ANT 101 Lecture Notes: Early Approaches to Culture Studies & Modern Ethnography

Flashcards generated from lecture notes covering early and modern ethnographic approaches, key methodological terms, and principles for cultural understanding in anthropology.

Armchair Anthropology

An early approach to culture studies that typically did not involve direct fieldwork.

Salvage ethnography

Documenting disappearing cultures, often those being destroyed by colonialism or genocide, usually involving short-term studies, mainly interviews, and minimal participation.

Ethnography

A qualitative research method and the product of ethnographic research, relying on participant observation and interviews, aiming for an emic perspective, and practicing cultural relativism.

Participant observation

A key method in modern ethnography where the researcher observes and participates in a group's activities, often involving years of immersion, to understand what people do versus what they say they do.

Emic perspective

An aim of modern ethnography that seeks to understand a culture from an insider's point of view.

Etic perspective

An outsider's or observer's perspective of a culture, often contrasted with the emic perspective.

Cultural relativism

A principle in modern ethnography that involves understanding and judging a culture based on its own terms, not by imposing external standards.

Ethnology

The comparison of cultures across different groups to identify similarities and differences.

Nacirema

A case study used to illustrate issues in ethnographic writing, highlighting how descriptions can 'other' or exoticize common practices when viewed from an external, decontextualized perspective.

Othering

The act of exoticizing or primitivizing groups in studies, leading to misrepresentation rather than an understanding of their culture on its own terms.

Thick Description

A thorough description of context, including what people say and do, sensory details (see, hear, smell), layout, who is present, the ethnographer’s thoughts/feelings/reactions, impacting factors, and interpretations of what is happening, aiming to 'show don’t tell'.

Thin Description

Merely stating facts or observations without thorough contextual details, interpretation, or the subjective experiences of the observer.