anthropology

Of Teamwork, Faith, and Trust in Western Sumatra

(Carol J. Colfer)

Author of Reflections of a Shy Ethnographer

(Juliana Flinn)

Author of An Anthropologist as Travel Writer

(Robert Tonkinson)

Not a Real Fish: The Ethnographer as Inside Outsider

(Roger M. Keesing)

Ethnology

(the study of one topic in more than one culture, uses ethnographic material)

Conversations and Interviews

Another primary technique for gathering ethnographic data is simply talking with people—from casual, unstructured conversations about ordinary topics to formal scheduled interviews about a particular topic.

Holism:

Anthropologists are interested in the whole of humanity, in how various aspects of life interact. One cannot fully appreciate what it means to be human by studying a single aspect of our complex histories, languages, bodies, or societies.

Fieldwork

Anthropologists conduct their research in the field with the species, civilization, or groups of people they are studying. In cultural anthropology, our fieldwork is referred to as ethnography, which is both the process and result of cultural anthropological research.

Comparison

Anthropologists of all the subfields use comparison to learn what humans have in common, how we differ, and how we change. In cultural anthropology, we compare ideas, morals, practices, and systems within or between cultures.

Gathering Life Histories

Collecting a personal narrative of someone's life is a valuable ethnographic technique and is often combined with other techniques. Life histories provide the context in which culture is experienced and created by individuals and describe how individuals have reacted, responded, and contributed to changes that occurred during their lives.

6 Characteristics of Culture:

Culture changes in response to both internal and external factors. Humans are not bound by culture; they have the capacity to conform to it or not, and sometimes change it. Culture is symbolic; individuals create and share the meanings of symbols within their group or society. The degree to which humans rely on culture distinguishes us from other animals and shaped our evolution. Human culture and biology are interrelated: Our biology, growth, and development are impacted by culture.

Objectivity and Activist Anthropology

Despite the importance of cultural relativism, it is not always possible and at times is inappropriate to maintain complete objectivity in the field. Researchers may encounter cultural practices that are an affront to strongly held moral values or that violate the human rights of a segment of a population.

Field Notes

Field notes are indispensable when conducting ethnographic research. Although making such notes is time-consuming, they form the primary record of one's observations.

Linguistic Anthropology:

How did language first emerge? How has it evolved and diversified over time? How has language helped us succeed as a species?

Language and Culture

Human language can be considered a culture's most important feature since complex human culture could not exist without language and language could not exist without culture. They are inseparable because language encodes culture and provides the means through which culture is shared and passed from one generation to the next.

Mixed Methods

In recent years, anthropologists have begun to combine ethnography with other types of research methods.

Language in Social Settings

Language can be influenced based on social class, ethnicity, and gender

language universals:

Languages we do not speak or understand may sound like meaningless babble to us, but all the human languages that have ever been studied by linguists are amazingly similar. They all share a number of characteristics, which linguists call language universals.

language death

Many of the rest of the world's languages are spoken by a few thousand people, or even just a few hundred, and most of them are threatened with extinction, called language death

Quantitative vs Qualitative Methods

Qualitative research in anthropology aims to comprehensively describe human behavior and the contexts in which it occurs while quantitative research seeks patterns in numerical data that can explain aspects of human behavior.

Language Shift

The abandonment of a language in favor of a new one

Key Informants

Within any culture or subculture, there are always particular individuals who are more knowledgeable about the culture than others and who may have more-detailed or privileged knowledge. Anthropologists conducting ethnographic research in the field often seek out such cultural specialists to gain a greater understanding of certain issues and to answer questions they otherwise could not answer.

Emic

a description of the studied culture from the perspective of a member of the culture or insider.

Etic:

a description of the studied culture from the perspective of an observer or outsider

Cultural evolutionism:

a discredited theory popular in nineteenth century anthropology suggesting that societies evolved through stages from simple to advanced.

Culture:

a set of beliefs, practices, and symbols that are learned and shared. Together, they form an all-encompassing, integrated whole that binds people together and shapes their worldview and lifeways.

Thick description:

a term coined by anthropologist Clifford Geertz in his 1973 book The Interpretation of Cultures to describe a detailed description of the studied group that not only explains the behavior or cultural event in question but also the context in which it occurs and anthropological interpretations of it.

Universal grammar (UG):

a theory developed by linguist Noam Chomsky suggesting that a basic template for all human languages is embedded in our genes.

Participant-observation:

a type of observation in which the anthropologist observes while participating in the same activities in which her informants are engaged.

Inductive:

a type of reasoning that uses specific information to draw general conclusions. In an inductive approach, the researcher seeks to collect evidence without trying to definitively prove or disprove a hypothesis. The researcher usually first spends time in the field to become familiar with the people before identifying a hypothesis or research question. Inductive research usually is not generalizable to other settings.

Functionalism:

an approach to anthropology developed in British anthropology that emphasized the way that parts of a society work together to support the functioning of the whole.

Structural-Functionalism:

an approach to anthropology that focuses on the ways in which the customs or social institutions in a culture contribute to the organization of society and the maintenance of social order.

Armchair anthropology:

an early and discredited method of anthropological research that did not involve direct contact with the people studied.

Noble savage:

an inaccurate way of portraying indigenous groups or minority cultures as innocent, childlike, or uncorrupted by the negative characteristics of "civilization."

Going native:

becoming fully integrated into a cultural group through acts such as taking a leadership position, assuming key roles in society, entering into marriage, or other behaviors that incorporate an anthropologist into the society he or she is studying.

Acculturation

cultural modification of an individual, group, or people by adapting to or borrowing traits from another culture.

Anthropology's Distinctive Research Strategy

ethnography

Archaeology:

focus on the material past: the tools, food, pottery, art, shelters, seeds, and other objects left behind by people.

Applied Anthropology:

involves the application of anthropological theories, methods, and findings to solve practical problems.

The Genealogical Method (kinship)

involves using symbols and diagrams to document relationships.

The Other:

is a term that has been used to describe people whose customs, beliefs, or behaviors are "different" from one's own

Paleoanthropologist:

people study ancient human relatives.

Deductive:

reasoning from the general to the specific; the inverse of inductive reasoning. Deductive research is more common in the natural sciences than in anthropology. In a deductive approach, the researcher creates a hypothesis and then designs a study to prove or disprove the hypothesis. The results of deductive research can be generalizable to other settings.

Cultural determinism:

the idea that behavioral differences are a result of cultural, not racial or genetic causes.

Linguistic relativity (or whorf hypothesis)

the idea that the structures and words of a language influence how its speakers think, how they behave, and ultimately the culture itself (also known as the Whorf Hypothesis).

Cultural relativism:

the idea that we should seek to understand another person's beliefs and behaviors from the perspective of their own culture and not our own.

Ethnography:

the in-depth study of the everyday practices and lives of a people.

Enculturation:

the process of learning the characteristics and expectations of one's own culture or group.

Biological Anthropology:

the study of human origins, evolution, and variation.

Ethnocentrism:

the tendency to view one's own culture as most important and correct and as the stick by which to measure all other cultures.