Chapter 2 - Fieldwork: A Meeting Of Cultural Traditions

Fact

A widely accepted observation, a taken-for granted item of common knowledge, that becomes intelligible only when it is interpreted and placed in a context of meaning.

When anthropologists study another culture, what is important that they do?

That they perform their research/study in a relativistic and reflexive manner.

What is multi-sited fieldwork?

-It arose from the expansion of the European capitalist economy. -Can be criticized for weakening the anthropologist's understanding, involvement, and insight with the informants of each site. -It encourages the study of new electronic and visual media. Anthropologists have begun to carry out fieldwork that takes them to a number of different sites. It is usually the outcome of following cultural phenomena wherever they lead, often crossing local, regional, and national boundaries in the process. This form of fieldwork is becoming more common in our globalized world. Such fieldwork allows anthropologists to better understand many cultural processes that link people, things, metaphors, plots, and lives that are not confined to a single site. Usually based in one primary site; its major innovation involves doing fieldwork in additional sites and bringing information from all these sites together in a single study.

What are the three overlapping arenas that should be of concern to contemporary anthropologists?

1) The centrality of science and technology. 2) Decolonization, post-colonialism, and the re-construction of societies after social trauma. 3) The role of the relatively new electronic and visual media. Multi-sited field work encourages anthropologists to identify and explore these relationships.

Structured Interviews

A method for gathering information whereby an anthropologist (or another researcher) asks a set of predetermined questions and records participants responses. -Archival of material. -Publishing literature. Can draw out a great amount of information on topics of particular interest to the anthropologist.

Positionality

A person's uniquely situated social position, which reflects his or her gender, nationality, political views, previous experiences, and so on.

Fieldwork

An extended period of close involvement with the people in whose way of life anthropologists are interested, during which anthropologists ordinarily collect most of their data. Broadens understandings of cultural worlds and transforms the self-understandings of anthropologists and the people with whom they work. It is the coming together of two different cultural worlds. Its intersubjective, involves interactions/translations/interpretations, and results in the production of knowledge.

All of the following statements about the positivist method are true EXCEPT: A) The traditional goal of the positivist method has been to produce objective knowledge. B) Positivists are committed to the integration of facts and values. C) Participant-observation results in a paradox for positivist researchers. D) Positivist anthropologists try to recreate lab conditions in cultural settings through the method of controlled comparison.

B) Positivists are committed to the integration of facts and values - False.

Why can fieldwork present challenges to both the researcher and the people they wish to study?

Because the anthropologist needs to gain appropriate authorization to work in a particular place and must gain acceptance from the individuals who will be participants. Both can be hard to do. Fieldwork is entangled with the realities of diverse, complex relationships. Gaining acceptance takes time and effort, and there's no guarantee the researcher will be accepted by everyone. There is a lot of preplanning which involves not only appropriate authorization but residence planning, access/travel to remote areas, time, etc. Obtaining grants/funding can be taxing and difficult, visas, clearance procedures, interests of agencies and intellectual debates within the discipline, etc. Accountability to the agencies, but also the individuals who allow the researcher into their lives. Rights/dignity of the informants and adherence to codes of ethics.

Why is what constitutes a cultural fact ambiguous?

Because the facts of anthropology exist neither in the culture of the anthropologist nor in the culture of the informant. They are cross-cultural because they are made across cultural boundaries. They aren't just out there waiting to be picked up. They are made and remade in the field, when fieldworkers re-examine field notes and reflect on field experience, when fieldworkers write about experiences or discuss them with other anthropologists, and when fieldwork is redone to make the changes that have occurred.

In the 1930s, Margaret Mead used a method called ________ when she studied four different societies in an attempt to discover the range and causes of gender roles.

Controlled comparison.

Reflexivity

Critically thinking about the way one things; reflecting on one's own experience. Includes: Situated subjectivity, positionality, and situated knowledge.

All of the following statements about informants are true EXCEPT what? A) Fieldwork can have effects on the informants. B) Informants practise reflexivity in their interactions with anthropologists. C) Informants have been typically given a passive role in the research process. D) Cultural facts exist solely in the culture of the informant.

D) Cultural facts exist solely in the culture of the informant - False.

Multi-Sited Ethnography

Ethnographic research on cultural processes that are not contained by social, ethnic, religious, or national boundaries in which the ethnographer follows the process from site to site, often doing fieldwork in sites and with persons that were traditionally never subject to ethnographic analysis. Focuses on widespread cultural processes and leads the researcher from site to site as new considerations present themselves. Follows things, people, metaphors, plots and lines. Offers the possibility of juxtaposing more than one place, more than one time, and more than one point of view, thereby bringing to light connections among them that would otherwise remain unknown.

By following ethical guidelines, anthropologists are relieved of responsibility to the people and communities they study. True or False?

False.

In fieldwork, proper interpretation comes from comprehending the cultural self in contrast to the cultural other. True or False?

False.

Multi-sited research simplifies research as it offers replication of the same data from various sources. True or False?

False.

Participant-observation is the most productive method available to anthropologists who seek an idealistic understanding of culture and the human condition. True or False?

False.

The shared, public symbolic systems of a culture are known as ________.

Intersubjective meanings.

When a successful dialogue is achieved between the anthropologist and the informant during fieldwork, the data generated are understood to be ________.

Intersubjective.

Anthropologists hoped to generate ________ by using positivist research methods.

Objective knowledge.

What are some limitations of multi-sited fieldwork?

It appears to dilute the intensity of involvement and depth of understanding fieldworkers develop with their informants in each situated study. Some see it as weakening their political commitment to their primary informants. It highlights the multi-cantered, complex conflicts of the contemporary world in which clear cut good and bad is hard to identify. By narrowly focusing on the needs of one group, a researcher may draw attention away from another equal group (or even greater need).

Objective Knowledge

Knowledge about reality that is absolute and true for all people, in all times and places. Critiqued theory.

Situated Knowledge

Knowledge that is set within or specific to a precise context or situation.

Going Native

Losing the anthropological point of view during fieldwork. Refers to the danger for ethnographers to become too involved in the community under study, thus losing objectivity and distance.

Intersubjective Meanings

Meaning rooted in the symbolic systems of a culture and shared by the participants in that culture.

Subjective Meaning

Meaning that stems true to a particular person, based on his or her personal values, beliefs, opinions and assumptions.

Intersubjective Meaning

Meanings achieved through dialogue and negotiation between researcher and informant. Meaning rooted in the symbolic systems of a culture and shared by participants in that culture.

When trying to study a cultural group in our often disconnected and globalized world, it is best to use a ________ research method.

Multi-Sited.

How do facts turn out to be complex phenomena?

On the one hand, they assert that a particular state of affairs about the world is true. On the other, they don't speak for themselves. They speak only when they are interpreted and placed in a context of meaning that makes them intelligible.

Situated Subjectivity

One's unique perspective.

What does anthropological fieldwork traditionally involve?

Participant-observation, which includes extended periods of close contact at a single site with members of another society. Anthropologists were expected to carry out research in societies different than their own, but recently, increasing numbers have worked in their own societies. Each setting has its own advantages and draw-backs for ethnographers.

Margaret Mead

Probably the most famous anthropologist. Greatly influenced by Franz Boas. She focused mainly on child-rearing and personality traits in Samoa, New Guinea, and Bali. It was here she was able to take a positivist method to her research. Mead was also popular to mass media as a speaker and writer of her work. In the 1930's Margaret Mead used a method called controlled comparison, or taking hypotheses to different cultural settings. Each setting would match up to a separate experiment. This allowed anthropologists, such as Mead, to study human life by participant-observation instead of an artificial lab setting. Mead used this method when she studied four different societies in an attempt to discover the range and causes of gender role. It is still used today. She was known for introducing radical proposals and being an activist. One of her most memorable stances on issues was her outspoken advocacy on birth control. From her findings she was able to produce many ethnographic writings, such as Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) and Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935)3. She combined cultural relativism and participant observation in her work. She was challenged after her death by Derek Freeman who criticized her book and made assertions that she lied.

For anthropologists, thinking about the way members of a culture think about their lives is known as what?

Reflexivity.

What did early anthropologists who wanted to be scientific try to do with fieldwork?

Remake it in the image of controlled laboratory research. According to positivist scientists and philosophers, lab research was the prototype of scientific investigation. Following this model, anthropologists systematically collected what they believed were highly accurate and objective data on societies in many parts of the world, although there were concerns about the method being insensitive to the informants. Today, anthropologists realize that there isn't just one, but a variety of scientific methods that researchers may use in order to generate anthropological knowledge.

________ is knowledge that explicitly states the observer's frame of reference with regards to his/her nationality, gender, background, etc.

Situated knowledge.

An anthropologist's ________ is her unique perspective, which informs her research choices.

Situated subjectivity.

What do many anthropologists believe that the main goal and focus of fieldwork should be?

Some anthropologists, when faced with the real struggles of the people they are studying, have committed time to working with their informants to bring about social change. Not all anthropologists are comfortable with this type of transformative participation in the lives of the people they are studying. Many researchers believe that the main goal and focus of an anthropologist during fieldwork should be to interpret and explain the dynamics of the culture, rather than trying to change it.

Why is it important that anthropologists and informants study in a reflexive and relativistic manner?

Successful fieldwork involves anthropologists who think about the way they think about other cultures. Informants must also reflect on the way they and others in their society think and must convey these insights to the anthropologist. This is basic to the reflexive approach to fieldwork, which sees participant-observation as an active dialogue about the meaning of experience in the informant's culture. Fieldworkers and informants must work together to construct an inter-subjective world of meaning.

Culture Shock

The feeling of physical and mental dislocation and/or discomfort a person experiences when in a new or strange cultural setting. It can manifest most deeply on returning "home," with home seeming exceedingly strange after extended stays in the fieldwork situation.

The example of Briggs's cultural violation of the Utuk cultural code illustrates what?

The importance of reflexivity in anthropological research.

Participant Observation

The method anthropologists use to gather information by living and working with the people whose culture they are studying in their lives as much as possible.

Participant-Observation

The method anthropologists use to gather information by living and working with the people whose culture they are studying while participating in their lives as much as possible. Involves direct, face to face interaction between the researcher and his or her local research partners, as they go about their daily lives. The method was pioneered by cultural anthropologists and remains characteristic of anthropological work. It allows anthropologists to understand interactions in a wider context of social networks and cultural beliefs and values. The most productive method available to anthropologists who seek a holistic understanding of culture and the human condition.

A "rich point" is ________.

The moment when problems in cross-cultural understandings emerge.

The notion of doing fieldwork in a researcher's own society has been what?

The norm in Mexico, Brazil, India, and Russia for many years.

Dialectic Of Fieldwork

The process of building a bridge of understanding between anthropologist and informant so that each can begin to understand the other.

Dialectic of Fieldwork

The process of building a bridge of understanding between anthropologists and informant so that each can begin to understand the other. -Jean Briggs

Positivism

The view that there is a reality "out there" that can be detected through the senses and that there is a single, appropriate scientific method for investigating that reality. -Controlled comparison. Still believes anthropology as a science. Believes in objective knowledge. Adopted by early anthropologists, it is the traditional philosophy of the physical sciences. A perspective heavily influenced by pioneering ethnographers who established the fieldwork tradition. (Bronislaw Malinowski, Franz Boas, Margaret Mead and Frank G. Speck).

Why can't the knowledge generated by anthropologists be objective?

This is because the researchers are never able to fully escape their own cultural views. In order to account for this, the researcher must constantly be reflexive, critically thinking about the way they are viewing and interpreting things, while gathering data. In the field of anthropology, there will always be more to know and learn as all cultures are dynamic and constantly changing.

As anthropologists began to move away from the positivist approach, the ethnographies that different observers began to generate demonstrated how people working with different assumptions could generate different interpretations of the same culture. True or False?

True.

Cultural facts are made both during and after fieldwork. True or False?

True.

Establishing interpersonal relationships with informants can sometimes enhance the effects of culture shock. True or False?

True.

The effects of fieldwork make take many years to manifest. True or False?

True.

The traditional dialect of fieldwork can sometimes act to exclude informants from the anthropological process. True or False?

True.

According to Mike Evans, adhering to principles of informer confidentiality can silence the voice of the community under study. True or False?

True..

Bronislaw Malinowski

Was the founder of participant observation (which happened by chance due to being stuck in the islands of the pacific during WW2). He was not a cultural relativist. He was a major contributor to the transformation of nineteenth-century speculative anthropology into a modern science of man. His principal field work was carried out among the Papuo-Melanesian people of the Trobriand Islands, located off the coast of New Guinea. Malinowski's primary scientific interest was in the study of culture as a universal phenomenon and in the development of a methodological frame-work that would permit the systematic study of specific cultures in all their particularities and open the way to systematic cross-cultural comparison. He was the originator of a functionalist approach to the study of culture. Malinowski treated each culture as a closed system and all cultures as essentially comparable. He made little use of the comparative method, he treated the empirical study of a specific culture as a contribution to the understanding of the universal phenomenon of culture. In Argonauts of the Western Pacific he stated that the ethnographer's final goal must be to grasp the native's point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of his world.

Franz Boas

Well known for his studies on the Native population in Northern Vancouver and British Colombia, Canada. Stood in the middle ground between fieldwork and armchair anthropology. Influenced by the writings of Charles Darwin, Boas developed the theory of cultural relativism, devoting much of his life's work to discrediting the importance of racial distinction in the field. At a time when armchair anthropology and racial prejudices were rampant, Boas emphasized the importance of impartial data, the use of the scientific method in his research, and rejected the idea of Western civilization's supposed "cultural superiority." Boas gave modern anthropology its rigorous scientific methodology, patterned after the natural sciences. He also originated the notion of "culture" as learned behaviors. Boas was truly the first person to develop an ethnography which is a descriptive account of anthropological studies.

Annette Wiener

Went to the islands where Malinowski performed his research, off the coast of New Guinea, and challenged his ideas. She found missing pieces, especially regarding women. Her book caused people to question objective knowledge and the positivist method. She was known for her ethnographic work and studied the contribution of women to the economy of Trobriand society, which had been the site of Bronislaw Malinowski's renowned studies of the Kula exchange. She demonstrated that women's contributions were highly significant but largely erased from record because the cultural focus was on the distribution and exchange of valuables rather than its production. She presented a theory of value and exchange in which there is a basic distinction between alienable and inalienable forms of wealth.

When can culture shock have its greatest effect?

When the researcher returns home.

What is a concern regarding multi-sited fieldwork?

While it is usually built around one site, there is concern that having to navigate knowledge and data from so many sites of research may dilute the depth and understanding of the researchers.