anth 202

Ethnography

A method used by cultural anthropologists to create a description of a culture or society

Fieldwork Goal

to assimilate into your host society to a greater or lesser degree

three approaches to fieldwork

• Positivist

• Reflexive

• Multi-sites

POSITIVISM + Anthropological positivism

• The view that there is a reality that is absolute and true and that there is a single appropriate scientific method for investigating that reality

• Tried to replicate lab work through “controlled comparison” but that turned out insensitive because you can’t treat humans like chemicals in a jar

• To record objective knowledge, anthropologists need to see things from an objective POV while being invisible which ISN’T possible because Anthropologists need to be personally involved

REFLEXIVE

• Neither objective or subjective but INTERSUBJECTIVE

• Critically thinking about the way one thinks, reflecting on one’s experience (and how that affects your view on things)

• Reflexive knowledge is situated (Put in a context)

• Anthropologists believed in explicitly saying who you are as an anthropologist in reports for increased accuracy as it influences relationships in the field

MULTI-SITED FIELDWORK/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 does fieldwork in sites and with people that are traditionally never studied ethnographically

BENEFITS OF MULTI-SITED FIELDWORK/ETHNOGRAPHY

Allows anthropologists to capture the increasing complexities produced by globalization

LIMITATIONS OF MULTI-SITED FIELDWORK/ETHNOGRAPHY

• Dilutes intensity of anthropological relationships

• Undercuts responsibility to primary informants

PREPARING FOR FIELD WORK

• Ethnographers specialize and receive training about the areas of their research 

• Study history and culture of the region

• Learn one or more languages (Or at least a language similar to the language of the region)

• Do pre-research about their specific topic (See how other societies apply to this topic, see if anyone else has researched this, etc)

ENTERING FIELD WORK

• Paperwork

  • Funding

  • Institution permission

  • Ethics approval

  • Research visa/permit

• Immensely rewarding

• Navigating unreasonable expectations (as anthropologists) and local power dynamics (You vs the people)

FIELDWORK TECHNIQUES

Key is being there, putting in the time to observe, interview, follow up and take advantage of chance encounters

• Interviews

• Recording speech and music

• Photography

• Film

• Genealogy (Ancestry, lineage)

• Mapping

• Census taking

• Archival research

• Collecting samples

TYPES OF INTERVIEWS: Unstructured

No set goal; go with the flow

TYPES OF INTERVIEWS: Structured

Extremely organized; no room for deviation

TYPES OF INTERVIEWS: Semi-structured

Interview guide; a list of questions with prompts

TYPES OF INTERVIEWS: Informal

Just talking; getting the interview by chance

TYPES OF INTERVIEWS: Formal

Everyone knows it’s an interview

Key Informant

The most used informant that you get most close to 

ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELD CRITIQUES: Ethnographic present

• Classic ethnographic research present communities as if they’re an island outside of time

• Everything is talked about like it’s in the present even years after the fieldwork/research

ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELD CRITIQUES: Tradition

• Anthropologists overrepresent tradition + have a tendency to romanticize the other 

• EX: Raymond Firth and local religion

ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELD CRITIQUES: Narrator Voice

• Early anthropologists adopted the voice of an omniscient narrator 

• Like a documentary voice

FIELDWORK CRITIQUES: Representativeness

• Long-term intense interaction with a small group of people does not tell you how representative they are

• People and communities are subtle with different details; one community does not represent a whole culture

• Impossible to get all sides

ETHNOGRAPHIC SUBJECTIVITY

• In natural science, you can use a standard instrument to yield comparable results

• In anthropology that is not possible as anthropologists are the instruments and humans are all different/cannot be objective

• Ethnographic research is subjective in nature

• Everyone views information differently

WAYS FOUNDERS OF MODERN ANTHRPOPOLY TRIED TO ADDRESSING SUBJECTIVITY

• Created standardized categories for data collection

• Believed training could overcome observer bias

• Anthropologists even underwent psychotherapy in attempt to calibrate themselves but did not last

REASONS FOR SUBJECTIVITY PROBLEMS

Restudies are not often done because

• Early anthropologists were motivated by salvage ethnography

• Thought it was useless to study the same culture

• Anthropologists were also protective of “their own” place and had mutual agreement of not wanting to “poach” each other’s “places”

Salvage Ethnography

The thought of studying as many places as they can so they can salvage as many cultures as they can

IS SUBJECTIVITY A PROBLEM?

NO!

- End of 20th century: Anthropologists questioned whether it is better to actually draw on our individual situations for interpretation

- Anthropologists have questioned fieldwork because assuming they can represent a culture better than the people in the actual culture could be an expression of power

- Power imbalances between observer and the observed

- Non-westerns developed own anthropological traditions

ETHICS: #1 RULE

Anthropologists should do no harm to the people they study

ETHICS: Struggles?

• Anthropologists struggle with figuring out how much they are allowed to intervene with life and culture 

• Anthropologists feel the need to advocate for the people they study

• Should the people being studied have copyright over their own cultural knowledge/control the publication of it?

ETHICS: allegiance

• Who is an anthropologist’s primary allegiance given to?

  • The institution/organization that funds their study?

  • The people they study?

  • The government of the country they study in?

CULTURE

Parts of cognition and behaviour learned through society from generation to generation (the way of life)

E.B TYLER

• The first anthropologist to define culture

• Argued that it consisted of “capabilities and habits acquired as a member of society”

• Had the idea that culture is not something you can have more or less of but is the way of life of a group of people

CULTURE AND PERCEPTION: Franz Boas

Believed culture was like a pair of glasses that allow us to perceive the world

CULTURE AND PERCEPTION: Durkheim and Maus

Believed that classifying the world is an extension of being a member of society/human nature

CULTURE: Levi-Strauss

• Thought culture/classifying the world was an innate structure of the mind

• Believed though culture has pieces, it was integrated in a way that fit perfectly together

What is culture? (modern idea)

• Idea that culture is an integrated whole (unified) is a modernist idea

• Including knowledge, religion, belief, etc

WHAT IS CULTURE: Ruth Benedict

Believed culture was a gestalt pattern

WHAT IS CULTURE: Clifford Geertz

Believed that cultures could be read as texts; sets of formal systems and rules to understand; meanings made up by people to make sense of their lives

WHAT IS CULTURE: Robert Lowie

• Studied diffusion

• Believed culture was a thing of shreds and patches that can be borrowed between different cultures and people

CULTURE IS WHAT?!

CONSTANTLY WORKED AND REWORKED!

Anthropologists avoided making it seem like it’s own independent thing, rather a part of a whole

ALFRED KOBER

• Related culture to a coral reef

• Built by fish and continues when said fish die and new are born into it 

• Did not include the role of the individual in creating and shaping culture

CULTURAL RELATIVISM

• Developed to combat sexism, 1900s racism and ethnocentrism

• Cultural practices and beliefs must be understood in their own context because different cultures experience the world differently

• NOT trying to see things outside of culture itself as that is not possible

Conflict between culture and human rights

• Do we need to suspend cultural judgment/do something about what we deem immoral?

• Take it on a case by case basis

• Is it illegal in the country it is happening? Does it violate a universal right? Do the people believe they are oppressed/hurt by the thing you think they are? Do you think you know better than them?

• You can judge a cultural thing but you must also respect it

LANGUAGE

• System of arbitrary vocal symbols humans use to encode their experience of the world

• Makes it possible to communicate with each other and think about abstract concepts

• The gateway to social learning allowing enculturation

LINGUISTICS

Specific study of language and not just understanding the words, includes:

• Context, connotation, gestures, etc need to be understood too

• Direct translation between many languages are hard because of this

LANGUAGE IN HOMO SAPIENS

• The only animal capable of speech and language (Vocal chords are made to speak)

NON VERBAL COMMUNICATION

• Sounds and gestures

• Gesture call and system of primate ancestors

• In English, 90% of emotional information is conveyed in “body language”

• The basic elements of body language are universal

Types of NON VERBAL COMMUNICATION

• Kinesics (Body Language)

• Proxemics (Space)

KINESICS

• Some aspects of body language are universal but some are not

• Non verbal cues are used to tell us how to respond to others

• Based on gender, class, culture, etc.

PROXEMICS

• How space is used to communicate

• Cultures can view invading/evading space differently because of their different ideas of space

• Miscommunication can result from this

LANGUAGE IN ANTHROPOLOGY

• Language is used as a means to communicate in the field

• Language is an object of study in itself and reveals a lot about culture

• All languages are equally and differently complex

Speech communities

Languages are associated with speech communities (group of people who speak the language)

• These groups are classified because not all people have access to the same language

• Regional dialects, age slangs, etc

• Where the language is learned or used like home, work, etc

LANGUAGE PROPERTIES: Discreteness

Sounds in language are meaningfully distinct, each sound is treated as a discrete unit.

• Sentence structure

• Combined in certain ways to create meaning

LANGUAGE PROPERTIES: Arbitrariness

The meaning of each individual word is arbitrary

• Language is symbolic

• Nothing in the way words are = the meaning

• Meaning of words only work because both people conversing agree it does

LANGUAGE PROPERTIES: Productivity

A finite number of words can be combined into an infinite number of sentences

LANGUAGE PROPERTIES: Displacement

Language makes it possible to communicate about people, things and events that are not present such as

• Abstract concepts

• Fantasy

• Lying

• Time

LANGUAGE PROPERTIES: Multimedia Potential

Language can be transmitted through a variety of media

• Messages are given in some medium

• Writing, billboards, etc

• Sign language

LANGUAGE COMPONENTS: Phonology

The study of the sounds of a language

• What are the actual sounds made?

• Sounds by humans differ from animals

• Linguistics study how phonemes are patterned

• Accents represent gender/class/region

PHONEMES

• Individual sounds that make a difference in the meaning of words

• No language uses all of these individual sounds

• Linguists use slash marks to show that a particular sound is a phoneme in a given language

LANGUAGE COMPONENTS: Morphology

The study of how words are put together

• Smallest unit of meaning

• Something said easily in one language can take multiple sentences in another

MORPHEME

Any sequence of phoneme that carry meaning

FREE MORPHEME

A morpheme that can be used alone

BOUND MORPHEME

A morpheme attached to a free morpheme to alter its meaning

LANGUAGE COMPONENTS: Syntax

• Ordered string of words

• Each language has a different structure

• System of linguistic knowledge that allows speaks of a language to convey meaningful messages

What does syntax consist of?

• Sounds that exist in a language

• Rules for combining them into meaningful sequences

• How sentences are structured

LANGUAGE COMPONENTS: Semantics

The study of meaning

• How words are linked to each other (aged vs old)

• Words in context

Semantic Domain

A class of things or properties that are perceived as alike

DIALECT

• A regional or subcultural variant of a language

• May be based on factors like region or ethnic identification

TONE LANGUAGES

Voice pitch a speaker uses when speaking a word or changes in the pitch within a word makes a difference in the meaning of the word

SOCIOLINGUISTICS

Investigates how speech behaviour is affected by social context

• To speak appropriately, people must take the total social context into account

• Must be recognized the types of interactions they are expected is based on their relationships with the other speaker
  

LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY

Theory that language influences how you perceive the world

• Also called Sapir/Whorf hypothesis

• This theory explains why symbols are used internationally as languages are ambiguous

LINGUISTIC DETERMINISM

Theory that language determines experience

• Not entirely true because otherwise people who speak multiple languages would experience multiple realities (which is not true)

• Changed to linguistic relativity

EUPHEMISM

Substitution of a less offensive or disagreeable expression

DYSPHEMISM

 Substitution of a more offensive or disagreeable expression

DOUBLESPEAK

• An euphemism in bad faith

• Term coined by George Orwell’s 1984

• Saying things in a roundabout way to soften it or conceal information

SMALL SCALE FORAGERS

Small groups of people that collect small amounts of stuff

COMPLEX FORAGERS

Large groups with environments that allow lots of foraging

HERDERS

• Herding animals

• Often have relationships with people who can give them non-meat items

HORTICULTERALISTS

• Grows crops

• Can have conflicts with herders because herders’ animals can eat their crops

• Often can be a mix between herding and horticulturalists

EXTENSIVE AGRICULTURE

• Burning a small patch of land/forest and then using that soil to grow until place has been exhausted then moving on to do the same elsewhere 

• The ash helps fertilize soil

• By moving on, they’re allowing the patch of land to grow back healthily without over-farming it

INTENSIVE AGRICULTURE

• Farming only one place of land intensively

• Plows

• Fertilizers

MECHANIZED INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE

Agricultural Business

FORAGERS: Foodways

• Foragers depend on the ecosystem 

• Diet is typically varied with nutrient dense plants and hunted foods

• Gathered foods usually provide the most calories

• Usually only find the food needed for daily diet

• Sometimes food can be stored if the environment allow it

• Has extensive knowledge of plant life

FORAGERS SOCIAL ORGANIZATION: Bands

• Foragers live in small, flexible bands

• Groups of people living together that people can switch in and out of different bands

• Bands often get together during certain seasons 

• Egalitarian

FORAGERS SOCIAL ORGANIZATION: Social Density

• The number of social interactions in a band

• The organization of bands lower this number

FORAGERS SOCIAL ORGANIZATION: Conflict

• Often bands break apart to join different bands in times of conflict before banding together when better

• Through doing this, social conflict is terminated as the people fighting would be separated

FORAGERS SOCIAL ORGANIZATION: Gender

• Men typically do more hunting and women typically do more gathering

• Some tasks are open to everyone

Egalitarian

No class structure; everyone gets the same stuff because hunting/gathering is based on luck

Nomadic

Move around a lot and carry all their stuff around

FORAGERS: Environment

• Nomadic

• Some have seasonal base camps

• Bands have some rights over home territory and tend to know their land really well

• Often have domesticated animals to help

• Land is so scarce that only a small percentage of people can still forage these days

• They turn to buying food and often share in the same way they would share found/caught food

HORTICULTURALISTS: Foodways

• Sedentary

• Live in small villages surrounded by fields

• Often continue to engage in foraging

• Most calories come from grown crops

• Often plant lots of different crops together in the same soil

Sedentary

Settlers that can’t move around due to needing to tend to crops year round

HORTICULTURALISTS SOCIAL ORGANIZATION: Gender

• There are gendered divisions of labour but it varies

• In most of these cultures, men do the clearing while the rest of the duties are dependant

HORTICULTURALISTS SOCIAL ORGANIZATION: Levelling Mechanisms

There is often a levelling mechanism to prevent accumulation

• Demand sharing

Demand sharing

If demanded, you must give (an unspoken rule)

HORTICULTURALISTS: Environment

Tend to do slash and burn cultivation

SLASH AND BURN CULTIVATION

• Cutting/burning down fast growing trees 

• The soil is fertilized by ash

• When done properly, it mimics controlled forest fire

• Land is left then fallow

• If land is not left fallow, the soil erodes and is destructive

PASTORALIST: Foodways

• Common in areas that do not support agriculture

• Revolves around herding

• Animals provide milk, butter, yogurt, cheese, blood and SOMETIMES meat

• Can tell what societies come from this because they are able to digest more lactose into adulthood

• Animals are usually only killed for important ritual reasons

• Tend not to farm but they can if possible

• Often trade with neighbouring groups

• Nomadic way of life

PASTORALIST: Social organization

• Herding is done by men and boys while women and girls do most other tasks

• Families try to maintain sizable herds

PASTORALIST: Environment

• TRANSHUMANCE

• Takes animals to graze in one place 1 season and another place the next

• Grazing helps biodiversity of native plants when done responsibly

• Try to use every part of the animal

Transhumance

Moving seasonally back and forth over long distances