1 McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. O v e r v i e w Methods and Ethics in Cultural Anthropology This chapter introduces students to the field methods and research methods employed by cultural anthropologists. It pays special attention to the field methods of ethnographers, the history of ethnography and the ethics that apply to cultural anthropologists.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 2 Ethics The AAA Code of Ethics states that anthropologists have ethical obligations to their scholarly field, to the wider society and culture, to the human species, other species, and the environment. To work in a host country and community, researchers must obtain the informed consent from all affected parties. Before the research begins, people should be told about the purpose, nature, and procedures of the research. Also, people should be told of the potential costs and benefits of the research before the project begins.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 3 Academic reciprocity The AAA Code states that researchers should reciprocate in appropriate ways. Include host country colleagues in your research plans and funding requests. Establish collaborative relationships with those colleagues and their institutions. Include host country colleagues in the publication of the research results. It should not be forgotten that the researcher’s primary ethical obligation is to the people being studied.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 4 Proposing Research Anthropologists need funding to support their research in the field. There are a series of agencies that support anthropological research. –National Science Foundation (NSF) –Social Science Research Council (SSRC) –Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research In order to receive funding from any of these institutions, anthropologists must write grant proposals that summarize what questions are going to be addressed, where the research will be conducted, and how it will be done.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 5 Good Grant Proposals Good grant proposals must address several key questions. What is the topic to be investigated? Why is this research important? Where and when will it happen? What’s going to be tested and how? Is the person proposing the research qualified to do it?

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 6 Ethnography Ethnography Is the Firsthand Personal Study of a Local Cultural Setting Ethnographers try to understand the whole of a particular culture, not just fragments (e.g., the economy). In pursuit of this holistic goal, ethnographers usually spend an extended period of time living with the group they are studying and employ a series of techniques to gather information. Key cultural consultants are particularly well-informed members of the culture being studied that can provide the ethnographer with some of the most useful or complete information.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 7 Life Histories Life histories are intimate and personal collections of a lifetime of experiences from certain members of the community being studied Life histories reveal how specific people perceive, react to, and contribute to changes that affect their lives. Since life histories are focused on how different people interpret and deal with similar issues, they can be used to illustrate the diversity within a given community.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 8 Observation and Participant Observation Ethnographers are trained to be aware of and record details from daily events, the significance of which may not be apparent until much later. “Participant observation,” as practiced by ethnographers, involves the researcher taking part in the activities being observed. Unlike laboratory research, ethnographers do not isolate variables or attempt to manipulate the outcome of events they are observing.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 9 Conservation, Interviewing, and Interview Schedules Ethnographic interviews range in formality from undirected conversation, to open-ended interviews focusing on specific topics, to formal interviews using a predetermined schedule of questions. Increasingly, more than one of these methods are used to accomplish complementary ends on a single ethnographic research project.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 10 The Genealogical Method Early anthropologists identified types of relatedness, such as kinship, descent, and marriage, as being the fundamental organizing principles of nonindustrial societies. The genealogical method of diagramming such kin relations was developed as a formalized means of comparing kin-based societies.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 11 Emic vs. Etic Local Beliefs and Perceptions and the Ethnographer’s An emic (native-oriented) approach investigates how natives think, categorize the world, express thoughts, and interpret stimuli. –Emic = “native viewpoint” –Key cultural consultants are essential for understanding the emic perspective. An etic (science-oriented) approach emphasizes the categories, interpretations, and features that the anthropologist considers important.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 12 Bronislaw Malinowski Bronislaw Malinowski is generally considered the father of ethnography. He did salvage ethnography, recording cultural diversity that was threatened by westernization. His ethnographies were scientific accounts of unknown people and places. Malinowski believed that all aspects of culture were linked and intertwined, making it impossible to write about just one cultural feature without discussing how it relates to others. Malinowski argued that understanding the emic perspective, the native’s point of view, was the primary goal of ethnography.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 13 Ethnographic realism The writer’s goal was to produce an accurate, objective, scientific account of the study community. The writer’s authority was rooted in his or her personal research experience with that community.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 14 Evolution of Ethnography Interpretive anthropologists believe that ethnographers should describe and interpret that which is meaningful to the natives. –Geertz argues that cultures are texts that natives constantly “read” and that ethnographers must decipher. –Meanings in a given culture are carried by public symbolic forms, including words, rituals, and customs. Experimental anthropologists, like Marcus and Fischer, have begun to question the traditional goals, methods, and styles of ethnographic realism and salvage ethnography. –Ethnographies should be viewed as both works of art and works of science. –The ethnographer functions as the mediator who communicates information from the natives to the readers.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 15 Ethnographic Present The early ethnographies were often written in the ethnographic present, a romanticized timelessness before westernization, which gave the ethnographies an eternal, unchanging quality. Today, anthropologists understand that this is an unrealistic construct that inaccurately portrayed the natives as isolated and cut off from the rest of the world. Ethnographers today recognize that cultures constantly change and that this quality must be represented in the ethnography.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 16 Problem-Oriented Ethnography Ethnographers typically address a specific problem or set of problems within the context of broader depictions of cultures. Variables with the most significant relationship to the problem being addressed are given priority in the analysis.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 17 Longitudinal Research Longitudinal research is the long-term study of a community, region, society, or culture based on a series of repeated visits. Longitudinal research study has become increasingly common among ethnographic studies, as repeat visits to field sites have become easier. Such studies may also encompass multiple, related sites. Team research involves a series of ethnographers conducting complementary research in a given community, culture, or region.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 18 Survey Research Anthropologists working in large-scale societies are increasingly using survey methodologies to complement more traditional ethnographic techniques. –Survey involves drawing a study group or sample from the larger study population, collecting impersonal data, and performing statistical analyses on these data. –By studying a properly selected and representative sample, social scientists can make accurate inferences about the larger population. Survey research is considerably more impersonal than ethnography. –Survey researchers call the people who make up their study sample respondents. –Respondents answer a series of formally administered questions.

McGraw-Hill © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 19 Anthropology in Complex Societies. Anthropologists rely increasingly on a variety of different field methodologies to accommodate a demand for greater breadth of applicability of results. Kottak argues that the core contribution of ethnology remains the qualitative data that result from close, long-term, in-depth contact between ethnographer and subjects.