Chapter 3 Fieldwork and Ethnography PDF

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Chapter 3 Fieldwork and Ethnography What is unique about ethnographic fieldwork and why do anthropologists conduct this kind of research? Ethnographic fieldwork: a primary research strategy in cultural anthropology typically involving living and interacting w a community of people over an extended period to better understand their lives  Fieldwork begins w PEOPLE!  Fieldwork shapes the anthropologist! Ofen experience culture shock, then familiarizes with the new community, then culture shock once they return home o NACIREMA~ Fieldwork as social science and art! o Success depends on the outsiders ability to develop relationships w people o The risk of mutual transformation o Reflects off the anthropologists ability to tell the story in human condition  Fieldwork informs daily life! How did the idea of fieldwork develop? Early times:  Colonizers kept diaries, maps, etc.  Merchants, colonial admins, missionaries  "armchair anthropologists": the earliest anthropologists didn't conduct their own research

The professionalization of social scientific data gathering and analysis:  Franz Boas: Fieldwork & the 4-field approach: o Gathering cultural, linguistic, archaeological and biological data (culture, biology, artifacts, language) o Salvage ethnography: strategy developed by Boaz to collect 4-field data about Native American pop being devastated by the westward expansion of European settlers.  Through rapid collection of all materials by talking to elders with oral interviews o Cultural relativism: understanding a groups beliefs & practices within their own cultural context, w/o making judgements  Bronislaw Malinowski: The father of fieldwork: o Book: Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922): an elaborate ring of thousands of islanders trading across miles of ocean  Set guidelines for conducting fieldwork from own experience: participant observation  E.E. Evans-Pritchard & British Social Anthropology: o Synchronic approach: control their experiments by limiting consideration of larger historical/social context to isolate variables  Margaret Mead: fieldwork & public anthropology: o Claimed culturally specific instead of cross-culturally found o Gender roles are not biological!  Annette Weiner: feminism & reflexivity: o Retraced Malinowski's footsteps but found more substantial women roles

o Reflexivity: critical self-examination of the role anthropologists plays & awareness that one's identity affects one's fieldwork & theoretical analyses  Barbara Meyerhof: a Turn to home: o Number our days: tells stories about Jewish people & their experiences  Turned study from "others" to "self": being thrice-born (own culture, new culture, return and rediscover own culture)...