Cultural Meanings, Ethnographic Fieldwork, and Ethnocentrism and Relativism?
 Cultural Meanings
 How do societies create cultural meanings?
 How do anthropologists uncover cultural meanings?
 Fieldwork
 Ethnography: a description and analysis of a single culture.
 Ethnographic Fieldwork: firsthand experience with a culture.
Types of Fieldwork:
 Participant observation: observe and take part in important day-to-day
activities.
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 household census
 Mapping
 Behavior observation
 Cultural Comparisons
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 Cross-cultural
 Historical
 Difficulties
 Objectivity: It is difficult for someone who grew up in one culture to frame
objective hypotheses about other cultures.
 Validity:
 Questions of Ethics
 Anthropologists have obligations to:
 Those whom they study first and foremost.
 Those who fund the research.
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 Napoleon Chagnon
 Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism Revisited
 Ethocentrism:
 Cultural Relativism: One must suspend judgement on other peoples’
practices in order to understand them in their own cultural terms.
 Can one ever be too much of a relativist?