C HAPTER T WO
Doing Cultural
Anthropology
What are the aims of ethnography and fieldwork?
How does an anthropologist do an ethnographic field study?
How has ethnography changed in the past century?
How do the personalities, social status, and culture of anthropologists affect their ethnographies?
What are the special opportunities and problems in doing anthropology in one’s own society?
What are some of the ethical problems raised by ethnography?
How do anthropologists use ethnographic data?
Kojo A. Dei (right), an anthropologist from Ghana, does ethnographic fieldwork among
African-American youth in a major city in the United States. The focus of Dei’s ethnography is on how the cultural meanings of substance use and abuse within inner city
communities both support and diverge from those in the larger society. An essential
relationship in dei’s ethnographic fieldwork is with his key informants, among whom
are Prince Afrika.
DOING CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
DOING CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
In attempting to understand human diversity,
cultural anthropologists have developed particular methodologies for gathering data and
developing and testing theories. For cultural
anthropology, the existing diversity of human
cultures is the laboratory. The controlled laboratory situation of the physical sciences is,
for both technical and ethical reasons, of little
use in cultural anthropology. Anthropologists
can hardly go out and start a war somewhere
to see the effect of warfare on family life. Nor
can they control in a laboratory all the factors
involved in examining the impact of multinational corporations on villages in the Amazon
rain forest. In place of the artificially controlled
laboratory, anthropologists rely on the ethnographic method and cross-cultural comparison.
The ethnographic method is the gathering and interpretation of information based on
intensive, first-hand study of a particular culture.
The written report of this study is called an
ethnography. In ethnology, or cross-cultural
comparison, the ethnographic data from different societies are analyzed to build and test
hypotheses about social and cultural processes.
Cultural anthropology encompasses a wide
range of activities and specialties: solitary
fieldwork in a remote location, delving into
historical archives, testing hypotheses using statistical correlations from many different societies, administering a community health care
clinic, and working with indigenous peoples
to exhibit their art in a museum. But all of these
diverse activities are based on ethnography,
which is not only the major source of anthropological data and theory but also an important
part of most anthropologists’ experience. We
thus begin this chapter with a discussion of
ethnography and then turn to some of the ways
in which ethnographic data are used in crosscultural comparison.
ETHNOGRAPHY AND FIELDWORK
Ethnography is the written description and
analysis of the culture of a group of people
based on fieldwork. Fieldwork is the firsthand, intensive, systematic exploration of a
culture. Although fieldwork includes many
techniques, such as structured and unstructured
interviewing, mapping space, taking census
data, photographing and filming, using historical archives, and recording life histories, the
heart of anthropological fieldwork is participant-observation. Participant-observation
is the technique of gathering data on human
cultures by living among the people, observing their social interaction on an ongoing daily
basis, and participating as much as possible in
their lives.This intensive field experience is the
methodological hallmark of cultural anthropology.Typically, the field experience results in
an ethnography, that is, an in-depth description
and analysis of a particular culture.
DOING FIELDWORK
The goal of fieldwork is to gather as much
information as one can on a particular cultural
system, or on a particular aspect of a culture
that is the focus of the fieldworker’s special
interest. The data are written up to present
as authentic and coherent a picture of the
cultural system as possible. The holistic perspective of anthropology developed through
fieldwork. Only by living with people and
engaging in their activities over a long period
of time can we see culture as a system of interrelated patterns. Good fieldwork and
ethnography are based both on the fieldworker’s ability to see things from the other
person’s point of view (the emic perspective)
and on the ability to see patterns, relationships,
and meanings that may not be consciously understood by a person in that culture (the etic
perspective).
Observation, participation, and interviewing
are all necessary in good fieldwork. The anthropologist observes, listens, asks questions,
and attempts to find a way in which to participate in the life of the society over an extended
period of time.
Anthropology, like every other scientific discipline, must be concerned with the accuracy
19
20
CHAPTER TWO
of its data. Anthropology is unique among the
sciences in that a human being is the major research instrument, and other human beings
supply most of the data. At least in the initial
stages of research—and usually throughout the
fieldwork—anthropologists have to rely to a
great extent on informants as well as observation for their data. Informants are people
through whom the anthropologist learns about
the culture, partly by observation and partly by
asking questions. Many people in a society may
act as informants, but most anthropologists also
have a few key informants with whom they
work. Key informants are people who have
a deep knowledge of their culture and are willing to pass this knowledge on to the anthropologist. Anthropologists often develop deep
rapport with their key informants and even lifetime friendships (Grindal and Salamone 1995).
These key informants are essential not only for
explaining cultural patterns but also for introducing anthropologists to the community and
helping them establish a network of social relationships.The establishment of trust and cooperation in these relationships is the basis for
sound fieldwork.
In the early stages of fieldwork, the anthropologist may just observe or perform some
seemingly neutral task such as collecting
genealogies (family trees) or taking a census.
Within a short time, however, he or she will
begin to participate in cultural activities.
Participation is the best way to understand
the difference between what people say they
do, feel, or think and what they actually do. It
is not that informants deliberately lie (although
they may), but rather, when they are asked
about some aspect of their culture, they may
give the cultural ideal, not what actually
happens. This is especially true when the
outsider has higher social status than the informant. For psychological or pragmatic reasons, the informant wants to look good in the
anthropologist’s eyes. Participation also forces
the researcher to think more deeply about culturally correct behavior and thus sharpens insight into culture beyond that learned by
observation alone.
Ruth Benedict’s major work, Patterns of Culture, was
a best-seller in the United States when it was published in the 1930s. It is still widely used in college anthropology courses. Benedict worked tirelessly with
Franz Boas to demonstrate to Americans that ideologies of racial superiority had no basis in science.
The work of Ruth Benedict, her mentor Franz Boas,
and her student, Margaret Mead, had a deep and
widespread influence on how Americans think about
cultural diversity. Her contributions are recognized
by her picture on a United State’s stamp.
FIELDWORK AND ETHNOGRAPHY:
A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Anthropology began in the last quarter of the
nineteenth century as a comparative science;
although its first practitioners were not fieldworkers, fieldwork and ethnography soon became its defining characteristic (Stocking 1992).
For a number of reasons, the earliest ethnographers concentrated their studies on the smallscale, technologically simpler societies that had
developed for thousands of years outside the
orbit of European culture. One reason was the
fear that much of the traditional cultures of these
societies were disappearing under the assault of
Western culture, and so their cultures needed to
be recorded as soon as possible. Another reason
DOING CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
was that these cultures were sufficiently homogenous that patterns and processes of culture
were more easily perceived than was possible
in the large, technologically complex, heterogeneous societies of the West. In addition, it was
necessary to look at societies outside the orbit
of Western society in order to learn about the
very diverse ways of being human.
E
T
H
N
European interest in cultural differences
was enormously intensified by the fifteenthcentury expansion of European power, which
brought Europeans into contact with cultures
that were very different from their own. This
interest continued to develop and, by the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, laid the
foundation for the emergence of anthropology.
O
G
R
A
AnEthnographic
Field Study in
India
harles Brooks is an American anthropologist who carried out
field research on the impact of
foreign Hare Krishnas in India.The followers of Hare Krishna, with their orange
robes and shaved heads, their public processions and festivals featuring drums and
cymbals, and their vegetarian food, are
well known in the United States. Brooks
worked not in an isolated, small-scale society, but rather in a large town in the
very complex society of India. The following description of his fieldwork
shows what anthropologists actually do as
they go about understanding cultures.
Although each fieldwork project is different, there are certain common steps:
choosing the problem, choosing the site,
locating informants, gathering and recording the data, and analyzing and writing
up the results.
C
Vrindaban
INDIA
interest formed the background of his research. Brooks was also aware of the most
visible representation of Indian religion
in the United States, the International
Society for Krishna Consciousness
(ISKCON), also called the Hare Krishna.
The Hare Krishna movement began in
India as a way of spreading the worship
of the Hindu god Krishna. In this religion,
devoted worship to Krishna is the main
path to religious or spiritual enlightenCHOOSING THE PROBLEM
Like much contemporary fieldwork, ment. Krishna worship was brought to the
Brooks’s approach to the culture he was United States in the 1960s by an Indian
studying was holistic, yet focused on a monk, Swami Bhaktivedanta, who aimed
number of specific questions.Through his to save Westerners from what he saw as
graduate study, Brooks had become inter- their materialism and atheism. His moveested in religion and change in India.This ment was very successful in the United
p
h
y
States and Europe, attracting many converts from the counterculture of the
1960s. As part of their commitment to
their new religion, many of these people
went to India to help spread Krishna consciousness in the land where it originated.
Brooks was fascinated by this process
and his research was guided by an overarching question: “How did a Western
cultural version of Hare Krishna fit itself
into the religious culture of India?” In
order to answer this larger question,
Brooks broke it down into smaller questions, which would actually guide his research.These questions included “In what
specific types of situations did foreign and
Indian Krishna followers interact?”
“What were the similarities and differences in how foreigners and Indian devotees understood the symbols, rituals,
meanings, and goals of Krishna worship?”
“How did Indians react to foreigners
who claimed they were Hindus—and
Hindu priests at that?” “What opinions
did Indians have about Westerners who
were in India to spread the word about
a religion that was originally Indian?”
“Because Hindus believe that foreigners
cannot become Hindus, as ISKCON
members claim they have become, how
was this paradox resolved?” “How did
ISKCON’s presence in India affect both
Hindu religious culture and the
21
22
CHAPTER TWO
An Ethnographic Field Study in India (continued)
Indian and Western Krishna followers who
encountered each other?” In sum, Brooks
was interested in the subjective experience
of individuals from two different cultures
who had come together through participation in the same religion.
PICKING THE RESEARCH SITE
Sometimes anthropologists have a particular site in mind when they begin their
fieldwork, but in many cases they have
only a general idea about a location that
might suit their research interests.The ultimate choice involves some practical
matters, such as the availability of housing, health care, and transportation, but
the major consideration is whether the
site will allow the researchers to answer
the questions they are interested in.
Because Brooks wanted to study social
interaction between foreign and Indian
devotees to Krishna, his main criterion
was to find a location where such interaction took place.
Anthropologists generally use the first
month or so of their fieldwork to look
over possible sites (this has changed somewhat today, when thanks to cheaper airfares, many graduate students take an initial
trip of several months to pick a research
site, and then return for the longer fieldtrip). Brooks’s initial choice for his research
was the sacred pilgrimage town of Vrindaban, where Krishna is said to have been
born and lived for part of his life. This
town has many temples and religious sites
dedicated to Krishna worship, and Brooks
knew that ISKCON had also set up a
temple there. He made an initial visit to
discover whether significant social interaction took place among the Indian and
foreign pilgrims and residents in Vrindaban and whether any Indians worshipped
at ISKCON’s temple. When he saw that
such interactions did occur, and that the
ISKCON temple attracted many Indian
pilgrims, Brooks decided that this would
be an appropriate site for his fieldwork.
Brooks chose as his residence a place
where many foreign and Indian people
stay while they are on pilgrimage at
Vrindaban.As a neutral site, it would not
associate Brooks with any particular religious faction. This would allow him
greater access to a variety of social situations than if he had stayed at a place identified with a particular religious sect or
temple. In addition, this residence was
centrally located in the town and situated
near a principal pilgrimage destination
where Brooks could observe from his
rooftop rooms the constant movement of
pilgrims and the many cultural performances that were held in the adjacent
public courtyard. Having found a suitable
place to stay, Brooks turned his attention
to beginning the research project.
COLLECTING AND RECORDING
DATA
In anthropology, as in every science,
method is connected to theory.The way
we collect our data is related to the questions we hope our research will answer.
Because Charles Brooks’s main interest
was in the way people create meanings
for their behavior through social interaction, participant-observation was his
major method of collecting data. Only
in this way did Brooks feel he could develop the “intimate familiarity and sensitivity to the social world” he wished to
understand (Brooks 1989:235). In order
to do this, he also had to take account of
his own role as an anthropologist in these
interactions.
Because the initial step of participation
is to find a role through which to interact with others, Brooks defined his role
as someone looking for personal development, and also as a research scholar
who had been certified by the Indian
government to study Vrindaban’s culture
and history. Both these roles were famil-
iar and valid to pilgrims and town residents. In order to more effectively participate in the religious culture of the
town, without identifying himself with
any particular faction, Brooks wore
Indian clothing and accessories that were
typical of Indians in Vrindaban but were
not specifically identified with any particular religious sect.
Because of the public nature of many of
the religious interactions Brooks wished
to understand, gaining entry to these situations and observing behavior was not
difficult. And because he had learned
Hindi, the main language used for social
interaction in this part of India, he rarely
needed an interpreter. But recording his
observations presented more of a problem. Many anthropologists use tape
recorders or take notes at the time of observation, but in other cases this hinders
interaction. On one occasion early in his
research, when Brooks was recording an
interview in a small notebook, one of his
key informants, a guru told him, “When
you are ready to learn, come back without your notebook.” From that point he
stopped taking notes on the spot and
waited until an encounter was over before writing it up.To help him remember
and keep track of the many details of an
interaction and record them in a consistent way, he developed a schematic flowchart into which he could fit his daily
observations. A different flowchart was
kept for each separate interaction, and
each chart incorporated information on
the actors, the content of their interaction, the symbols used, the goal of the interaction, and its conclusion. In addition,
he also recorded his experiences in a
more impressionistic way in a journal.
Second to participant-observation in
its importance for collecting data,
Brooks also used unstructured, openended interviews. The goal of these
interviews was to explore a particular
DOING CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
An Ethnographic Field Study in India (continued)
(left) The Hare Krishna movement has spread throughout Europe and the United States. This procession is in Russia. Charles
Brooks’s ethnography is aimed at understanding how Western Hare Krishna devotees were integrated into the Indian city of
Vrindaban, a center for Krishna worship. (right) One of Brooks’s key informants was Govind Kishore Goswami, a Brahmin priest
and the owner of the pilgrim’s hostel where Brooks lived during his research. Here Goswami is pictured with his wife and son
during Holi, a festival where people sprinkle each other with colored water.
topic in depth, such as the meaning
of a particular symbolic object used
in religious practice. Many of his
interviews were with groups of informants.These were helpful in comparing
the ways different individuals interpret a
symbolic object or act, whereas in the individual interviews people could speak
about more private matters.This was the
format he used for collecting life histories.The individual interviews were taped
and more structured, organized around
preset questions, but Brooks also allowed
the conversations to develop on their
own if an informant showed a particular
interest in or knowledge of a subject.
Twenty-two of these life histories were
collected, and they were particularly valuable in giving information about the
background from which informants developed their interpretations of religious
phenomena.
Brooks also used random verbal surveys
to discover the castes and backgrounds of
the pilgrims and town residents, and to
learn their opinions and attitudes toward
the foreign devotees in Vrindaban. He
initially tried to use a written questionnaire to gather this kind of information
but dropped that as counterproductive.
Not only were written questionnaires
foreign to Vrindaban culture, and thus not
very effective, but, although Brooks assured informants of their confidentiality,
many people were nervous at the idea of
writing down private information. In addition, the use of such formal documents
might be interpreted to confirm the belief of many Indians that all Americans
in India are working for the CIA.
Hardly any anthropologist could be
found today who does not take a camera
to the field. Brooks used photographs in
several specific ways related to his research project: documenting the physical
23
24
CHAPTER TWO
An Ethnographic Field Study in India (continued)
aspects of Vrindaban’s religious complex,
such as the temples and pilgrimage sites;
documenting the different people who
visited and lived in Vrindaban and their
clothing and appearance as a way of preserving a record of cultural diversity; and
photographing the sites and participants
of social interactions as an aid to remembering and interpreting them.
ANALYZING AND INTERPRETING
THE DATA
Brooks’s data indicated that there is significant interaction between Indians and
foreigners in Vrindaban. The ISKCON
temple is accepted as a legitimate place of
worship for Indian devotees of Krishna,
and ISKCON members are accorded legitimacy as Krishna devotees by Indians.
The interaction of people from different
cultures in the religious complex of
Krishna worship has led to changes in the
meanings of the symbols involved in this
worship.
On a more theoretical level, Brooks’s
research challenges some popularly held
conceptions about Indian culture and society, especially concerning the importance of caste in social interaction.
As the study uncovered some ways that
outsiders—the foreigners—could be accepted in a Hindu religious and social
universe, it opened up new perceptions
of social organization in India, indicating that in religious settings, caste identity, which is normally essential in social
interaction, could be subordinated to
evaluations of the sincerity of a person’s
devotion. The acceptance of foreigners
as Hindus and even Brahmins highlights
the complexity of Indian culture and
demonstrates its flexibility—its ability to
deal with novel and contradictory situations. Thus caste, which has popularly
been viewed as a rigid hierarchy, can be
deemphasized, superseded by other social
statuses, or held irrelevant for determining individual social position.
In the case of Vrindaban, as is true
in many other parts of India, religion
is of prime importance in determining
individual social position and social
interaction. This is evidenced by the
importance of religious competence
and extreme devotion, which override
caste as indicators of rank and status.The
fact that foreigners can be considered
Brahmins in India shows that our
Anthropologists attempted to grapple with the
significance of the cultural differences between
Europeans and other cultures, initially by placing the cultures they encountered on evolutionary scales of cultural development. In these
scales, characterized by different stages of technology and social institutions (such as the form
of family or type of religion), European culture
was placed at the pinnacle and these other,
“primitive” societies were viewed as earlier
forms of its own development.
The earliest observers of the societies later
studied by these nineteenth-century anthropologists were typically amateurs—travelers,
understandings of caste may be incomplete and even incorrect: that Brahmin
status, for example, may be achieved as
well as acquired by birth.
Like all good ethnography, Brooks’s
study of one town in India has a wider
application, as it reveals the processes by
which social reality is transformed into a
meaningful universe.As people from different parts of the world increasingly
come into contact with one another and
participate in common social systems,
they are forced to rethink traditional cultural concepts and their own and others’
cultural identities.
Critical Thinking Questions
1. How might the social processes
revealed in Brooks’s study apply
to the multicultural society of
the United States?
2. If you were to study a situation
in the United States like the one
Brooks studied in India, what
groups would you study and why?
From Charles Brooks, The Hare Krishnas in
India. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1989.
explorers, missionaries, and colonial officers
who had recorded their experiences in remote
corners of the world. In the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, much of anthropological theory, including much of cultural evolutionary theory, was developed by “armchair
anthropologists” who had not done fieldwork
themselves and who based their theories on the
often ethnocentric and unsystematic writings
of the amateurs.
By the early twentieth century, fieldwork and
ethnography became the hallmarks of cultural
anthropology. Twentieth-century anthropologists hoped that detailed ethnographies would
DOING CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
illuminate the richness and human satisfactions
in a wide range of cultures and increase respect
among Europeans and North Americans for
peoples whose lives were very different from
their own. It was particularly after the devastation, demoralization, and disenchantment with
European civilization following World War I
that academically trained ethnographers began
doing intensive fieldwork in distant places and
among peoples whose cultures were not only
different from but often in striking contrast to,
Western culture (Tedlock 1991). This emphasis on fieldwork is linked particularly with the
names of Franz Boas in the United States and
Bronislaw Malinowski in Europe.
Franz Boas, the primary influence in anthropology in the United States in the first half of
the twentieth century, turned away from armchair anthropology and urged anthropologists
to do more fieldwork before small non-Western
cultures disappeared. Boas himself produced an
enormous amount of ethnographic data on native American cultures, particularly those of the
Pacific Northwest. For Boas, the status of anthropology as a science would depend on the
most complete and objective gathering of
ethnographic data on specific cultural systems.
He insisted that grasping the whole of a culture
could be achieved only through fieldwork.
Malinowski, whose fieldwork was carried out
in the Trobriand Islands, saw an essential goal
of the ethnographer as “grasp[ing] the native’s
point of view, his relation to life, to realize his
vision of his world” ([1922] 1961:25). Only an
anthropologist who could learn to think, feel,
and behave as a member of another culture
could enter into another cultural experience.
And this could be done only through fieldwork, living among the people, observing their
behavior firsthand, and participating in their
lives. With the publication of Malinowski’s
unmatched ethnographies of the Trobriand
Islands, doing fieldwork and writing ethnography became the dominant activities identified
with cultural anthropology.
Boas and Malinowski together set the high
standards for fieldwork, the unique methodology of cultural anthropology. The major
criterion of good ethnography that grew out of
the work of Malinowski and Boas was that it
grasp the native point of view objectively and
without bias. This goal was based on the
assumptions of positivism, an empirical
scientific approach that dominated the nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries.
Positivism and empiricism emphasized the
possibility and desirability of observing and
recording an objective reality.Anthropology reflected this scientific view: The basis of the
ethnographic method was the confidence that
trained, neutral investigators could, through
observation of behavior, comprehend the objective reality of a culture.
After World War I, and even more so after
World War II, anthropological fieldwork took
yet another turn, expanding fieldwork and
ethnography to peasant and urban societies,
Anthropologist Franz Boas was the most influential
American anthropologist of the first half of the
twentieth century. He carried out fieldwork among
the KWakiutl of the Northwest Coast of North
America in collaboration with his key informant,
George Hunt, and was instrumental in establishing
ethnography as the hallmark of anthropology.
25
26
CHAPTER TWO
which were enmeshed in more complex regional and national systems.This required some
changes in the way fieldwork was practiced as
the study of these “part cultures” is not amenable to the same holistic perspective derived
from the study of a small-scale, seemingly isolated culture.This shift to the study of smaller
units in complex societies led to new methodologies as well as new theories about culture,
in particular about the relationships of smallscale cultures to larger systems. Indeed, in
today’s global community, the connections
between cultures are so central that no society,
no matter how seemingly remote, can be
studied as if it existed in cultural isolation. In the
example of Charles Brooks’s fieldwork on the
Hare Krishna of India, we see very clearly
the diffusion of cultural patterns in our global
society and the importance of the anthropologist having a global perspective.
CHANGING DIRECTIONS
IN ETHNOGRAPHY
Since the 1970s, many of the assumptions of
twentieth-century fieldwork and ethnography
and confidence in the possibilities of discovering an objective reality have become the subject of intense debate in anthropology (Lee
1992a). These debates result from the increasing importance of postmodernism in anthropology as well as in other social sciences and
humanities. A basic assumption of postmodernism is that all knowledge is influenced by
the observer’s culture and status in society and
that there is no single objective reality, or truth,
but rather many partial truths, depending on
one’s perspective. Postmodernism has caused
intense reflection on why, how, and with what
goals cultural anthropologists have done, are
doing, and should be doing ethnography.
Current perspectives in anthropology, as influenced by postmodernism, are more sensitive to issues of history and power. Because
many (if not most) of the ethnographic encounters of the twentieth century took place
in colonial or neocolonial situations, where the
ethnographer came from a much more pow-
erful culture than the ethnographic subject, this
is a particularly important factor in understanding the ways in which anthropologists
have interpreted and represented other cultures.
Postmodernism has thus challenged the
ethnographer as the sole, or even most authoritative voice in presenting cultural descriptions.
From a postmodern point of view, ethnographies are stories, just like other stories about
experienced reality, and there is an increasing
attempt, as a result of postmodernism, to write
more experimental ethnographies that use
multiple voices—of many people in a culture,
among whom the ethnographer is only one—
as a more accurate account of cultural reality
(see Brown 1991; Abu-Lughod 1993; Harding
and Myers 1994). It must be kept in mind,
however, that these multiple voices are still
selected and presented by the ethnographer.
The perspective that ethnography is just another story about reality has led to an interest
in the ways in which, consciously and unconsciously, ethnographers give authority to their
stories, that is, how they make them believable
(Geertz 1988). This emphasis on ethnography
as narrative also raises questions about how the
projected audience for an ethnography, as well
as cultural and political biases of the ethnographer, shape the interpretation and representation of other cultures.
By the 1990s, the earlier trickle of interest in
raising explicit questions about the methodology of participant-observation and the writing
of ethnography had turned into a flood, with a
new emphasis on the process of fieldwork itself—what Barbara Tedlock (1991:69) calls the
“observation of participation.” Contemporary
anthropologists are, in a more focused and explicit way, raising questions about subjectivity
and objectivity in fieldwork, bias in the interpretation of field data, the accuracy of traditional
ethnography as a representation of culture, the
relationship of ethnography to anthropological
theory, and the usefulness of definitions of culture itself (see Chapter Three).These concerns
have been differently viewed as a challenge, a
threat, a crisis, or a fad. In fact, although almost
all contemporary ethnographies now include
DOING CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
some reflection about the conditions under
which the fieldwork was carried out, ethnography continues to be dominated by fairly
straightforward cultural descriptions and
analyses.
Traditionally, the dominant requirement in
anthropology, at least in writing ethnography if
not in the fieldwork itself, was to write like a
scientist.This often led to omitting the lifeblood
in a culture, describing norms and structures and
patterns but leaving out any mention of specific
events and individuals, including the ethnographer.With a few notable exceptions, such as E.
E. Evans-Pritchard’s classic The Nuer ([1940]
1968), only occasionally, in an introduction or
a preface, were explicit accounts of the fieldwork process included in ethnographies. Until
the 1970s, few ethnographies considered, in any
central way, how interactions between ethnographer and informants affected the gathering,
interpretation, and reporting of data.
This began to change in the 1960s with the
publication of some first-person, experiential
accounts of fieldwork (Berreman 1962) and by
the 1970s, more ethnographies began to appear
in which the observation of participation had
as central a place as more standard cultural descriptions; indeed, such concerns have moved
from the margins of anthropology to the center (although it is a center that continues to be
shared by other interests and issues).
Participant-observation leads anthropologists
to reflect more consciously on how their own
statuses, personalities, and cultures shape their
view of others and how they personally interact with “the other” to produce cultural data.
Thus, there is a new focus on the interaction
between the self and the other—the ethnographer and her or his informants—and the
kinds of communication they engage in as part
of the fieldwork experience and the written
ethnography. Fieldwork and ethnography, from
this perspective, become a dialogue, a coproduction between the self and the other, the
ethnographer and the native informant
(Crapanzano 1980).
We can see the effects of these changes in the
ethnography of what Westerners call the
Middle East.Western views of the Middle East,
the Muslim religion, and Arab culture have
been very significantly biased by historical encounters between Islam and Christianity, the
historical colonization of the Middle East by
Western powers, the contemporary politics of
the Middle East, and the recent Gulf War (Said
1978, 1993; Hale 1989).
Anthropology, as well as other disciplines, has
been affected by these encounters, particularly
in the study of gender, which has been shaped
by ethnocentric stereotypes about the dominance of the shame/honor dichotomy, the
domination of men, the total submission of
women (symbolized by veiling), and the sharp
segregation between the two sexes. Significant
in this ethnocentric view of the Middle East
has been the overemphasis on Islam as the cultural determinant of gender roles and women’s
status.As one anthropologist (Waines 1982:652)
noted, too much of the literature “assumes a
priori the existence of a universal Islam which
mysteriously moulds behavior ‘from above.’”
These assumptions and generalizations have,
until quite recently, resulted in neglect of other
factors in studying the Middle East, such as
history, economics, political dynamics and ideologies, the formation of social classes, and the
variety of cultural contexts. Middle Eastern
realities are more complex than they have generally been portrayed by many anthropologists.
For example, overemphasis on separation and
subordination in gender relations has led to a
neglect of study of the places, such as the family
or the workplace, where men and women meet
and interact.
THE INFLUENCE OF FEMINIST
ANTHROPOLOGY ON
ETHNOGRAPHY
Ethnography of the Middle East raises particularly important questions about ethnocentrism
and gender bias in cultural anthropology, but
both of these biases extend beyond Middle
Eastern ethnography. The examination of the
degree to which culture and gender are powerful biases in ethnography and cultural theory
27
28
CHAPTER TWO
is a significant contribution of feminist anthropology (further discussed in Chapter Ten).
In the past, much fieldwork was—and continues to be—done by men who have limited,
or even no, personal access to women’s lives.
This is particularly true in cultures where men
and women lead very separate lives and are
often hostile to each other, as in New Guinea
(Hammar 1989) or in the Middle East, where
cultural notions of honor and shame severely
restrict the interactions of men and women
who are not related (Abu-Lughod 1987).
The description of whole cultures based on
male activities grew out of a (largely unconscious) assumption that the most important cultural activities were dominated by men.A good
example is the work of Malinowski himself. His
descriptions of exchange among the Trobriand
Islanders almost completely excluded women’s
gift exchanges, an omission rectified more than
50 years later by a woman whose restudy of the
Trobriand Islands focuses on exchanges among
women (Weiner 1976).
Gender bias had its effect not only on
the accuracy of ethnographies, but also on the
development of theories about culture. When
the culture of a small society is based on information from just one segment of the community—that is, men—the culture appears to be
much more homogeneous than it really is.
When such inaccurate descriptions accumulate,
anthropologists can conclude that cultural
homogeneity and integration are characteristic of such societies. This conclusion may be
theoretically misleading; it is also a source of
concern for those who believe that it helps perpetuate oppression of women by ignoring their
perspectives on their own culture, which are
different from those of men (Keesing 1987;
Hammar 1989). As we see in Chapter Ten, the
recognition of the androcentric bias of anthropology has led to a new concern with the
lives, thoughts, and activities of women and also
to a new interest in men’s lives, activities, and
the whole subject of gender and sexuality.
These new emphases in ethnography are one
more element of the diversity and dynamism
that have always characterized the history of
anthropology. Discussions and debates over theory and method in contemporary anthropology highlight the wide range of approaches
cultural anthropologists bring to the question
of what it means to be human. Anthropological studies focus on the “other” and ourselves;
its goals embrace those of a comparative science
and also a unique, humanistic inquiry. Many
ethnographies continue to emphasize “objective” descriptions of a culture, whereas other,
more experimental ethnographies try in different ways to incorporate the many voices that
make up a culture. In their field studies some
anthropologists still try to be the proverbial “fly
on the wall,” observing and reporting from the
position of outsider, but political activism and
advocacy for the people one is studying have
also come to be important goals. In meeting the
challenges of a changing world, anthropologists
are increasingly reflecting on the work they do
and its place in contemporary global society.
These reflections have raised new issues. One
of these is the particular challenge of doing
ethnography in one’s own society.
SPECIAL PROBLEMS IN
CONTEMPORARY ETHNOGRAPHY
STUDYING ONE’S OWN SOCIETY
The demand for more self-conscious fieldwork
means that anthropologists need to be more
aware of their own reactions in the field and
to see themselves not only as the instrument of
observation but also as the subject of observation. These observations of the self emerge as
part of the interaction with others that is central to fieldwork and can be the source of
the special insights that make fieldwork such
an exciting but risky enterprise for cultural
outsiders.The emphasis on more reflective fieldwork and ethnography affects all anthropologists but particularly anthropologists studying
their own societies, or native anthropologists.
When anthropologists study a culture different from their own, their main methodological
task is to perceive cultures emically (that is, from
the point of view of its members). Although
DOING CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
training in anthropology is designed to increase
awareness and perhaps ultimately overcome cultural bias, even well-trained anthropologists slip
into projecting their own culturally determined
feelings and perceptions on other peoples. In
studying their own cultures, anthropologists
must try to maintain the social distance of the
outsider because it is all too easy to take for
granted what one knows. In addition, as distinguished anthropologist Margaret Mead once
noted, remaining objective, or relativist, may be
easier when confronting problematic patterns
in other cultures, such as cannibalism or infanticide, than when confronting problematic
situations such as child neglect, corporate greed,
or armed conflict in one’s own society.
Some of the problems and the rewards of
studying one’s own culture are found in the
work of Barbara Myerhoff, an American anthropologist. Myerhoff contrasted her earlier
work with the Huichol of Northern Mexico
with her work among elderly Jewish people in
an urban ghetto in California (1978). She notes
that in the first case, doing anthropology was “an
act of imagination, a means for discovering what
one is not and will never be.” In the second case,
fieldwork was a glimpse into her possible future,
as she knew that someday she would be a
“little old Jewish lady.” Her work was a personal
way to understand that condition. Because in
North American culture the lives of the elderly
poor are often “invisible,” Myerhoff ’s ethnography of elderly Jewish people who had struggled
to overcome and had triumphed in many small
ways over the disabilities of being old and poor
in North America was, for her, a valuable and
rare experience: that of being able to rehearse
and contemplate her own future.
In other cultures, both similar and different
problems arise for cultural insiders. Although
Middle Eastern ethnography has substantially
improved through the work of native women
anthropologists, their fieldwork accounts suggest that the ethnographer’s insider/outsider
position still poses special difficulties in cultures
where women’s public activities are limited and
where respectability, honor, and shame are central cultural values (Altorki and Fawzi El-Solh
1988). Anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod started
her fieldwork among the Bedouin accompanied by her father, an event that first irritated
and embarrassed her. But she later concluded
that her father’s insistence that a “young, unmarried woman traveling alone on uncertain
business” would be suspect and “have a hard
time persuading people of her respectability”
was culturally appropriate.This was all the more
true because Abu-Lughod had lived in the West
and was subject to the negative stereotypes the
Arabs have of the morals of Western women.
Abu-Lughod had confidence that she could
overcome this suspicion by her own culturally
sensitive behavior, but she did not realize until
she reflected on her fieldwork that a young
woman alone would be seen to have been
abandoned or alienated from her family.
This would cast doubts on her respectability
(1987:9) and hinder her fieldwork, or even
make it impossible, among the conservative
Egyptian Bedouin whom she was studying.
Another dilemma experienced by many
anthropologists, but particularly poignant for
native anthropologists, is whether one should
be a disinterested researcher or an advocate
for the people one studies and whether it is
possible to be both. Delmos Jones, an African
American anthropologist in the United States,
experienced some of these conflicts in studying the role of voluntary organizations in
effecting political and social change in African
American urban communities (1995). An important finding of his research emphasized the
contradictory demands on organizational leaders, who often had to compromise their members’ expectations in order to remain effective
with local power establishments. Leaders sometimes emphasized the importance of these
connections with powerful outsiders to stifle
dissent within their organizations’ staff and
membership.
Jones’s finding on dissension between the
leadership and the membership of these organizations presented him with a dilemma, one
that rested partly on his being a native anthropologist. On the one hand, Jones acknowledged
that he was given access to the leadership of the
29
30
CHAPTER TWO
Soo Choi (center) is an anthropologist from Korea who studied in the
United States and returned to do fieldwork in a Korean peasant village.
As an insider, Choi had the advantage of knowing the language and
culture of his fieldsite. But as an outsider, he also had the advantage of
social distance that allowed him to gain a fuller understanding of
both the ideals and realities of village culture. .
community organizations because he was
African American and also because he shared
their concern about improving the position of
African Americans in the United States. On the
other hand, many of the members and staff of
the organization were more suspicious of Jones
because they identified him with the leaders
(who had given permission for the study) toward whom they were antagonistic. Nor was
his finding of dissension between the group’s
leadership and their membership palatable to
the leadership. Jones asked himself whether he
should omit reporting on the socially destructive aspect of the organization’s tension between its leadership and its members in the
interest of racial unity or whether he should
describe how racial unity could be used as a
slogan by the leadership to silence dissent
among the organization members.
Reflecting on his research experience,
Delmos Jones concluded that although being
a cultural insider offers certain advantages
for an anthropologist, such as access to the
community, it also poses special dilemmas,
particularly when the group being studied has
been oppressed by the larger society. Indeed, he
noted that the very concept of a native anthropologist is itself problematic. As he and
other native anthropologists have pointed out,
an individual has many identities, which include those of race and culture but also of gender and social class. Being a native in one
identity does not make one a native in all one’s
identities (Narayan 1993; Cerroni Long 1995).
Furthermore, for all anthropologists who share
Delmos Jones’s view that the most important
goal of research and ethnography is to demonstrate the ways in which social systems may
exploit, alienate, and repress human possibilities, both cultural insiders and cultural outsiders
face similar dilemmas.
As “exotic” cultures disappear, it becomes
much more difficult for Western anthropologists to limit themselves to studying “others,”
and many more anthropological studies are
being carried out in North America and
Europe by natives of those cultures. But
whether it is Western or non-Western anthropologists studying their own societies, the
dimensions of native anthropology will become
increasingly important as subjects for reflection.
On this subject, M. N. Srinivas, a distinguished
anthropologist from India who has studied his
own society, coined the term thrice born for what
he called the ideal anthropological journey. First,
we are born into our original, particular culture.
Then, our second birth is to move away from
this familiar place to a far place to do our fieldwork. In this experience we are eventually able
to understand the rules and meanings of other
cultures, and the “exotic” becomes familiar. In
our third birth, we again turn toward our native land and find that the familiar has become
exotic. We see it with new eyes. Despite our
deep emotional attachment to its ways, we are
able to see it also with scientific objectivity
(quoted in Myerhoff 1978).
Srinivas’s ideal anthropological experience is
becoming more real for many anthropologists
today. It is also an experience completely consistent with one of anthropology’s original
goals: that of eventually examining our own
DOING CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
cultures in the same objective way that we have
examined other cultures, and of bringing what
we learn back home.
ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS
IN FIELDWORK
carry on fieldwork in a manner that appropriately involves working in collaboration with
their informants but also doing ethnography
in a way that most accurately represents both
the culture and the collaborative dialogues
through which cultural description emerges.
Ethical considerations come up in every fieldwork experience and anthropologists are always
required to reflect on the possible effects of
their research on those they study.Three main
ethical principles that must guide the fieldworker are acquiring the informed consent of
the people to be studied, protecting them from
risk, and respecting their privacy and dignity.
The current concern with ethics in participantobservation is an important, often agonizing
matter, much more so than in the past, and surrounded by both professional codes and federal
regulations (Murphy and Johannsen 1990).
Some serious transgressions of ethical conduct,
such as the past participation of anthropologists
in counterinsurgency work, have caused concern within the profession. Fieldwork is based
on trust, and as anthropologists involve themselves in a continually expanding range of research situations, ethical dilemmas will increase.
In trying to address these issues, the American
Anthropological Association adopted a statement of ethics in 1983, which holds that the
anthropologist’s paramount responsibility is to
those being studied; anthropologists must do
everything within their power to protect the
physical, social, and psychological welfare of the
people and to honor their dignity and privacy.
This includes the obligation to allow informants to remain anonymous when they wish
to do so and not to exploit them for personal
gain. It also includes the responsibility to communicate the results of the research to the individuals and groups likely to be affected, as
well as to the general public (AAA 1983).
Anthropologists’ obligations to the public include a positive responsibility to speak out, both
individually and collectively, in order to contribute to an “adequate definition of reality”
that may become the basis of public opinion,
public policy, or a resource in the politics of
culture. Thus, anthropologists must not only
ETHNOGRAPHY
AND THE DILEMMAS OF
DANGEROUS SITUATIONS
Increasingly, anthropological studies are conducted in locations where conflicts between
ethics and national law are common.These may
also involve situations physically dangerous to
anthropologists or their informants.These situations call for greater reflection and perhaps additional training.
Anthropologist Jeffrey Sluka studied the popular support for the Irish Republican Army (IRA)
and the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA)
in a Catholic-nationalist ghetto in Belfast, the
scene of a violent and long-standing conflict
between Irish nationalists and the British government (1990). In such tense, ongoing conflict
situations in which emotions run high, “no
neutrals are allowed,” and in any case, as Sluka
points out, people will define the side they
think the anthropologist is on and act accordingly. At the same time, he found that it is not
necessary to become an active partisan. One
can indicate one’s feelings through sympathizing with grievances and problems; “walking
softly” around issues that involve illegal activities, such as the location of guns and explosives and the identification of guerrillas; being
honest about research interests; maintaining a
heightened awareness about dangerous situations; and being flexible enough to redirect the
research in the face of imminent danger.These
are useful techniques for building rapport and
avoiding danger in the field.
Sluka’s suggestions for minimizing danger by
using “foresight, planning, skillful maneuvering,
and a conscious effort at impression management,” becoming well acquainted with people
in the community, meeting well-respected
people who will vouch for the researcher,
and avoiding contacts with the police are also
31
32
CHAPTER TWO
relevant for anthropologists working in the
substance abuse field in the inner cities of the
United States (Williams et al. 1992). Ethnographers studying the use and sale of crack cocaine, for example, are exposed to the irrational
and often violent behavior of crack users, the
routine violence used by drug dealers, the proliferation of guns and random shootings, and
the possibility of being robbed or mugged.
However, there has been little violence in these
ethnographic settings against anthropologists
who follow the rules Sluka suggests.
Because ethnographic situations of these
kinds involve people breaking the law, who
have every reason to hide their identities,
locales, and activities, ethnographers in these
special situations need to be meticulous about
following the rules of professional conduct and
ethics, that guide (or should guide) all field research and ethnography.
NEW ROLES FOR THE
ETHNOGRAPHER
Another important issue affecting fieldwork
and ethnography is that, contrary to the situation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, anthropology today is well understood in many of the societies which anthropologists study. People from those societies are
attending universities in greater numbers, and
some have become anthropologists themselves.
In some cases, members of the societies studied
resent anthropological representations of themselves, but in other cases ethnographic data are
viewed as useful to a society, serving as a basis
for the revitalization of traditional cultural elements and the creation of cultural identities that
have been nearly effaced by Western impact
(Feinberg 1994).
In societies where different versions of a culture are competing for validation as “authentic” in the construction of national identities,
both anthropological data and anthropologists
may be incorporated as important sources of
cultural authority.When Kathleen Adams carried out her fieldwork among the Toraja of
Sulawesi, Indonesia, she found her informants
already quite sophisticated about ethnography.
On her third day there, one of the Toraja told
her, “As an anthropologist, you should write a
book about the real Toraja identity and history,
both the good and the bad . . . [the] authentic
and the true . . . the Toraja without make-up”
(Adams 1995).
Toraja society was traditionally based on a
ranking of aristocrats, commoners, and slaves. In
the last several decades, however, for a variety
of reasons, including wage labor outside the region and the income from tourism, lowerstatus people had begun to achieve some wealth.
As the aristocrats became more insecure about
the relevance of their own royal genealogies, anthropological accounts became an important resource, shoring up their claims to noble status,
and elite Toraja competed for anthropological
attention. Indeed, Adams became a featured
event on tourist itineraries in the region and
tour guides led their groups to the home of her
host, not only validating his importance in the
village but also bolstering the tourists’ experience of theToraja as a group sufficiently remote
to be studied by anthropologists.
The manipulation of anthropologists by the
local politics of culture is another of the
changed conditions of ethnography that reinforces our recognition that the concept of a
bounded, isolated tribal or village culture is no
longer a viable basis for ethnography.Whether
working in cities, villages, or with tribal groups,
almost all ethnographies take into account the
interaction of these local units with larger, even
global social structures, economies, and cultures. It may mean following informants from
villages to their workplaces in cities or collecting genealogies that spread over countries or
even continents. This new conceptual framework raises questions about how typical one’s
unit of study is within a larger cultural pattern,
or even whether it is a culturally legitimate unit
at all. In addition to expanding the research site,
contemporary ethnography more often uses
techniques other than participant-observation,
such as questionnaires, social surveys, archival
material, government documents, and court
records.
DOING CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISON
AND THE USES OF
ETHNOGRAPHIC DATA
Five. However, these comparative approaches
still depend on intensive field studies of particular societies and are well within the definition of the ethnographic method.
The gathering of good ethnographic data
through participant-observation is the hallmark
of cultural anthropology and the foundation
on which anthropological theories are built.
Under the influence of anthropologists such
as Bronislaw Malinowski and Franz Boas, the
aim of anthropological fieldwork was the description of a total cultural pattern.Today, however, many anthropologists go into the field
with the aim of focusing on specific theoretical problems, much as Charles Brooks did
in his study of the Hare Krishna in India. Some
of these field studies may be comparative,
studying the same cultural pattern or social
institution in several cultures, as in the comparative study of preschools in China, Japan,
and the United States described in Chapter
CROSS-CULTURAL SURVEY
An entirely different kind of cross-cultural
comparative method is the cross-cultural
survey, or controlled cross-cultural comparison. The goal of the cross-cultural survey is to test generalizations about culture,
using statistical correlations of culture traits
based on a wide survey of many different cultures.The data base for the cross-cultural survey method is the Human Relations Area
File (HRAF). The HRAF is an extensive filing system containing ethnographic data
about hundreds of societies (past and present)
from the main ethnographically distinguished
areas of the world: Africa, Asia, native North
G
l
o
b
a
l
i
z
a
t
i
o
n
Ethnographic Data in the Global Economy
n today’s global economy, ethnographic data have a new commercial
value. Huge multinational pharmaceutical companies, for example, continually search new natural habitats in hopes
of finding new miracle drugs. These
searches sometimes include interviews
with native healers, who are most knowledgeable about medicinally effective
plants in their environments, but much of
the multinationals’ research relies on digging out information from ethnographic
publications.
Once ethnographic and ethnobotanical
data are published, they are in the public
I
domain, and multinational corporations
or governments may use the data with no
legal obligation to get permission from
the societies who are the source of the
information or to remunerate the members of those societies financially or in
any other way (Greaves 1995).
Concern over this issue is part of a
larger issue of the cultural rights of
indigenous people to protect their
own cultural knowledge and cultural
products. In many cases these areas of
knowledge and products are associated
with secret societies and practices and
their dissemination beyond their origi-
nal cultural borders violates important
religious values.
The increasing concerns of indigenous
people over the appropriation of their
cultural knowledge will undoubtedly affect fieldwork and ethnography, as these
peoples exercise greater control over
what ethnographers can publish. Recognition of the cultural and intellectual
property rights of indigenous peoples and
efforts to protect those rights are some
of the adaptations ethnography must
make in a changing world characterized by a global economy and global
communication.
33
34
CHAPTER TWO
and South America, and Oceania. Based on
ethnographic information about these societies from books and articles, hundreds of cultural features are cross-indexed in the HRAF.
Thus it makes accessible information about
specific cultural patterns in a particular society, and it also facilitates inquiry about cultural patterns that are found in association
with each other.
Thousands of different kinds of questions can
be answered by the cross-cultural survey
method (Ember and Ember 1996). For
example, in the 1950s, when divorce was
becoming more common in the United States
and the increasing divorce rate was causing
some alarm, anthropologist George Murdock,
one of the important pioneers in this methodology, used the HRAF to determine how marriage instability in the United States compared
with that of other cultures ([1950] 1996).
Using a random sample of eight societies
from the five major ethnographic divisions
of the world, Murdock ascertained that
thirty-nine of the forty societies in his sample made provision for the termination of
marriage through divorce. When Murdock
surveyed his sample for the frequency of
divorce, he found that while fifteen societies
had more stable marriages than the United
States, twenty-four societies (60% of the sample) had less stable marriages. He also investigated the grounds for divorce and found
that the great majority of societies recognized
only certain grounds as adequate and few
societies condoned divorce for a “mere
whim.” The most common bases for divorce
were incompatibility, adultery, barrenness or
sterility, impotence or frigidity, economic
incapacity or nonsupport, cruelty, and quarrelsomeness.
Murdock concluded from his cross-cultural
survey that the American divorce rate was
well within the limits that “human experience
has shown that societies can tolerate with
safety.” He also concluded that most societies,
even those with high divorce rates, are not
indifferent to family stability and that societies
with lower divorce rates usually have social
devices, such as marriage payments, arranged
marriages by parents, and prohibitions against
adultery, to support marital stability.
Most often, the cross-cultural survey is used
to test hypotheses about cultural correlations
and causes. For example, anthropologist Donald
Horton used this method to test his theory that
the primary function of drinking alcohol is to
reduce anxiety (Horton 1943). One of the
many hypotheses he tested as part of his larger
theory was that drinking alcohol would be related to the level of anxiety in a society and that
a major source of anxiety would be economic
insecurity.
To test this hypothesis, Horton first classified societies in the HRAF for which there was
information on drinking behavior into those
having high, moderate, or low subsistence insecurity. He then classified the same societies
into those having high, low, or moderate rates
of insobriety. Horton found a significant statistical correlation between high subsistence
insecurity and high rates of insobriety. With
significant statistical correlations found for
many of the other hypotheses that were generated from his theory, Horton considered his
theory confirmed.
There are both advantages and disadvantages
to the cross-cultural survey. A major advantage of the method is that it encourages formulating hypotheses, which can then be tested
by finding statistically significant correlations
between two or more cultural traits. However,
a problem that arises is whether the correlations found have explanatory power, that is,
whether they indicate causality. For example,
although Horton’s study found a statistically
significant correlation between economic insecurity and high rates of insobriety, his findings cannot confirm that subsistence insecurity
causes high rates of insobriety. To confirm
causality one needs to test the association of
many different features and to disprove alternative hypotheses.
DOING CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Another problem with the cross-cultural survey is that there is often ambiguity about what
constitutes a particular cultural trait and how
to measure it. Because the cross-cultural survey method uses cultural traits taken out of
context, it is not always clear that a trait has the
same meaning in the different societies in
which it is found. Insobriety, for example,
would be constructed differently in different
cultures, and its measurement may be somewhat arbitrary. Still another problem is that for
many societies, information on the particular
cultural trait the investigator wants to measure
may be missing from the ethnographic source.
Because most of the ethnographic data in the
HRAF were collected without HRAF categories in mind, not all societies have data on
all of the same cultural patterns. Anthropologists using the cross-cultural method have
tried in different ways to overcome these problems, and many continue to find the method
of substantial advantage.
Carol and Melvin Ember, anthropologists
prominently associated with the cross-cultural
survey method, note that an important function of the cross-cultural survey is that it prevents generalizing about human nature or
making assumptions about cultural correlations
based on only a few cultures (Ember and
Ember 1996).They note that the thousands of
such cross-cultural surveys carried out have
produced conclusions that support commonsense expectations and also hold some surprises.
On the question of violence, for example, crosscultural comparative studies confirm that societies that have a lot of violence in one aspect
of culture tend to have a lot of violence
throughout the culture. Societies that more
often engage in warfare, for example, also tend
to have a high degree of other forms of violence, such as homicide, assault, wife beating,
capital punishment, and male socialization practices that permit or encourage aggression. Such
studies, like George Murdock’s study on
divorce noted earlier, are also important in
putting contemporary social problems in cross-
35
Ethnographic data on drinking behavior can be useful in cross-cultural comparisons. These comparisons require caution, however, to make sure that the
behavior being studied has the same meaning in the compared cultures. The
ritual of drinking kava which occurs in many Pacific Islands, as illustrated
here, is quite different than drinking for social reasons in a neighborhood
bar in the United States.
cultural perspective, providing new insights into
possible solutions.
Undoubtedly, as more anthropologists learn
to use the HRAF through the annual Summer
Institutes in Comparative Anthropological
Research, sponsored by the Human Relations
Area Files and the National Science Foundation, cross-cultural comparisons will become an
increasingly important part of anthropologists’
work.The use of cross-cultural surveys and the
HRAF data base emphasizes the need for good
ethnography. The use of both methods confirms anthropology’s status as the most humanistic of the sciences and the most scientific of
the humanities.
36
CHAPTER TWO
SUMMARY
1. The main method of cultural anthropology is
ethnography, or the intensive, first-hand study of
a particular society through fieldwork.The major
technique in fieldwork is participant-observation.
An ethnography is the written account of a culture based on fieldwork.
2. Charles Brooks’s field experience in India illustrates the steps in doing fieldwork: choosing a
research problem, picking a research site, finding
key informants, collecting and recording data, and
analyzing and interpreting the data.
3. An essential ability in fieldwork is to see another
culture from the point of view of members of that
culture. Bronislaw Malinowski and Franz Boas
were two twentieth-century anthropologists
whose meticulous fieldwork set a standard for the
profession.
4. With the postmodern emphasis on multiple voices
in ethnography, anthropological accounts of
other cultures increasingly describe the fieldwork experience and raise questions about
how anthropologists’ status and culture influence
their perceptions and representations of other
cultures.
5. Doing fieldwork in the anthropologist’s own
culture presents similar and different problems
from doing fieldwork in another culture.Although
native anthropologists may have advantages of
access and rapport in some cases, they also experience special burdens more intensely, such as
whether to expose aspects of the culture that may
be unfavorably received by outsiders.
6. Anthropological ethics require protecting the dignity, privacy, and anonymity of the people one
studies and not putting them at risk in any way.
This may require extra caution when the research
setting is a site of ongoing violent conflict.
7. In addition to ethnography, anthropologists
may also use the rich ethnographic data of the
HRAF in cross-cultural surveys in order to test
hypotheses about human behavior and cultural
processes.
8. In the global economy and with the global reach
of information, ethnographic data, particularly
from indigenous cultures, is increasingly being
used for commercial purposes. This has led to
greater activism by anthropologists, working with
indigenous peoples, to find ways to protect cultural knowledge and products.
KEY TERMS
androcentric bias
controlled cross-cultural comparison
cross-cultural survey
empirical science
ethnographic method
ethnography
ethnology
fieldwork
genealogy
Human Relations Area File (HRAF)
informant
key informant
native anthropologist
participant-observation
positivism
postmodernism
random sample
SUGGESTED READINGS
Agar, Michael. 1996. The Professional Stranger: An
Informal Introduction to Ethnography. Second edition.
New York: Academic Press. Agar’s informal and
often humorous style makes this a good source
of the whys and hows of ethnography for the introductory student.
Allen, Catherine. 1989. The Hold Life Has: Coco and
Cultural Identity in an Andean Community.
Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. A sensitive and beautifully written account of anthropological fieldwork in a Latin American
agricultural community.
Altorki, Soraya, and Camillia Fawzi El-Solh, eds. 1988.
Arab Women in the Field: Studying Your Own Society.
Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Six
women anthropologists, each of whom is socially
part Westerner and part Arab, write about the personal, ethical, practical, and intellectual problems
of doing fieldwork as an Arab woman in a range
of Middle Eastern societies.
DOING CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Bernard, Russell H., and Jesus Salinas Pedraza.
1995. Native Ethnography:A Mexican Indian Describes
His Culture. Walnut Creek, Calif.: Altamira Press
(Sage).An innovative ethnography based on native
researcher collaboration in which Salinas’s ethnography of his own people, written in his own language, was guided, translated, and annotated by the
American anthropologist.
DeVita, Philip R., ed. 1991. The Naked Anthropologist:
Tales from Around the World. Belmont, Calif.:
Wadsworth. An anthology of original and often
amusing articles by anthropologists who have been
taught some important lessons by their informants
in the process of doing fieldwork.
Gottlieb,Alma, and Philip Graham. 1993. Parallel Worlds:
An Anthropologist and a Writer Encounter Africa. New
York: Crown.A compelling ethnography with alternating chapters by anthropologist Gottlieb and
her fiction writer husband, which emerged from
anthropological fieldwork among the Beng of
West Africa.
Narayan, Kirin. 1989. Storytellers, Saints, and Scoundrels:
Folk Narrative in Hindu Religious Teaching.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. A
delightful book whose rich portraits of the anthropologist and the swami who is her key informant become the vehicles for learning about one
important kind of religious experience in India.
Young, Malcolm. 1993. In the Sticks: Cultural Identity in
a Rural Police Force. Oxford, England: Clarendon
Press. A fascinating ethnography by an anthropologist who spent over 30 years on the English
police force, which describes his culture shock as
well as some of the pitfalls of planned change
among the police in England.
INTERNET EXERCISES
Do you want to get a feeling for
what doing a fieldwork-based project in anthropology is like? Check
out anthropologist Laura Zimmer
Tamakoshi’s Web site http://www.truman.edu/
academics/ss/faculty/tamakoshil/index.html.
Professor Tamakoshi’s site covers information on
planning her fieldwork, her experiences in
Papua New Guinea, and her experiences after
she returned.The site is well constructed and
full of great color photographs of New Guinea.
Dr.Tamakoshi provides good personal discussions of establishing rapport, culture shock, and
writing field notes. She also includes many
quotations from other anthropologists.
Another good place to begin to get an idea of
what cultural anthropologists do is at the Center
for Social Anthropology and Computing of the
University of Kent at Canterbury. You can find
their home page at http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk. There
you will find a variety of resources for learning
anthropology.These include the texts of numerous ethnographies, stories about anthropologists,
and brief pictorial exhibits that are informative
and fun to look at. One particularly useful part
of the site is the database of basic information on
many different cultures.You can access this at
http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/EthnoAtlas/societies.html.
37