Fieldwork and Ethnography
Fieldwork
•living with people for an extended time to gather data using a variety of field
techniques for collecting that data
•fieldwork & field techniques developed in the study of smaller scale societies with
greater cultural uniformity compared to large-scale industrial societies
the concept of holism
Before Fieldwork
•schooling & training
•language acquisition (at school & in the field)
•research proposal
•visa, government bureaucracies & permissions to do fieldwork
•changing nature of the rules of fieldwork
Field Equipment
Medicine, money, and… as field equipment
Entering the Field
•expats (missionaries, other anthros, international development people)
•tourists
•going “native” types
•exceptional locals
•culture shock
refuge from the “natives”
Whose natives?
Field Techniques: The Ethnographic Method
•participant-observation - defining characteristic of cultural anthropology & its
methods of research
•first-hand observation of daily behavior; immersed in daily life
no other human science does this
•what people say & what they do
(Kottak), "The common humanity of the student and the studied, the ethnographer
and the researched community, makes participant observation inevitable."
•(Malinowski), “…, in this type of work, it is good for the ethnographer sometimes
to put aside camera, note book and pencil, and to join in himself in what is going
on."
Surveys & Interviews
•2 techniques of asking questions & eliciting responses
•quantitative vs. qualitative methods
enumerated/statistical
descriptive/ interpretive
Surveys
•structured closed-ended questionnaires
•genealogical method/genealogies
•statistical analysis
•objectivity
who administers
Interviews
•structured open-ended
•unstructured
•spontaneous & planned
Ethnographic vs. Survey Research
•study whole functioning community vs. a sample
•develop rapport
•totality of an informant's life-context
•context & thick description
•adds depth to survey data (i.e. kinship genealogies)
Life History
•recollections of lifetime experiences
•identify important life turns for a culture
•indicates the diversity of experience within what appears to be a society of cultural
uniformity
•problem with remembering in the present
•Notions of narrative and history
Informants
Informants
•what is a "well informed informant"?
compared to who?
•the relationships between ethnographer & informant
relations of power
•trust, friendship, economic contract, learning, adopted as family member, prestige
for both
TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE
•Emic – local knowledge: how people think, perceive, categorize the world; what has
meaning in their world-the natives point of view
•Etic -- shift focus from the native's point of view to that of the anthropologist
Reflexivity
•Type of knowledge – intersubjective
•A self consciousness about the impact on the data produced in the context of doing
fieldwork and writing culture
•how the anthropologist effects the thoughts, actions of informants
•how the ethnocentrism of the anthro colors the interpretation and final
representation of others thinking & actions
Paul Rabinow on Reflexive Knowledge
•Field data are constructs of the process by which we acquire them -- intersubjective
•The problem is a “hermeneutical one”
hermeneutic – interpretation ... “as the comprehension of self by the detour of the
comprehension of the other”
•Fieldwork is dialectic
DIALECTIC BECAUSE NEITHER THE SUBJECT NOR THE OBJECT REMAIN
STATIC
Ali & Rabinow
•“highlighting, identification, and analysis also disturbed Ali’s usual patterns of
experience.
•forced to reflect on his own activities and objectify them [as an informant].
•began to develop an art of presenting his world to me
•But the more we engaged in such activity, the more he experienced aspects of his own
life in new ways.”
Reflexive Knowledge and Doing Anthropology as Negotiated Reality
•a mutually constructed ground of experience and understanding
•an acknowledgement of the dialogue between the anthropologist and the informant
in the experience of fieldwork
Negotiated Reality
•anthropologists are historically situated through the questions we ask and the manner we
seek to understand and experience the world
•anthropologists receive from our informants their interpretations that are also mediated
by culture and history
•the data is doubly mediated
first by presence of the anthropologist
Then by a second order self-reflection of our informants
•fieldwork is an experience in
a kind of social relationship
risky business
humanity
Anthropology and the Ethics of Fieldwork
•Anthropological researchers, teachers and practitioners are members of many different
communities, each with its own moral rules or codes of ethics
•In both proposing and carrying out research,
anthropological
researchers must be open about the purpose(s), potential impacts, and source(s) of
support for research projects with funders, colleagues, persons studied or providing
information, and with relevant parties affected by the research.
Ethics and Informant Relationships
•Anthropological researchers have primary ethical obligations to the people, species, and
materials they study and to the people with whom they work
avoid harm or wrong
respect the well-being
consult actively with the affected individuals or group(s)
Fieldwork and Informed Consent
•Anthropological researchers should obtain in advance the informed consent of persons
being studied, providing information, owning or controlling access to material being
studied, or otherwise identified as having interests which might be impacted by the
research
Ethics Beyond the Field
•Responsibility to scholarship and science
•Responsibility to the public
•Responsibility to students and trainees
•www.aaanet.org