BNW Wiki Project Phase 1 (permalink)
last edited by Melissa Eaton on Monday, 10/11/2010 1:13 PM
Welcome to Our Ethnographic Wiki, Phase 1!
ANTH 110: Cultural Anthropology
This is the home page for ANTH 110's ethnography observations and analysis of Aldous Huxley's Brave
New World.
Checklist for Completing All Parts of the First Brave New World Wiki Assignments.
Click here for a link to Index of Researchers.
Click here for a link to the Index of Cultural Commentary.
Your Assignment Sheet:
For this assignment, you play the role of an ethnographer who will be observing certain scenes within
Brave New World. You are permitted to be creative in regards to why you are there. Are you watching
video footage that the World Controllers taped of certain people, scenes, and conversations? Are you a
friend of the characters and are "tagging along"? Are you the film crew in a reality show following these
characters around? Are you an invisible being from outerspace?
Of course I realize that you are limited in your observations to what Huxley actually writes about, but I this
will actually help you focus your observations.
During the course of the semester, you will be writing ethnographic notes and an analysis for two scenes.
One scene is due October 7. The second scene is due November 4. You will select your scene from the
following List of Scenes.
For the first half of each assignment, you will need to create three Wiki Pages. How Do I Create a Wiki
Page?
1. The First Page will be Your Researcher's Home Page. The Title of this Wiki Page should include
your full name. Within this page, I want to see a brief biography. I also want to see under what
pretext you are observing the characters from the book. Tell us what scene you are observing.
Writing a Researcher's Home Page.
2. The Second Page you create will be your Raw Notes Page. The Title of this Wiki Page should
include your name and an indicator that these are notes. The Wiki allows you to paste your notes
directly from a word processing file. How Do I Take Notes?
3. The Third page will be your Ethnographic Analysis Page. It should be titled appropriate
(including your name).You can paste your paper directly into the page. It should be the
equivalent to 4-5 pages. How Do I Write An Analysis?
4. The last step should be to use the Link feature (it is the chain icon above) to link your Researcher
Page to the Index of Researchers page and Link your notes and your paper to your researcher
page. How do I Make Links?
(If you need help with posting your data to the Wiki or are very unfamiliar with computers, type the above
information into three separate computer files. This will be same as writing papers. Bring the three files
(your Researcher information, observation notes, and analysis) to my office hours and we will upload
them together.)
The second half of the assignment is to respond to a classmate's analysis. The classmate will be
randomly selected and communicated to you during class. Your response will consist of comments made
to the Wiki as well as an "artifact" created based on the analysis and a short write-up of how the analysis
and your artifact are related.
For the second half of the assignment, you will need to:
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Post Comments to the assigned ethnographic analysis.
Create one Wiki page. On this page, you will present your "artifact" and a discussion of why you
chose this artifact and how it relates to the analysis you read.
Checklist for Completing the First BNW Ethnography (permalink)
last edited by Melissa Eaton on Wednesday, 09/29/2010 11:06 AM
This is a checklist for you to consider when completing the assignment.
1. Choose the scene from the first six chapters of the Brave New World novel. Scenes to be
Analyzed.
2. Imagine who you will be as you conduct your ethnographic research.
3. Create a Wiki page for your biography. How Do I Create A New Wiki Page?
4. Write a biography into your Researcher's Home Page. Writing a Researcher's Home Page.
5. Link your Researcher's Home Page into the Index of Researchers. You will need to edit
this page to add your information. Make sure it is in alphabetical order by last name (your real
last name, even if you are adopting another name for your persona).
6. Take ethnographic field notes (remember to use the principle of cultural relativity). You may use
of the the methods outlined or a method of your own choosing. How To Make Ethnographic
Observations and Make Notes. There are no guidelines pertaining to the length of the
ethnographic notes. They need to be thorough enough to write your analysis and the actual
length will depend on your note-taking and the chapter you choose to observe. I recommend
taking as many notes as you can.
7. Create a Wiki page and insert your notes into that page. How Do I Create A New Wiki Page?
8. Link your Notes page to your Researcher's Home Page. How Do I Edit, Create Links, and Upload
Images?
9. Using your notes as a guide, write an ethnographic analysis of this culture. Utilize cultural
relativism. How Do I Write An Ethnographic Analysis?
10. Create a Wiki page for your analysis
11. Link it to your Researcher's Home page.
Here is a checklist for reviewing another student's analysis and creating your cultural commentary.
1. You will be given the name of another researcher during class time. (If your assigned student
does not complete his or her work on time, you may choose any other researcher).
2. Read the Biography, the notes, and the analysis posted by that researcher. They are available on
this Wiki. Go to the Index of Researchers to find them.
3. You will need to create a Wiki Page where you will post your cultural commentary artifact and a
discussion of how it relates to the ethnographic analysis you read. Making Cultural Commentary.
4. Link your Cultural Commentary Page to the the Index. You will need to edit the page to add your
information. Make sure to follow the template described on the Index page.
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Writing a Researcher's Home Page (permalink)
last edited by Melissa Eaton on Wednesday, 09/29/2010 2:49 PM
Here are some guidelines to consider when writing your Researcher's Home Page.
First, keep in mind that this will be the "home page" for your own research products. You will end up
linking your raw notes for both ethnographic observations and both ethnographic analyses here. You will
also be linking your cultural commentary assignments to your Home page.
Second, you can "be" anybody as your ethnographic researcher. You can be yourself, yourself as an
ethnographer, a space alien ethnographer, a "new" character that belongs to the Brave New World world.
The Researcher's page functions for you (and your readers) as context. Before you do an cultural
ethnography of Brave New World, you need to understand who you are observing this culture as.
Lastly, once you figure out who you are going to be as you observe your chapter/scene in Brave New
World, start writing your biography. here are some examples of real anthropologist's autobiographical
pages:
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Richard and Sally Price http://www.richandsally.net/
William C. Meadows http://socantcrim.missouristate.edu/3192.htm
Michael Fischer http://web.mit.edu/anthropology/faculty_staff/fischer/index.html
Your biography should be the equivalent length to these examples, but can be longer. You can use real
examples of ethnographers' biographies as guides, but do not plagiarize them. You need to fill in the
format with your own, original information. They can include "imaginary" educational backgrounds,
previous research, and publications. Tell the readers which scene you will be reviewing. You can
accomplish this in the context of your biography as "new research". Create links to your notes and your
analysis from this home page when you are finished creating them.
Consider including or uploading images in your biography. There is a button in the text editing box that
allows you to insert images, or you can copy and paste images into the text editor box. If you use images
that require citations, please cite the website or give proper credit to the image(s).
Somewhere on this page (probably at the end or in the title of the Wiki page) your real name needs to be
on the page. You could include your name as the author of the page, etc.
Lastly, go the Index of Researcher’s Page. Click on Edit and add your real name in alphabetical order (by
last name). Create a link to your Researcher's Page from that index.
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How To Make Ethnographic Observations and Make Notes (permalink)
last edited by Melissa Eaton on Friday, 09/24/2010 11:11 AM
Making good ethnographic observations takes a lot of practice, so I do not expect you to be complete
experts at this introductory level.
Here are five tested ethnographic note-taking methods that you will want to choose among for your
observations.
In various scenes from the book, one form of note taking may be more useful than others. Using one of
the frameworks below, you may want to write a column for each one and put your notes and observations
into the appropriate columns. Or, you may wish to write your notes as normal and write the ethnographic
categories into the columns.
1. 9 Dimensions of descriptive observation (Spradley, J. P., 1980)
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SPACE - layout of the physical setting; rooms, outdoor spaces, etc.
ACTORS - the names and relevant details of the people involved
ACTIVITIES - the various activities of the actors
OBJECTS - physical elements: furniture etc.
ACTS - specific individual actions
EVENTS - particular occasions, e.g. meetings
TIME - the sequence of events
GOALS - what actors are attempting to accomplish
FEELINGS - emotions in particular contexts
2. AEIOU (The Doblin Group/eLab; E-Lab 1997)
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A - Activities are goal directed sets of actions-things which people want to accomplish
E - Environments include the entire arena where activities take place
I - Interactions are between a person and someone or something else, and are the building
blocks of activities
O - Objects are building blocks of the environment, key elements sometimes put to complex or
unintended uses, changing their function, meaning and context
U - Users are the consumers, the people providing the behaviors, preferences and needs
3. A(x4) (Rothstein, P., 2001)
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Atmosphere
Actors
Artifacts
Activities
4. Bringing the Outside In (Sotirin, P., 1999)
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Territory - including space and architecture
Stuff - furniture, possession, private/public, visual signs, technology
People - flows, dress, bodies, nonverbal behaviors, authority, affection
Talk - conversation, vocabularies
5. POSTA (Pat Sachs; Gitte Jordan)
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P - Person
O - Objects
S - Situations
T - Time
A - Activity
Your notes will be the basis from which you write your analysis, so it is important to take good notes. You
will be posting them in the Wiki and linking them to your Researcher's page.
A note about format: Typing up your notes may be necessary. If you have hand written notes and
cannot type them up, it is possible to scan your notes and upload them to Wiki as .pdf files. Please
contact me for instructions, if you require them.
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