ANT2410 | Chapter Four | Ethnography: Studying Culture

Applied Question | How do Cultural Anthropologists do research?

By building personal relationships over a long period of time.

Applied Question | What is Participatory Action Research is based on?

The idea that poor people can and should do much of their own investigation, analysis, and planning.

Define | Headnotes

The mental notes made while in the field, all of which can prove to be useful later.

Applied Question | How are Anthropologists distinct?

They are more holistic, traditionally studying all aspects of social life simultaneously, rather than limiting ourselves to a single dimension of people's lives, such as economic, political, psychological, or religious dimensions.

Applied Question | What are the goals of Anthropology in non-industrialized countries where poor and/or indigenous populations are common?

Have often been closely aligned with national development needs, such as researching the health conditions of rural and poor people to improve government programs.

Applied Question | Nature of Informal Interview & Open-Ended Interview

Interviewer has a focus for the interview but may not have a clear goal of what information he or she wants from the interview. While the researcher may begin with certain questions, he or she develops new questions as the interview proceeds. The interviewer may have a notebook present, but most of the time is spent in conversation rather than writing notes.

Define | Multi-Sited Ethnography

Involves conducting participant observation research in many different social settings. Used by Anthropologists studying globalization.

Define | Comparative Method

Involves systematic comparisons of data from several societies. Used since the beginning of the discipline.

Applied Question | Why does Participant Observation provide right insights?

It emphasized a holistic perspective, direct experience, long-term participation in people's lives, and responsiveness to unexpected events.

Applied Question | What do Anthropologists use structured interviews for?

To elicit specific kinds of information, such as terms of biological species, details about the proceedings of a village court case, or the meaning of symbols and behavior in rituals.

Applied Question | What is another key goal of fieldwork?

To flesh out our insights and gain new perspectives from interviews to collect data.

Define | Fieldnotes

Information that the Anthropologist writes down or transcribes.

Define | Intersubjectivity

Knowledge about other people emerges out of relationships individuals have with each other.

Applied Question | What is the deeper obligation of Anthropology?

To reveal to the public the oversimplified images of the enemy offered by politicians ad the media.

Applied Question | What is a common technique to overcome these limitations (We are more likely to think we know what is going on and miss the local particularities that make people's actions sensible)?

To study social conflicts, because when people are complaining or making allegations against others, their informal logic emerges quite clearly.

Applied Question | Kind of Fieldnotes for Formal Interview & Structured Interview

Transcript of answers or of questions and answers.

Applied Question | True or False? "Anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski referred to this perspective (But after some time and effort to see things in terms of local context, things people say and do being to make sense and you are likely to feel generally that you are beginning to see the world from an emic -- or insider's -- perspective) as 'the native's point of view' and asserted that it lay at the heart of the ethnographic method he claimed to have invented when he famously pitched his tent on the beach near the houses of Trobriand Islanders."

True

Applied Question | True or False? "Anthropologists also use both published and unpublished materials to learn about other people's lives."

True

Applied Question | True or False? "Anthropologists ask prying questions and seem to stick their noses into many aspects of people's lives, which has led many Anthropologists to be accused of spying."

True

Applied Question | True or False? "As observers, Anthropologists cannot remove themselves from the action. Yet giving into participation too easily prevents one from noticing subtleties of behavior and learning to intuit their significance. Too much participation is sometimes referred to as 'going native,' because the researcher stops being an engaged observer and starts to become a member of the community, dressing like them and even assuming some of their mannerisms."

True

Define | Fieldwork

Long-term immersion in a community.

Applied Question | What have Anthropological researchers found that long-term immersion and participation in a community (at least a year or more), as well as an open mind, yield?

Insights we would never achieve had we started with preconceived ideas about the relationships among social, economic, political, and religious institutions.

Applied Question | Kind of Fieldnotes of Interview Schedule

Interview Schedule Form

Applied Question | List the kinds of interviews.

Interview Schedule, Formal Interview, Structured Interview, Informal Interview, Open-Ended Interview, Conversation, Casual Conversation, Hanging Out

Applied Question | Nature of Formal Interview & Structured Interview

Interviewer has a clear goal for the interview and writes down the informant's answers or tape-records the interview. Often used for survey data collection. Researcher has decided ahead of time what is important to ask.

Define | Secondary Materials

Materials that are not primary (that is, original) sources (such as field notes) from someone with direct personal knowledge of the people, provide yet another level of context for what we observe and learn in interviews.

Define | Open-Ended Interview

Or unstructured interview, informants discuss a topic and in the process make connections with other issues.

Applied Question | What is a key element of Anthropological fieldwork?

Participant observation.

Define | Armchair Anthropologists

People who never went to the field but relied on others for their ethnographic data.

Applied Question | Kind of Fieldnotes for Informal Interview & Open-Ended Interview

Preliminary notes that outline the discussion. Later writes up a full description of context and content of discussion.

Define | Participatory Action Research

Promotes the involvement of community members in formulating the research questions, collecting data, and analyzing the data. Based on the idea that poor people can and should do much of their own investigation, analysis, and planning. Not only aims to place the researcher and subjects on a more even plane; it also encourages researchers to share their methods so people can act to improve their own social, economic, and political conditions.

Applied Question | Nature of Interview Schedule

Questions are read from a printed script exactly as written to all subjects of the interview. Often used for survey data collection. Researcher has decided ahead of time what is important to ask.

Applied Question | What is one solution to having to work with focused research questions that require answers within a month or two?

Rapid Appraisal (also called Parachute Ethnography because the researcher drops in for a few weeks to collect data). This is a focused research strategy.

Define | Action Anthropology

Research committed to making social change.

Applied Question | What is one criticism of all social scientific research?

Research often benefits the researcher more than the subjects of research. The problem is especially acute for disenfranchised communities, where the gap between a community's needs and a researcher's own personal interests may be greatest.

Applied Question | What did Ruth Benedict do when she was studying Japanese society and culture during World War II?

She interviewed Japanese living in the United States and read widely in the published literature about that country and its customs.

Applied Question | What can disclosure of informants' secrets lead to?

Social isolation of an informant, contention in the community, or even criminal investigation. Any kind of objectionable behavior or medical conditions can cause difficulties or harm to informants and members of their family or community.

Define | Interviews

Systematic conversations with informants.

Applied Question | True or False? "But all Anthropologists, nevertheless, face certain common ethical dilemmas, no matter where they conduct their research, including the commitment to do no harm; considerations about to whom Anthropologists are responsible; and who should control Anthropology's findings."

True

Applied Question | True or False? "But as Anthropologists have increasingly focused their research on communities in their own countries, they have been confronted by social groups whose cultures do not always differ so much from their own."

True

Applied Question | True or False? "Early Anthropologists also used comparative data to establish models of how they believed the cultures of modern Europe had evolved from so-called primitive societies."

True

Applied Question | True or False? "Establishing rapport requires a lot of discipline, as well as acceptance of local customs and practices, however peculiar, unfamiliar, or uncomfortable."

True

Applied Question | True or False? "Even when we think we understand how someone thinks, a similar but new situation often produces a different and unexpected reaction."

True

Applied Question | True or False? "For Johannes Fabian, such observations and understanding (the Anthropologist observes things in the field setting, observes them a second or third time, and later inquires about them, gradually pulling together an enriched sense of what has been observed) are neither objective nor subjective, but the product of intersubjectivity."

True

Applied Question | True or False? "In some communities, informants insist they should have access to and control of Anthropological field notes, since they helped create the data and should benefit from it."

True

Applied Question | True or False? "It is important to recognize that indigenous people also practice Anthropology themselves. As one Maya ethnolinguist has observed , indigenous peoples often conduct Anthropological research as a way of speaking not just about their own societies, but for their societies."

True

Applied Question | True or False? "Many Anthropologists have used their Anthropological skills in service to their countries (assisted with the war effort)."

True

Applied Question | True or False? "Notes and Queries" was initially created to help colonial-era travelers, missionaries, and administrators gather data to send back to Europe for Armchair Anthropologists."

True

Applied Question | True or False? "Open-ended questions usually encourage informants to discuss things the Anthropologist wants to hear about, or that informants find especially meaningful."

True

Applied Question | True or False? "Participant observation gives us many insights about how social life in another society is organized, but it is up to us as Anthropologists to find systematic evidence for our perceptions."

True

Applied Question | True or False? "Participant observation makes the Anthropologist a professional stranger. It is neither pure observation nor pure participation."

True

Applied Question | True or False? "Social research can impact its subjects in powerful ways."

True

Applied Question | True or False? "The Anthropologist observes things in the field setting, observes them a second or third time, and later inquires about them, gradually pulling together an enriched sense of what has been observed."

True

Applied Question | True or False? "Today, Cultural Anthropologists are as likely to be doing fieldwork among advertising executives, factory workers, transnational migrants -- or, in this case, urban drug dealers and users -- as we are to live in villages in remote settings."

True

Applied Question | True or False? "Today, usually we [Anthropologists] no longer have a prescribed set of good questions to ask. Usually we set out with certain questions we want answered -- drawn from theories and background literature, from an advisor or other colleague, or from simple curiosity. These questions change during fieldwork with new experiences and as we confront new cultural realities."

True

Applied Question | True or False? "Until the 1970s, the typical path of the Anthropologist was to seek an out-of-the-way place where cultural differences appear most pronounced."

True

Applied Question | True or False? "Until we can make sense of the local cultural logic, we will inevitably use tunnel vision to understand another culture, complete with all its ethnocentric biases."

True

Applied Question | True or False? "When we understand the language and already have well-formed views about people's behavior and attitudes, being a 'professional stranger' becomes more difficult."

True

Applied Question | True or False? "With the professionalization of Anthropology in the early 1900s, however, such guides [Armchair Anthropologists] became less relevant since Anthropologists themselves were collecting data."

True

Applied Question | True or False? "During the 1920s, American Anthropologists developed life histories as part of their fieldwork on Indian reservations, because the questions they were studying had to do with white American society."

True Anthropologists quickly recognized that by interviewing elders about their lives, they could get an understanding of how life was before contact.

Applied Question | Clear Focus for Formal Interview & Structured Interview

Yes

Applied Question | Clear Focus for Interview Schedule

Yes

Applied Question | Some of the most important other methods include:...

the comparative method, the genealogical method, life history, ethnohistory, rapid appraisals, action research, Anthropology at a distance, and analyzing secondary materials.

Applied Question | Others have worried that the military use of Anthropology in one place can...

undermine the trust between local communities overseas and Anthropological researchers, compromising the trust and rapport all Anthropologists strive to create with their informants.

Applied Question | Life histories reveal important aspects of social life, such as...

whether or not the society being studied has changed dramatically. As people develop, become adults, mature, and grow old, people take on different roles in society and in its social institutions. By recording the life histories of a number of individuals, the Anthropologist can build an image of how a person's age influences his or her role in the community and how typical social roles unfold over a lifetime.

Applied Question | These techniques -- of becoming involved in people's lives, getting them to talk, and taking notes about it -- enable Anthropologists to pursue a major goal of fieldwork,...

which is to see the world from the point of view of the people who are the subjects of research.

Applied Question | There are many kinds of interviews, ranging from...

highly structured, formal ones that follow a set script to unstructured, casual conversations.

Applied Question | Ethnohistorians are also interested in...

how societies understand and recount the past. The concepts of history and how to tell it may differ from one society to another.

Applied Question | In general, social scientists gather data or information about...

human beings and the social, economic, political, and psychological worlds they inhabit. They use methods that are either quantitative (e.g., statistical) or qualitative (e.g., descriptive and interpretive).

Applied Question | The ____ ____ is an old method, developed by English Anthropologist William H.R. Rivers in 1898 during the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Straits, the islands between Australia and New Guinea.

genealogical method This methodology was widely used during the past century and became a key tool for understanding all sorts of relationships in non-industrial societies, where political, economic, and social institutions are based on kin relationships. It is increasingly used in hospitals today to understand genetic propensity for certain diseases, such as breast and ovarian cancers.

Applied Question | At the heart of all of these research projects is a central goal:...

to learn about people who often live in different cultural circumstances from our own.

Applied Question | How do Anthropologists differ from journalists?

(1) Anthropologists tend to stay in a community gathering field data for a long time, and most Anthropological data come directly from participant observation and interviews with informants (journalists often get their information secondhand and rarely stay on assignment for more than a few days or weeks). (2) Unlike reporters, in the United States Anthropologists have no constitutional protections, such as the First Amendment, that allow them to conceal their informants or the sources of their data, as reporters have traditionally had. This means that while Anthropologists are obligate to protect their informants, their field notes, tape recordings, and photographs are nevertheless subject to a subpoena from a court should the police or some similar legal authority show cause that one should be issued.

Applied Question | But all Anthropologists, nevertheless, face certain common ethical dilemmas, no matter where they conduct their research, including...

(1) The commitment to do no harm. (2) Considerations about to whom Anthropologists are responsible. (3) Who should control Anthropology's findings.

Applied Question | The decision to live for a long period of time -- a year or more -- in an unfamiliar community in order to observe and record cultural differences emerged after ____ and led to profoundly new kinds of understandings of native peoples.

1914

Applied Question | What does this kind of research (Parachute Ethnography) require?

A general knowledge of both the region and the topic under investigation and that the Anthropologist have considerable field experience to begin with, so she or he knows to focus on the features that distinguish the community under study from other similar ones.

Applied Question | What does the Pan-Maya ethnic movement in Guatemala aim to assert?

A research agenda and methods derived from and relevant to Maya social interactions and worldviews.

Define | Participant Observation

A systematic research strategy that is, in some respects, a matter of hanging out. A key element of Anthropological fieldwork.

Applied Question | What occurs during fieldwork?

Anthropologists become involved in people's daily lives, observe and ask questions about what they are doing, and record those observations. Being involved in people's lives for a long period of time is critical to the method, generating insights we would not have if we simply visited the community a few hours a day, to administer a survey or questionnaire, or conduct a brief interview. Sticking around helps us put what people say in context.

Applied Question | Nature of Hanging Out

At the heart of Anthropology is participant observation, and participating by just hanging out with members of the community in sex- and age-appropriate ways is the best way to participate. Hanging out may involve helping with fishing, cooking, planting, or weeding in rural or traditional societies, or playing in some pickup sport like basketball or soccer. It could involve hanging out in a local coffee shop, diner, or bar, or in a work environment such as an office, water cooler, lunch room, or cafeteria. Anthropologists may occasionally make jot notes, but most of the time they record details in their notes later, when people are not around.

Applied Question | Why was the task confusing at first?

Because Torres Straits islanders' kinship terminology used terms that Rivers interpreted as 'mother,' 'brother,' and 'grandfather' for a much wider variety of people than just the relatives euro-Americans refer to with these terms. Rivers developed a simple, but systemic way of classifying all kin according to their relationship to his informants. This was essentially a system of notation -- for example, using MBD to refer to the mother's brother's daughter -- so that he could classify how terms were used. This methodology was widely used during the past century and became a key tool for understanding all sorts of relationships in non-industrial societies, where political, economic, and social institutions are based on kin relationships. It is increasingly used in hospitals today to understand genetic propensity for certain diseases, such as breast and ovarian cancers.

Applied Question | Why do most Anthropologists do not set out to study illegal activities?

Because of the risks both to themselves and to their informants.

Applied Question | Why have ethnographic research methods been around for the better part of a century?

Because they have proven to be an effective tool for helping Anthropologists gather the kind of information they require to understand social complexities and the inner lives and beliefs of people.

Applied Question | Why is writing fieldnotes essential?

Because, as one Anthropologist has written, "if it's not written down, it didn't happen."

Define | Human Relations Area Files (HRAF)

Collects and finely indexes ethnographic accounts of several hundred societies from all parts of the world. Another kind of comparative research strategy. Each paragraph has been subject-indexed for a wide variety of topics such as type of kinship system, trading practices, and so on. This facilitates the ability of researchers to conduct statistical analyses about whether particular traits appear to be randomly associated or whether they are regularly found toggether in human cultures.

Applied Question | Although Cultural Anthropology shares some methods with other social sciences, what does it also have?

Distinctive and effective methodological tools.

Applied Question | What was one central ethical dilemma Philippe Bourgois was confronted with?

Ensuring that he did not betray the people who trusted him.

Applied Question | ____ combines historical and ethnographic approaches to understand social and cultural change.

Ethnohistory The approach has been most important in studying non-lliterate communities, where few written historical documents exist, and those documents that do exist can be enhanced with archaeological data and ethnographic data such as life histories.

Applied Question | Name the approach. "The approach has been most important in studying non-lliterate communities, where few written historical documents exist, and those documents that do exist can be enhanced with archaeological data and ethnographic data such as life histories."

Ethnohistory.

Applied Question | What is the defining methodology of Anthropology?

Fieldwork. "What blood was to the martyrs of the early Church, fieldwork is to Anthropologists."

Applied Question | Kind of Fieldnotes Hanging Out

Headnotes and jot notes. Later writes up a full description of context and content of discussion. Notes often include topics to follow up on in future interviews or conversations.

Applied Question | Kind of Fieldnotes for Conversation & Casual Conversation

Headnotes and jot notes. Later writes up a full description of context and content of discussion. Notes often include topics to follow up on in future interviews or conversations.

Applied Question | Nature of Conversation & Casual Conversation

Most people would not recognize this as an interview, notebooks are not present, and it would appear that the Anthropologist and informants are simply having an ordinary conversation. The Anthropologist might ask certain question, but the flow is much more conversational. Afterward, the Anthropologist takes a few jot notes so he or she can remember the top.

Applied Question | What has become another source of data about historic conditions as societies have changed over the past century?

Museum collections.

Applied Question | Clear Focus for Conversation & Casual Conversation

No

Applied Question | Clear Focus for Hanging Out

No

Applied Question | What does fieldwork help us (additionally) achieve?

One of our discipline's central goals, which Clifford Geertz once described as deciphering "the informal logic of everyday life," which is to say, trying to gain access to the implicit assumptions people make and the tactic rules they live by.

Applied Question | Why can this situation (In some communities, informants insist they should have access to and control of Anthropological field notes, since they helped create the data and should benefit from it) create a dilemma for the Anthropologist?

One the one hand, many Anthropologists share the sentiment that their research should benefit the community. On the other hand, they know that many communities are divided into factions and so raw data turned over to the community can benefit some and harm others. In situations where an Anthropologist agrees to share fieldnotes, he or she negotiates with community members what will be shared.

Applied Question | In the 1950s, prominent American Anthropologist ____ ____ began advocating Action Anthropology.

Sol Tax

Applied Question | Who encouraged Anthropologists to offer voluntary help to disenfranchised communities in airing their grievances and solving their collective problems.

Sol Tax.

Applied Question | Clear Focus for Informal Interview & Open-Ended Interview

Sometimes

Define | Informants

The people from whom he or she gathers information.

Applied Question | What can an Anthropologist do if (s)he has no way of getting into the field at all?

The researcher conducts interviews with people who are from the community but who live elsewhere.

Applied Question | What becomes field data?

The synthesis (the Anthropologist observes things in the field setting, observes them a second or third time, and later inquires about them, gradually pulling together an enriched sense of what has been observed) actively created by the Anthropologist and his or her informants.

Applied Question | True or False? "It has become clear that living in the community did not guarantee cultural relativism -- that is, understanding a native culture on its own terms -- nor did it promise that the researcher could overcome his or her ethnocentrism and cultural bias."

True But it increased the likelihood that the Anthropologist could get some sense of the world in terms that local people themselves understood.

Applied Question | True or False? "Anthropologists have an ethical commitment to share their reasons for doing research with their informants openly, and explaining their goals often helps build rapport with informants."

True In fact, many Anthropologists only bring out a notebook when they are conducting structured interviews and surveys.

Applied Question | True or False? "A handful of Anthropologists have joined a new U.S. military program called the Human Terrain System, which places a non-combatant social scientist with combat units to aid officers in gathering information and working with local communities in Iraq and Afghanistan."

True The American Anthropological Association -- with the strong support of the vast majority of its members -- condemned this program and its use of Anthropology, recognizing the dilemma that Bateson's experience suggests, that Anthropologists may end up helping the state act against vulnerable groups by providing cultural insights that can harm or disadvantage them.

Applied Question | True or False? "Anthropologists find that questions posed to elicit a 'yes' or 'no' answer are almost always unproductive."

True The goal is, quite simply, to get people talking, not to get them to provide simple, short answers. The more they talk, the more people reveal the cultural logic they use in their daily lives that they may not even be conscious of.

Applied Question | True or False? "For the most part, Anthropologists developed their methods in village settings in out-of-the-way places."

True These methods especially made sense when applied in non-Western communities because they were effective at helping Anthropologists gain critical insights into cultures radically different from their own.

Applied Question | True or False? "The effect of being a proverbial 'fish out of water,' struggling to make sense of seemingly senseless actions, heightens our sensitivities to the other society's culture."

True These sensitivities allow us to ask questions and eventually understand what seems obvious to members of the other community.

Applied Questions | True or False? "From the 1870s until the 1950s, many British and American Anthropologists relied on a volume published by the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1874) entitled "Notes and Queries in Anthropology" as a guide for what questions filed researchers should use."

True This little book was updated and reissued every decade or so.

Applied Question | True or False? "Generally Anthropologists have worked hard to protect their field notes from scrutiny, because they inevitably contain information that was given in confidence."

True When Anthropologists publish excerpts, they do so in short passages that give the flavor of the field experience or of an interview. The purpose is not to reveal an informant's secrets.

Applied Question | True or False? "When Anthropologists conduct participant observation, however, we are ethically obligated to let our informants know from the outset that we are researchers."

True. As researchers, our primary responsibility is to our informants, not government agencies or the military.

Applied Question | True or False? "Anthropologists have used the ethnographic methods of Participant Observation and Open-Ended Interviews for about a century and have developed systematic ways to get holistic data that are accessible to few other social scientists."

True. Such methods were tested and developed as research strategies in remote, non-Western communities.

Define | Cultural Tunnel Vision

Unquestioned tactic meanings and perspectives drawn from our own culture that prevent us from seeing and thinking in terms of another culture's tactic meanings and perspectives.

Applied Question | Why does understanding the language and already having well-formed views about people's behavior and attitudes make being a 'professional stranger' more difficult?

We are more likely to think we know what is going on and miss the local particularities that make people's actions sensible.

Applied Question | What are we claiming when Anthropologists attempt to see the world 'from the native's point of view?'

We are not claiming that the other culture's way of thinking is necessarily better than our own. But by understanding the native's point of view we are attempting to unravel the cultural logic within which unthinkable actions in our own society become commonplace in another culture.

Applied Question | What can we gain from participating directly in community activities?

We can observe what is important to the community, what they discuss among themselves, and how these matters intertwine with social institutions. This approach can yield rich insights about people's behaviors, actions, and ideas that people themselves might not notice or understand.

Applied Question | How does Anthropological fieldwork resemble the work of journalists?

We interview people to learn what is happening in a community.

Applied Question | What is an important reason Anthropologists can understand other cultures?

When we go overseas or work with a community different from our own, the differences between our culture and theirs are immediately obvious.

Applied Question | What do Anthropologists have to pay attention to when reading documents?

Who wrote the documents, what their author's motivations (thus biases) might have been, and any other factors that may have influenced the writing and distribution of the document.

Applied Question | Although participant observation and unstructured, open-ended interviews are the core research methods for Cultural Anthropologists, some project require...

additional strategies to understand social complexity and the native's point of view.

Applied Question | Anthropologists might also conduct systematic surveys, such as a village census or a survey of attitudes about an event, using carefully structured interviews so that...

all informants are asked the same questions and their responses are thus comparable.

Applied Question | Some years ago, Anthropologist Johannes Fabian suggested that...

any notion that an Anthropologist in the field is collecting 'objective' data misses the point of the discipline. The data Anthropologists bring home in their field notebooks were not out there to be gathered like blackberries; they were created by the relationships between an Anthropologist and his or her informants.

Applied Question | In order to do no harm, Anthropologists need to...

conceal the identities of everyone thy have interviewed and, sometimes, conceal content. Typically we use pseudonyms for informants in published accounts, but we might also change details to further disguise an informant's identity.

Applied Question | Mayan societies view time as ____, which is to say repeating itself during regular periodic cycles, so their notion of history is different from that in the Western world.

cyclical

Applied Question | Much of the time in the field is spent scribbling ____.

fieldnotes

Applied Question | Understanding the ____ ____ of informants has been an important tool for Anthropologists in understanding past social institutions and how they have changed.

life histories

Applied Question | Western history is ____, reflecting a view of time as marching through past and present straight toward the future.

linear

Applied Question | In an ____ ____, or unstructured interview, informants discuss a topic and in the process make connections with other issues.

open-ended interview

Applied Question | This Anthropology (Pan-Maya ethnic movement) is often in direct tension with that of...

other national and foreign Anthropologists, because one of its central goals is to support the political claims and self-determination of a particular indigenous group.

Applied Question | Today, some Anthropologists use a variant of action research methods by...

promoting the involvement of community members in formulating the research question, collecting data, and analyzing the data. This is called the Participatory Action Research.

Applied Question | Although most Anthropologists use quantitative data, Cultural Anthropology is the most ____ of the social sciences.

qualitative

Applied Question | Anthropologists use other methods besides Participant Observation and Interviews, including...

the Comparative Method, the Genealogical Method, Collecting Life Histories, Ethnohistory, and Rapid Appraisal. Each of these research strategies is effective in tackling different research questions where Participant Observation may not be possible.

Applied Question | Tax believed in...

the importance of inserting one's political values into Anthropological research and of treating research subjects as equal partners.

Applied Question | Rivers was studying visual perception among the Torres Straits Islanders and observed that...

they had an unusually high incidence of mild color blindness.