1. McGraw-Hill © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 1 12 Ethics and Methods in Cultural Anthropology Anthropology: The Exploration of Human Diversity 11 th Edition Conrad Phillip Kottak

2. McGraw-Hill © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 2 Ethics and Methods in Cultural Anthropology Ethics Methods-Ethnography Ethnographic Techniques Culture, Space, and Scale Survey Research

3. McGraw-Hill © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 3 Ethics American Anthropological Association (AAA) Code of Ethics provide guidelines for anthropologists as they plan and conduct research

4. McGraw-Hill © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 4 Ethics Seeks permission, cooperation, and knowledge from government officials, scholars, and people being studied Before research begins, people should be told the purpose, nature, and procedures of research People also should be told of potential costs and benefits of research before project begins –Ethnographers typically do field work outside their nations of origin

5. McGraw-Hill © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 5 Ethics –Include host country colleagues in research plans and funding requests –Establish collaborative relationships with colleagues and institutions The AAA Code states researchers should reciprocate in appropriate ways

6. McGraw-Hill © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 6 Ethics –Include host country colleagues in publication of research results It should not be forgotten that researcher’s primary ethical obligation is to the people being studied

7. McGraw-Hill © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 7 Ethics Location of the Betsileo in Madagascar

8. McGraw-Hill © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 8 Methods-Ethnography –Ethnographers try to understand the whole of a particular culture, not just fragments –Ethnographers usually spend extended period of time living with group they are studying and employ a series of techniques to gather information Firsthand personal study of local cultural setting

9. McGraw-Hill © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 9 Ethnographic Techniques Conversation with varying degrees of formality Direct, firsthand observation of daily behavior, including participant observation

10. McGraw-Hill © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 10 Ethnographic Techniques –Detailed work with key consultants about particular areas of community life –In-depth interviewing, often leading to collection of life histories of particular people (narrators) –Discovery of local beliefs and perceptions, which may be compared with ethnographer’s own observations and conclusions The Genealogical method

11. McGraw-Hill © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 11 Ethnographic Techniques Ethnographers trained to be aware of and record details from daily events, significance of which may not be apparent until much later The Genealogical method –Observation and Participant Observation

12. McGraw-Hill © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 12 Ethnographic Techniques –“Participant observation,” as practiced by ethnographers, involves the researcher taking part in the activities being observed The Genealogical method Unlike laboratory research, ethnographers do not isolate variables or attempt to manipulate the outcome of events they are observing

13. McGraw-Hill © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 13 Ethnographic Techniques –Ethnographic interviews range in formality from undirected conversation to open- ended interviews focusing on specific topics to formal interviews using predetermined schedule of questions –Increasingly, more than one of these methods are used to accomplish complementary ends Conservation, Interviewing, and Interview Schedules

14. McGraw-Hill © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 14 Ethnographic Techniques Key Cultural Consultants Every community has people who by accident, experience, talent, or training can provide the most complete or useful information about particular aspects of life

15. McGraw-Hill © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 15 Ethnographic Techniques –Reveal how specific people perceive, react to, and contribute to changes that affect their lives Life Histories

16. McGraw-Hill © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 16 Ethnographic Techniques –Emic (native-oriented) approach— investigates how natives think, categorize the world, express thoughts, and interpret stimuli –Etic (science-oriented) approach— emphasizes categories, interpretations, and features that anthropologist considers important Local Beliefs and Perceptions and the Ethnographer’s

17. McGraw-Hill © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 17 Ethnographic Techniques Generally considered the father of ethnography Did salvage ethnography, recording cultural diversity threatened by westernization Ethnographies were scientific accounts of unknown people and places The Evolution of Ethnography –Bronislaw Malinowski

18. McGraw-Hill © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 18 Ethnographic Techniques Believed 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 Argued that understanding the emic perspective, the native’s point of view, was the primary goal of ethnography The Evolution of Ethnography –Bronislaw Malinowski

19. McGraw-Hill © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 19 Ethnographic Techniques –Writer’s goal to produce an accurate, objective, scientific account of study community –Writer’s authority rooted in his or her personal research experience with that community Ethnographic realism

20. McGraw-Hill © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 20 Ethnographic Techniques Geertz argues that cultures are texts that natives constantly “read” and that ethnographers must decipher Meanings in given culture carried by public symbolic forms, including words, rituals, and customs Ethnographic realism –Interpretive anthropologists believe ethnographers should describe and interpret that which is meaningful to the natives

21. McGraw-Hill © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 21 Ethnographic realism –Experimental anthropologists, like Marcus and Fischer, have begun to question the traditional goals, methods, and styles of ethnographic realism and salvage ethnography Ethnographic Techniques Ethnographies should be viewed as both works of art and works of science The ethnographer functions as mediator who communicates information from natives to readers

22. McGraw-Hill © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 22 Ethnographic Techniques Ethnographic Present –Early ethnographies often written in ethnographic present, a romanticized timelessness before westernization, which gave ethnographies an eternal, unchanging quality Today, anthropologists understand this is unrealistic construct that inaccurately portrayed natives as isolated and cut off from rest of world Ethnographers recognize that cultures constantly change and that this quality must be represented in the ethnography

23. McGraw-Hill © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 23 Ethnographic Techniques –Ethnographers typically address specific problem or set of problems within context of broader depictions of cultures –Variables with most significant relationship to problem being addressed given priority in the analysis Problem-Oriented Ethnography

24. McGraw-Hill © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 24 Ethnographic Techniques –Long-term study of a community, region, society, or culture based on series of repeated visits –Has become increasingly common among ethnographic studies, as repeat visits to field sites have become easier –May also encompass multiple, related sites Longitudinal Research

25. McGraw-Hill © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 25 Ethnographic Techniques Team Research –Involves series of ethnographers conducting complementary research in a given community, culture, or region

26. McGraw-Hill © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 26 Culture, Space, and Scale Shift toward recognition of ongoing and inescapable flows of people, technology, images, and information Traditional ethnographic research focused on single community or “culture,” treated as more or less isolated and unique in time and space

27. McGraw-Hill © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 27 Culture, Space, and Scale Anthropologists increasingly study people in motion Ethnography increasingly multi-times and multi-sited

28. McGraw-Hill © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 28 Survey Research Anthropologists working in large-scale societies increasingly use survey methodologies to complement more traditional ethnographic techniques Survey involves drawing study group or sample from the larger study population, collecting impersonal data, and performing statistical analyses on data By studying properly selected and representative sample, social scientists can make accurate inferences about larger population

29. McGraw-Hill © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 29 Survey Research –Survey researchers call people who make up their study sample respondents –Respondents answer a series of formally administered questions Survey research considerably more impersonal than ethnography

30. McGraw-Hill © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 30 Survey Research Anthropologists rely increasingly on a variety of different field methodologies to accommodate a demand for greater breadth of applicability of results Hallmark of ethnography remain the ethnographic method and emphasis on personal relationships

31. McGraw-Hill © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 31 Survey Research Ethnography and Survey Research Contrasted Insert Table 12.1