned less (seller
wanted to be rid of it)
at home,
Valentine’s Day
Delayed (next evening)
Similar (home-cooked dinner)
equal
world (the foolishness of pride, or the tension between the genders, for example),
to explain a joke to someone from another culture or subculture is not going to
produce laughter because the outsider lacks the context. A joke might depend
upon familiarity with a newspaper comic strip, or on recognition of symbols or
images associated with a particular occupation. The jokester usually assumes
that listeners are familiar with the latest fashions and current events. The jokester
usually provides clues that listeners will associate with a certain socioeconomic
class, gender, or occupation.
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Chapter Three What Is the Context for This Practice or Idea?
The setting is the kitchen,
indicating that the man on
the left is not just a guest.
He’s helping himself after
a simple meal.
The man is balding, not young,
and bearded, indicating that
he’s probably not working at a
high-paying job.
This appears to be an ordinary
suburban middle class house or
condo: there is an upstairs and a
kitchen large enough to have a
breakfast table.
The couple is dressed in dark
clothes, a conservative older couple.
We assume that the couple would be
happy to have the son home yet he
would be eager to become independent. Instead, the parents are trying
to nudge the “family cycle” along:
he should move out, so they can
attend to their own needs.
This man is one of 3.8 million
unmarried “white” adults over
25 years still living with parents.
Such an arrangement is not
considered proper unless it is
short-term.
Figure 3.12 An American cartoon from 1995. (The New Yorker, December 4. Used by
permission. Annotations by John Omohundro)
A U.S. Example of a Joke
In literate cultures, cartoons are a form of visual and verbal joke. Figure 3.12 is a
cartoon that many Americans will understand. I have annotated it in a way that
certainly doesn’t make it funnier but does provide a holistic view of it, connecting
the scene, the characters, and their remarks to the wider culture, which might
help the anthropologist to “get” the joke and identify what Douglas calls its subversive message.
1. Describe the aspects of American culture that this cartoon pokes fun at.
Exercise 3: Holistic Approaches to Jokes
119
2. Which Americans will probably laugh at this cartoon and which, because
of their cultural background, won’t?
3. What context will you have to explain to a reader from the Trobriand
Islands, for example, or from the society whose ethnography you are
reading?
A Japanese Example of a Joke
Figure 3.13 is a cartoon from a popular series of books published in Japan in the
1950s and 1960s. It too is about sons and parents, and we Americans “get” that
Older brother, married and living with his mother, takes younger brother to
dinner in a restaurant. Older brother, a “salaryman,” dresses conservatively.
Younger brother, a poor writer, dresses outlandishly.
Older brother: “This is just
about cooked. . . . It’s been a
while since we had a drink
together.”
Younger brother: “You may
not think so, but we writers
are busy all the time.”
He must often justify his
unconventional and poorlypaying work.
Older brother: “Of course.
Since we renovated our living
room, I’ll also send you a
suite of furniture as well!”
Younger brother: “Might I
have one of your scroll
paintings, Older Brother?”
Poor artists can’t afford art,
and older brothers are
expected to take care of
younger.
The delivery truck arrives and
younger brother and wife
look forward to wealthy
older brother’s good
painting and furniture.
Old Mother is in the van also.
As with the furniture, she is
the “gift” which cannot be
returned, an important
concept in Japanese culture.
Younger brother: “There is
nothing more costly than
receiving a favor.”
Respecting and caring for
Mother is expected of children,
but no one wants to do it. So
Granny is a hot potato.
Figure 3.13 A Japanese cartoon from the early 1950s. (Hasegawa 1952, 4. Used by
permission. Annotations by John Omohundro)
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Chapter Three What Is the Context for This Practice or Idea?
the younger brother has been tricked, but why would a Japanese person think
this is so funny? The joke subverts a number of principles that Japanese culture
has long valued: Older brother must care for younger brother. Successful brother
must care for less affluent brother. Grown children must respect their aged parents, want to be with them, and care for them. Brothers dine together without
their wives. They are not supposed to fool one another. Gifts should be pure. People with low status occupations (younger brother’s humor writing) shouldn’t
seek to emulate real businessmen’s lifestyle. In the postwar Japanese economy of
the 1950s, as the nation struggled to revive its economy and standard of living,
some of the old Japanese values—such as taking care of one’s elderly parents—
were neglected in practice, although they continued to be heralded as the Japanese way. The cartoon reminds the reader that “in these modern times” when
everyone pursues his self-interest, cultural rules can easily be bent or broken.
4. Contrast the cultural ideas and practices being twitted in this cartoon
and the American cartoon.
5. How does the Japanese cartoonist provide contextual clues for the
reader?
Your Turn
Select a single-frame cartoon from a U.S. mass market publication such as
Reader’s Digest or the New Yorker (see also www.cartoonbank.com). Funny Times is
an entire tabloid devoted to cartoons. The comic sections of newspapers also usually contain single-frame cartoons. Some political cartoons on the op-ed pages of
newspapers will also serve for this exercise, because readers are challenged by the
cartoonist to supply the context in order to grasp the editorial message.
Mount your selection in the center of a letter-size sheet of paper. Annotate the
cartoon, as I have, with arrows and text in the space around the cartoon. Items in
the cartoon requiring explanation may include the following:
• Elements that indicate setting, timing, region
• Clothing
• Other objects
• Word choice, idioms, puns or plays on words, dialect, other language clues
• Activities taking place or recently having taken place
• Relationships among the characters
• Fanciful elements (a talking zebra, a man with no head, for example)
Exchange annotated cartoons in small groups and read each other’s. Compare
your cartoons for their contexts.
6. Are some of these cartoons more likely than others to be understood by
someone from a very different cultural background, perhaps a Thai or
Russian? Why?
7. Which aspects of your cartoon require the longest explanation? Why?
Exercise 4: Sociobiography: A Life in Cultural Context
121
8. Can you see a way to make the cartoon funnier? Or easier to understand?
What does that alteration borrow from the context? Does that alteration
change the context?
Exercise 4: Sociobiography: A Life in Cultural Context
The ethnographies we read are answering the holistic question, What’s the context and how is everything connected? but often they must dissect to show the
links and the operation of the parts. As one anthropology professor, Philip Carl
Salzman, admits, “Not to put too fine a point on it, ethnographies, by and large,
tend to be bloodless” (2002, 74). That’s less true today than when Salzman and I
were students. Still, the more an ethnographic case study tries to generalize or theorize, the more lifeless it becomes. An excellent way to restore the life is the biography, which casts light on a culture as it is manifested in one participant’s life.
Biographies of persons in other cultures have been published and celebrated
in anthropological circles and placed on the reading lists of many anthropology
courses. I suggest a few in the Recommended Reading. The biography humanizes
the culture’s participants, but it also reveals the culture’s integration in the only
place it can occur: in people’s lives. No individual experiences the whole culture
or recognizes all the linkages that the anthropologist might pursue, but every life
is a rich source of cultural clues, so the fieldworker will invest significant time in
a society to collect those clues. My understanding of the Philippine Chinese community depended heavily on the ninety-six autobiographies I painstakingly collected in the heat and noise of fabric bazaars and iron foundries.
As an alternative to taking our classes into the field or bringing our field
informants into class, Professor Salzman recommends writing sociobiographies,
or fictional portraits of individuals participating in specific cultures. In this exercise you will invent an individual of specific age, gender, and other characteristics
relevant to a culture you have read about recently. Describe that person’s life as a
participant of that culture. Consider answering these questions:
1.
2.
3.
4.
What is daily life like?
What are this person’s abilities, beliefs, and attitudes?
How does this person relate to other individuals and groups?
What major events may occur in this person’s life, and how might those
reveal what provides meaning and shapes behavior by such a person?
To anchor your imagination in ethnographic reality, frequently cite pages
from the ethnography you’re reading. More detailed guidelines for writing the
sociobiography and two samples of student work are published in Salzman
(2002, 74–77).
Read each other’s essays, not to rate or criticize them, but to fuel the following
discussion:
• Has your ethnographic source provided a cultural description suffi-
ciently holistic to permit you to imagine a life in it?
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Chapter Three What Is the Context for This Practice or Idea?
• What features of the culture were missing from the case study that you
needed to invent?
• How much does changing the person who is the subject of the biography,
from one in the royal family to one in the peasantry, for example, result
in a different cultural experience?
• Can you see some social and cultural linkages in these subjects’ lives that
perhaps the subjects themselves can’t see or articulate very well?
Exercise 5: What Are Kin Terms Connected To?
A genealogical chart from the United States will be the data for this exercise. Like
many features of culture, kin terms appear at first to be a narrow topic, but when
we adopt the holistic perspective, we find that they are linked to the wider context
of family life, social structure, gender relations, ethical systems, and other cultural arenas. This exercise illustrates how value systems and social relationships
are embedded in the kin terms that people use to distinguish their relatives from
each other.
Step 1—Reading the Genealogical Chart
Figure 3.14 is a portion of the genealogical chart of an imaginary U.S. citizen,
aged 20, named Typ Ickle. His family background is mostly European American,
and his native language is English. It is conventional to distinguish Typ by a solid
symbol and to label him “EGO,” because he is our informant and the kin terms
we add to this chart are all from his point of view.
Step 2—Adding Kin Terms of Reference
Now that you can read Typ’s chart, you be the informant. Fill in beneath their
names the kin terms of reference that you would use if you were Typ to refer to
each of the kinfolk on this chart. The kin term of reference defines the person’s
kin relationship to EGO. During data collection, we learn this term by asking
Typ, “That person is your . . . ?” or, “How is that person related to you?” The kin
term of reference, for example, might be “father-in-law” or “second cousin.” Kin
terms of reference are not to be confused with the kin terms of address, which
are the terms Typ uses when addressing, or speaking to, relatives. So, the kin term
of address might be “Granny,” “Billy,” or “Unca Donald.” To get you started, I’ve
included three kin terms of reference on Typ’s chart.
Step 3—Looking for Patterns
Now look for patterns in the kin terms of reference you’ve written on the chart.
Holistically, we may expect these terms to be linked to the values and social relationships for families in Typ’s culture. When a child learns the kin terms for family members, he or she learns the social relationships that the terms represent.
The following questions are meant to lead you to discover the structure and
values of English-speaking American families as revealed in the kin terms.
123
2B
2C
1C
2D
Siblings
Offspring
Adopted
Twins
Male
Gender unknown
Conjugal
Deceased
Marriage
Key
1E
3C
3D
Jack Ickle
“Father”
2E
3E
Jill Ickle
2F
1F
1G
1H
2H
3F
?
Bill Ding Shania Ding
2G
2I
2J
3H
Terra Pin Hattie Pin
3G
Madonna Pin Sean Pin
Harold Dree
1I
Figure 3.14 The kinship chart of Typ Ickle, a hypothetical English-speaking U.S. citizen.
Three kin terms of reference are also indicated.
Beyoncé Ickle Mick Ickle Typ Ickle Angel Ickle
Ego
3B
Female
Louie Turn
“Cousin”
3A
1D
Fred Ickle Ginger Ickle Mort Salt Beulah Katz Bela Katz Nick Ding Nora Ding
“Great-aunt”
1B
Ice Ickle Ralph Turn Maya Ickle Pops Ickle
2A
Sharon Ickle
1A
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Chapter Three What Is the Context for This Practice or Idea?
1. To label Mick (3C) and Angel (3E), Typ uses two kin terms. What distinguishes those two terms? Can you imagine three terms? What would the
third one be?
2. To label those in his own generation besides his siblings, Typ uses how
many terms? Why are there fewer terms than there are for siblings?
3. Can someone in the class provide the French or Spanish kin terms for
those in Typ’s own generation besides his siblings? Why do those languages have two terms while there is only one term in English?
4. Does Typ use any of the same terms for his generation and for relatives in
his parents’ generation? Are any of the terms from the parents’ generation used for the grandparents’ generation? Why/why not?
5. There are linguistic similarities between the terms that Typ uses for the
grandparents’ and parents’ generation. What’s the meaning of the prefix
to the terms in the grandparents’ generation?
6. Why are more different kin terms used in Typ’s parents’ generation than
are used in his own generation?
7. Madonna (2I) and Shania (2H) do not appear to have the same kin relation to Typ. Why does he refer to them by the same term?
8. Is there a difference between terms on the left side of the chart (the
father’s) and the terms on the right side of chart (the mother’s)?
Why/why not?
Step 4—The Holistic Connections
From a holistic perspective, the kin terms that EGO (Typ or other Americans like
him) uses may be clues to important social relationships in American families.
Two persons with different terms probably have different social relationships to
EGO. Two persons with the same term probably have the same relationship to
EGO. Answer these questions based on Typ’s chart.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
How well is gender distinguished by kin term?
How well is generation distinguished?
How well is a relative by marriage distinguished from a relative by birth?
How well is birth order among siblings distinguished?
How is respect for seniority represented in the terms?
How is the paternal side of the family distinguished from the maternal
side?
Compared to its European origins, Typ’s kin term system reflects American
values of individualism, equality, informality, and probably other values. Identify
some examples.
If analyzing Typ’s kin chart leads to reflection about your own kin chart, that’s
as intended! Exercise 3, Chapter 7 provides an opportunity to construct your own
genealogical chart.