Ch. 3: Fieldwork and ethnography

Identify examples of the use of polyvocality in ethnographic research and writing.

(The practice of using many different voices in ethnographic writing and research question development, allowing the reader to hear more directly from the people in the study.) Nancy Scheper Hughes's use of direct quotes from a mother lamenting the death of her daughter (Direct quotes are one of the most immediate and effective ways for anthropologists to include their subjects' thoughts in their writing.) giving a key informant a draft of the manuscript to review key informants designing research surveys and interview questions NOT: an anthropologist's observations on the minutiae of daily life an anthropologist's sketched map of the built environment

Identify the reasons why it is important for anthropologists to map the components of a built environment

(man-made structures, features, and facilities viewed collectively as an environment in which people live and work.) The built environment shapes human life and culture. Human life and culture shape the built environment. The built environment can illuminate power structures.

Place key fieldwork strategies and approaches in order from first developed to most recently developed.

1900- salvage ethnography 1920- participant observation 1940- synchronic approach 1980- reflexivity

In his classic ethnography titled_____, Bronislaw Malinowski analyzed ____as a system of exchange in islands in the Pacific Ocean. In the book, Malinowski also provided guidelines for anthropologists conducting fieldwork, an approach that today is still called ____.

Argonauts of the Western Pacific; the Kula ring; participant observation

Identify what later anthropologists found problematic about E. E. Evans-Pritchard's study of Sudanese communities during the 1930s, detailed in his ethnography The Nuer (1940).

He was a British citizen. He adopted a synchronic approach and did not take into account historical context. NOT a problem: The Nuer were an isolated society in Africa. The fieldwork took place over eleven months between 1930 and 1936. He documented the group's social structure and captured intimate details of the community's daily life.

For centuries, explorers, missionaries, and others gave accounts of different cultures that they encountered around the world. Anthropologists continued this tradition with formalized approaches to data collection and analysis.Place the following descriptive accounts of other cultures in order from first to most recent.

Herodotus travels throughout Egypt, Persia, and the area now known as Ukraine Marco Polo crosses from Italy to China on Silk Route Christopher Columbus arrives in Americas Julian Steward conducted fieldwork in Puerto Rico

Fieldwork is simultaneously a social science and an art form. Match the following anthropological techniques and skills to the category under which they best fall.

Social Science adherence to defined techniques (participant observation, field notes, interviews, mapping, etc.) Art convey their subjects' stories to an audience in meaningful ways intuition

Identify the strategies engaged anthropologists employ in their work.

advocacy and activism with local communities revealing and critiquing systems of power and inequality NOT: producing unbiased, objective studies (Engaged anthropologists challenge the discipline's assumption that as social scientists, anthropologists should play the role of the impartial observer. They recognize that it is difficult, if not impossible, to remain unbiased.) working in isolation as the only researcher addressing the problem

The opening excerpt from Nancy Scheper-Hughes's ethnography Death without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil (1992) demonstrates a variety of ethnographic techniques. Match the example from the text to the technique or practice that it exhibits.

anonymity-"the market town I call Bom Jesus de Mata" polyvocality-"Nailza's voice would range from tearful imploring to angry recrimination: 'Why did you leave me? Was your patron saint so greedy that she could not allow me one child on this earth?'" establishing ethnographic authority-"My involvement with the people of the Alto do Cruzeiro now spans a quarter of a century and three generations of parenting."

The Nacirema were described by Horace Miner in his famous article "Body Ritual among the Nacirema." Who were (or are) the Nacirema?

contemporary americans (Nacirema is "American" spelled backward, and Miner's article describes familiar bathroom rituals in a way that makes them seem bizarre.)

Identify the systems of power and meaning that are studied by anthropologists through intensive fieldwork and the observation of people's everyday lives.

gender and sexuality socioeconomic and political religious racial and ethnic

Establishing ethnographic authority is an essential part of the anthropologist's job. Identify how an anthropologist might attempt to establish ethnographic authority, often early on in the ethnography?

improve the quality of their relationship with members of the community spend a long time on a study acquire language skills NOT: reveal the financial support that they received to undertake the study

Place an anthropologist's preparations and strategies when undertaking fieldwork in a foreign area in order, starting with pre-fieldwork preparations

learn the language, do a literature review, garner local and financial support establish a rapport with key informants and others in the community map human relationships analyze the data

Identify the actions taken by cultural anthropologists during and after ethnographic fieldwork.

live with a community for an extended period of time look beyond the everyday to uncover power systems take careful notes, recordings, and photographs NOT: return home with a similar perspective as when they left

Identify the fieldwork methods and practices that anthropologists have adopted as a result of globalization

maintaining ongoing relationships between the anthropologist and community undertaking fieldwork in multiple locations broadening the scopes of their studies NOT: viewing field sites in isolation (Communities can no longer be seen as isolated. Most communities, no matter how small, have seen the effects of globalization.)

During the 1960s and 1970s, how was anthropology's role in colonialism viewed, and why?

negatively- for providing information to the military and depicting colonial subjects as unable to govern themselves

Identify the factors that led to the development of anthropology and the practice of fieldwork.

rapid dwindling of native cultures professionalization of data gathering globalization of the late nineteenth century NOT: desire to understand each culture on its own terms

Ethnographic writing techniques have changed dramatically since Malinowski and Evans-Pritchard published their books in the early twentieth century. Identify the techniques contemporary anthropologists use to make their ethnographic writing more participatory and transparent

reflexivity tone and style polyvocality ethnographic authority NOT: demographic statistics

To reach his goal of collecting data and interpreting it well, Franz Boas introduced and practiced the concepts of____, which is the rapid gathering of all available material, and ______, or seeing the merits of each culture from that culture's perspective.

salvage ethnography; cultural relativism

Match each term to the correct definition.

the anthropologist's written observations and reflections on a community-field notes the analysis and comparison of ethnographic data across cultures-ethnology the study and description of a community-ethnography

This image depicts two men who have sold their kidneys on the illegal global market, but rumors also abound that some people have their organs forcibly stolen. Identify the statements reflected by Scheper-Hughes's work showing the similarity of organ-theft rumors in South and Central America, Eastern Europe, parts of Africa, and other regions around the world.

the fears of poor people that their bodies are worth more dead than alive real, everyday threats to bodily security, urban violence, police terror, and social anarchy NOT: that there is one group of people that travels the world harvesting organs the global system of exchange where stories travel around the world

Why should (or shouldn't) anthropologists experiment with different types of writing ethnography?

they should be aware of their limits and biases, and explore different ways to tell a story more accurately

Identify examples of a zero.

(The term zero describes what is unsaid, not what is said.) the absence of a local politician from an important community meeting a mother's avoidance of discussing her children's deaths NOT: an interviewee describing in detail how she felt at a particular event the inability of an anthropologist to collect statistical data