Practicing Ethnography

Identify the statement that best represents Scheper-Hughes's answer to her research question: Why do Alto do Cruzeiro mothers not grieve when their babies die?

The political and economic context forces mothers to cope with frequent deaths.

Review the first few sentences of the excerpt. Identify the statement that most accurately describes how the inclusion of Aji's voice strengthens the ethnography. "It happened at first with my friends, my buddies, and me," Aji, then 32 years old, told me, as we sat in the back of his small shop in Bandung in the spring of 2007. I had just arrived in the West Javanese city after several months researching indie music and fashion production in Yogyakarta, and I was touring the major outposts of Bandung's indie clothing network on the back of the motorbike of my self-appointed tour guide "Mega-death." Aji's shop was stop number four on a daylong introductory blitz. He went on: "We used to skateboard together, then play in a band together ... ."

The reader hears directly from Aji.

A key informant is a person who can contribute to the ethnographer's field notes in a particularly important way. In Aimee Cox's research, which person is a key informant?

Tia, because she is a participant in the local scene and has shared information with the anthropologist

Aji's voice shows us a personal example of the cultural trend of financial pressures bearing down on young artists.

True

An anthropologist who risks mutual transformation in ethnographic fieldwork is still following the scientific method.

True

Ethical principles that guide the anthropologist's fieldwork are relevant in all areas of life.

True

Ethnographic data may be presented in video, photography, or writing.

True

Ethnography can develop useful skills and perspectives in college students of all majors.

True

Field notes may describe relationships, details of the context, and even the anthropologist's personal feelings.

True

It is common for anthropologists to encounter ethical dilemmas in fieldwork.

True

It is common for ethnographic writing to include lengthy quotes from research subjects, as the excerpt does.

True

It is possible for any professional—not just professional anthropologists—to read ethnographies and put their insights to use.

True

Reflexivity may show the anthropologist's weaknesses.

True

Which question most directly reflects the importance of beginning with careful observation of the details of everyday life?

What is the relationship between the boy and the infant being buried?

According to the excerpt, Abu-Lughod conducted fieldwork with a Bedouin community in the late 1970s and 1980s. Identify the question she might have asked in obtaining informed consent for that fieldwork.

Would you agree to let me conduct fieldwork in your community?

Identify each field note as referring to a zero, or not.

Zero(s) The youth do not tell me stories of failed activist experiences. There are no senior citizens at the Allied Media Conference. Not Zero(s) Tia glanced at her phone before beginning the performance. The young women often tell stories of their negative experiences in school.

Hover over the text to discover passages that you would probably want to highlight as an active reader. Select the highlighted material to reveal why that word or phrase is important. Click or tap on words, phrases, or items in the passage below to complete the question as instructed. The process of cultural comparison and assessment, called ethnology, uses the wealth of anthropological studies to compare the activities, trends, and patterns of power across cultures. The process enables us to better see what is unique in a particular context and how it contributes to identifying larger patterns of cultural beliefs and practices.

ethnology, activities, trends, and patterns of power across cultures. larger patterns

Hover over the text to discover passages you would probably want to highlight as an active reader. Click on the highlighted material to reveal why that word or passage is important.

slowness to anthropomorphize and personalize their infants, prevent material overattachment

Anthropologists take field notes when they use a variety of research strategies. Match each Cox-inspired research topic to its most compatible strategy.

social network analysis Correct label: identifying who homeless teens turn to when they are in need life history Correct label: tracing a dancer's biography, looking for themes of political and social action expressed through art kinship analysis Correct label: examining the networks of marriage and family ties that shape a youth's experience of homelessness survey Correct label: inviting thirty youth to fill out a form that asks basic questions about their experiences making digital art

Match the discipline to its research method for generating and analyzing data.

spend time in local communities and document people's everyday lives Correct label: anthropology pore over records and library archives Correct label: history conduct experiments in laboratories Correct label: chemistry crunch census data Correct label: demography

College students encounter diverse cultures in everyday life. For this question, imagine Hannah is a U.S.-born college student, and Ahyeong is an international student just arriving in the United States from South Korea. Match each concept to the scenario that best exemplifies it.

After a semester, Ahyeong returns home and is surprised by how much she has changed. She appreciates her exposure to American culture. Correct label: risking mutual transformation Ahyeong and Hannah share stories about their siblings and pets, and notice both similarities and differences. Correct label: studying the other and the self Hannah feels frustrated because Ahyeong's food and language are unfamiliar. Hannah worries that they will not become good friends. Correct label: culture shock

Abu-Lughod makes "a crucial point about veiling." Identify the statement that describes the harm she is most concerned with in the excerpt.

Americans misunderstand Muslim women as being oppressed by veiling.

Identify each quotation from the Scheper-Hughes excerpt as analytic or descriptive. ("Analytic" means explaining or interpreting. "Descriptive" means reporting or portraying.)

Analytic "Life in the Alto do Cruzeiro resembles nothing so much as a battlefield ... ." "[M]ortality is guided by a kind of 'life-boat ethics' ... ." Descriptive "[I]ndifference ... [is] conveyed in such sayings as 'little critters have no feelings' ... ." "The bereaved mother is told not to cry ... ."

Match the renowned anthropologist to his or her ethnographic writing.

Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922) Correct label: Bronislaw Malinowski The Nuer (1940) Correct label: E. E. Evans-Pritchard The People of Puerto Rico (1956) Correct label: Julian Steward Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) Correct label: Margaret Mead

Match each ethical principle to the everyday scenario that exemplifies it.

Before hosting a public forum on race, the Black Student Union considers possible scenarios of blowback or retaliation. Correct label: do no harm Gabi tells her family a story about a juvenile at the detention facility where she interns. She changes identifying details about the juvenile. Correct label: ensure anonymity Erik records his friend doing a silly dance. Before posting the video online, Erik asks his friend for permission. Correct label: obtain informed consent

Review the following sentences from the excerpt. It was a story I heard over and over throughout my fieldwork. In the midst of the Asian Financial Crisis of the late 1990s, young, middle-class urbanites like Aji found themselves in a difficult position. The relative economic prosperity of the late Suharto period, coupled with economic deregulation, had expanded the size and spending capacity of the Indonesian middle class. Identify each statement as a claim to ethnographic authority used in these sentences, or not.

Claim(s) to Ethnographic Authority The author's fieldwork was long enough for him to hear similar stories repeated. The author has done enough research to make generalizations about people in the society. Not Claim(s) to Ethnographic Authority The author's nationality gives him a valuable vantage point from which to analyze Indonesian culture.

Review these lines from the Myerhoff excerpt. However much I learned from [fieldwork in Mexico] was limited by the fact that I would never really be a Huichol Indian. But I would be a little old Jewish lady one day; thus, it was essential for me to learn what that condition was like, in all its particulars. ... I consider myself very fortunate in having had, through this work, an opportunity to anticipate, rehearse, and contemplate my own future. Identify the statement that describes Myerhoff's "third birth" experience of culture shock.

Correct Answer(s) Myerhoff could consider her own future in a new light. Incorrect Answer(s) Myerhoff was very different than the Huichol Indians. Like the Huichol and the Jewish senior citizens, Myerhoff was a human being. Myerhoff studied the details of everyday experience for senior citizens.

Identify the statement that illustrates cultural relativism as a key value in fieldwork and field notes.

Cox carefully describes her research participants, without passing judgment on their words, actions, faces, or bodies.

You set out to conduct fieldwork with Muslim women in New York City. Identify each ethical dilemma as directly related to informed consent, or not.

Directly Related to Informed Consent Did each woman agree to participate in the study? Does each woman understand the purpose of the study? Not Directly Related to Informed Consent Does the researcher have adequate background and expertise? Is there a chance that the women could suffer discrimination or violence because they participated in the study?

Kia is a U.S. college student who was born in California. She spends a summer conducting fieldwork with the Waorani, a group of people who live in the Amazon rain forest. Match each scenario to the stage of culture shock it describes.

Disorientation is brought on by the new and unfamiliar. Correct label:When Kia begins to live among the Waorani, she feels very lonely because she does not speak their language yet. Upon returning home, previously familiar people and customs seem strange. Correct label:In the fall, Kia returns to college and feels angry about American materialism and isolation, things she used to not even notice. The unfamiliar becomes familiar. Correct label:After several weeks, Kia feels happy and comfortable in everyday life with the Waorani.

Identify each statement about infant mortality and maternal bonding as an emic perspective, held by people who live in Alto do Cruzeiro, or an etic perspective, held by outsiders including anthropologists.

Emic (Insider View) Mothers who grieve are mentally ill. If a mother cries, her baby's angel wings will be too wet with tears to fly up to heaven. Etic (Outsider View) Loving children less is a rational response to an environment that produces high rates of infant death. If a mother refuses to grieve, she is better able to care for her surviving children.

Anonymity is relevant only when the research topic involves illegal activity.

False

Early anthropologists were mostly unaffected by their fieldwork, but today's anthropologists are often transformed by ethnographic fieldwork.

False

Taking field notes is one way to ensure that anthropological research is objective and neutral.

False

Luvaas's ethnographic writing showcases which fundamental principle of ethnographic authority?

He knows about the people because he was there.

Building on Scheper-Hughes's findings, what question could be asked of Brazilian shantytowns, inner-city emergency rooms, and battlefields?

How are the bonds between humans shaped by situations of extreme death?

When studying the "self," distress may stem from confronting complex problems in one's home culture. Identify each social problem as one that Myerhoff confronted in her fieldwork, or not.

In Myerhoff's Fieldwork physical limitations associated with aging limited prospects for positive changes in quality of life Not in Myerhoff's Fieldwork political repression climate change impacting coastal areas of the United States

Match each scenario to the ethical principle it violates.

Muslim women are targeted for discrimination by local officials, because they gave information to an anthropologist. Correct label: do no harm An anthropologist uses the real names of her informants, because the publication is in a different country and a different language than that of the informants Correct label: ensure anonymity A Muslim woman thought she had befriended an interesting American, not realizing that the American was an anthropologist collecting data on her. Correct label: obtain informed consent

Which change did Myerhoff experience as a result of her fieldwork with the Jewish senior citizens in California?

She appreciated the wisdom and community of the senior citizens.

Cox's research fits with public anthropology, in which the anthropologist partners with the community to bring about social and political change. Identify the stage of Cox's anthropological fieldwork in which taking field notes was most important.

She conducted participant observation while working as the director of a homeless shelter.

The excerpt concludes with this statement about Abu-Lughod's years of fieldwork: I have done fieldwork in Egypt over more than 20 years and I cannot think of a single woman I know, from the poorest rural to the most educated cosmopolitan, who has ever expressed envy of U.S. women, women they tend to perceive as bereft of community, vulnerable to sexual violence and social anomie, driven by individual success rather than morality, or strangely disrespectful of God." Identify each statement, as it relates to anonymity, as true or false.

She makes an effective generalization that does not violate the privacy of research participants. It would violate anonymity if she named the Muslim women she knew, and described their views toward Americans. False We cannot know whether she conducted fieldwork in Egypt, or in some other country.

Shannon Speed is an anthropologist who studies Native American life. Hover over her reflections about how anthropology can be transformative for undergraduates. Select the highlighted material to reveal why those phrases are important. "Cultural anthropology, more than any other course, is going to allow you to stand outside of your cultural blinders and see the world in a different way. Potentially to understand yourself for the first time as part of the human family. ... Once you take off your cultural blinders, you can begin to see that your way of thinking isn't the only way to think about the world. That has the potential to transform everything in the way you view yourself in relation to the world around you."

stand outside of your cultural blinders and see the world in a different way. your way of thinking isn't the only way to think about the world. the way you view yourself in relation to the world around you."

Click or tap on the photograph to discover a key insight about anthropologist Franz Boas's contribution to ethnography. What was Boas's major contribution to the practice of ethnographic fieldwork?

the four-field approach

Identify the statement that describes the main purpose of ethnographic writing.

to interpret the people and experiences that were the focus of fieldwork

Hover over the text to discover the words and phrases that show reflexivity. Select the highlighted material to reveal why that word or phrase is important. "It happened at first with my friends, my buddies, and me," Aji, then 32 years old, told me, as we sat in the back of his small shop in Bandung in the spring of 2007. I had just arrived in the West Javanese city after several months researching indie music and fashion production in Yogyakarta, and I was touring the major outposts of Bandung's indie clothing network on the back of the motorbike of my self-appointed tour guide "Mega-death."

. I had just arrived in the West Javanese city after several months researching indie music and fashion production in Yogyakarta, I was touring the major outposts of Bandung's indie clothing network on the back of the motorbike of my self-appointed tour guide "Mega-death."

Sarah is conducting fieldwork in a third-grade classroom in Kansas City. Identify the question that most centrally relates to Sarah's conducting ethical fieldwork.

Is it possible to ensure the anonymity of the teacher, since there is only one?

Match the quality of ethnographic writing to its example in the Luvaas excerpt.

Luvaas uses "I" in his writing, describing his reactions and feelings in first-person voice. Correct label: reflexivity Luvaas demonstrates credibility with long fieldwork and his ability to establish rapport. Correct label: ethnographic authority Aji speaks in his own words, via direct quotations. Correct label: polyvocality

Anthropology is both a social science and an art, which is reflected in both fieldwork and in writing ethnography. Identify each feature of ethnographic writing as corresponding more with social science or with art.

Social Science findings that stem from methods such as participant observation, kinship analysis, and mapping tests hypotheses and builds theories about the diversity of human behavior Art expresses how the anthropologist was personally transformed by the fieldwork experience descriptions include the anthropologist's own feelings and relationships formed in the field

Identify each example of ethnographic fieldwork as the study of the "other," or the study of the "self."

Study of the "Other" Barbara Myerhoff's fieldwork with the Huichol Indians of Mexico Annette Weiner's fieldwork with the Trobriand Islanders of the western Pacific E. E. Evans-Pritchard's fieldwork with the Nuer of East Africa Study of the "Self" Barbara Myerhoff's fieldwork with the Jewish senior citizens of California