Anthropology Final Chapter 14: Culture, Ethnography, Ethnology

Ethnography

A detailed description of a particular culture primarily based on firsthand observation and interaction (fieldwork).

Ethnology

Branch of anthropology, the study and analysis of different cultures from a comparative or historical point of view.

*Utilizes ethnographic accounts and developes anthropological theories that help explain why certain important differences or similarities occur among people.

Urgent Anthropology (Salvage Ethnography)

Ethnographic research that documents endangered cultures.

Culture Contact

When people from different cultures come in contact with one another through migration, trade, invasion, or conquest.

Acculturation

Cultural modification resulting from intercultural borrowing.

*Often disruptive process of cultural change occurring in traditional societies as they come in contact with more powerful state societies.

Colonialism

An attempt by one country to establish settlements and to impose its political, economical, and cultural principles in another territory.

Applied Anthropology

Applying anthropological knowledge and methods to solve practical problems in communities confronting new challenges.

Advocacy Anthropology

Research that is community based and politically involved.

*Over the past few decades, anthropologists committed to social justice and human rights have become actively and increasingly involved in efforts to assist indigenous groups, peasant communities, and ethnic minorities.

*Robert Hitchcock specializes in development issues, focused primarily on land rights (as well social, economic, and cultural rights) of indigenous peoples in southern Africa, especially Bushmen groups in Botswana.

*Made Botswana the only country in Africa that allows broad-based hunting rights for indigenous people who forage for part of their livelihood.

Studying Up

Anthropologists should focus on Western elites, government bureaucracies, global corporations, philanthropic foundations, media empires, business clubs, etc.

*Harde to do participant-obvervation because these elites have the power to stop the research.

Multi-Sited Ethnography

The investigation and documentation of peoples and cultures embedded in the larger structures of a globalizing world, utilizing a range of methods in various locations of time and space.

*A result of globalization

Digital Ethnography (Cyberethnography or Netnography)

An ethnographic study of social networks, communicative practices, and other cultural expressions in cyberspace by means of digital visual and audio technologies; also called cyberethnography or netnography.

Ethnocentrism

Belief in the superiority of one's nation or ethnic group.

Emic Perspective (Actor-Oriented)

Researchers obtain the emic perspective through informal conversations with the case study participants and by observing their natural behavior in the field.

*Approach of studying a culture's behavior from the perspective of an insider, the participants' viewpoint about the phenomenon under study.

Etic Perspective (Action-Oriented)

This is the outsiders' interpretation of the experiences of a culture.

*An approach to studying cultures that stresses commonalities across cultures.

Idealist Perspective

A theoretical approach stressing the primacy of superstructure in cultural research and analysis.

*Psychological and Cognitive anthropology.

Materialist Perspective

A theoretical approach stressing the primacy of infrastructure (material conditions) in cultural research and analysis.

*Highlights such environmental or economic factors as primary in shaping cultures.

*Marxism, neo-evolutionism, cultural ecology.