question #2: how do you think you might apply one of the research methods to und
ID: 110417 • Letter: Q
Question
question #2:
how do you think you might apply one of the research methods to understand the world around you?
Text for the assignment: Chapter 5 - Section 4 Fieldwork and Ethnographic Methodology
Regardless of one’s philosophical persuasion, before any of the anthropological paradigms discussed above can be applied, data collection must occur, i.e., fieldwork is the first step in anthropological analysis. The anthropologist is not a tourist; rather she must thoughtfully and methodically engage herself in the lifeways of the people being studied. Typically, a fieldwork project will begin many months before she actually embarks on her journey to the area where the target group resides. The anthropologist must be as familiar as she can be with the history, demography, politics, language, and religion of the people she plans to research; such “library research” will also involve a special focus on the particular topic of interest to the anthropologist. For example, prior research on gender roles would be important for someone researching the domestic life of women. Very little of what goes on in a particular area takes place in a cultural vacuum. Rather, there could be, for example, political or religious influences that affect the topic of study whether or not that topic of study is political or religious. This writer’s work on the Orisha religion in Trinidad (Houk 1995) uncovered a sophisticated meta-structure (a structure that existed above and beyond the religion itself at a much more abstract level) that was comprised of some components that were acting to conceptually expand the religion and some that were acting to conceptually contract the religion. Such a structure only became clear after certain details regarding gender roles, ethnicity, history, and politics were taken into consideration. So my research of the Orisha religion took me far beyond simply the religious life of my contacts. Although fieldwork is essential for anthropologists, they must secure funding for the venture or finance the fieldwork themselves. Several grants (local, state, federal, and international) are available but highly competitive; often special consideration is given to graduate students conducting research for an advanced degree. After funding is obtained, the anthropologist then has to arrange for travel, lodging, etc. Often, the anthropologist is working alone and has to take care of these details herself, which will require some familiarity with the country or area she is visiting. Depending on the area to which she will be travelling, the fieldworker may have to be vaccinated for one or more diseases or maladies that are endemic to the area. So, funding has been secured, travel and lodging have been arranged, and the fieldworker now finds herself in a strange place among strange people. What now? There are two primary issues that are germane at this point: ethics and productivity. The former concerns proper conduct in the field and the later concerns methodology and fieldwork techniques. Ethics An anthropological “Code of Ethics” (American Anthropological Association 1998) comprehensively addresses a host of issues that may be potentially problematic but one statement, in my mind, stands out above all the rest: “Anthropological researchers must do everything in their power to ensure that their research does not harm the safety, dignity, or privacy of the people with whom they work, conduct research, or perform other professional activities.” The anthropologist’s first concern should always be the general health, well-being, and welfare of the people with whom she is working. (A more comprehensive treatment of the updated 2012 ethical code can be found in Chapter Fifteen.) Two considerations are of primary import here. First, the fieldwork should have the informed consent of those with whom she is working. In medical ethics, informed consent entails that the individual is a competent adult (i.e., of sound mind), the individual understands what is being proposed or discussed, and the individual consents to participation. This is a sound guideline that translates quite easily to the field. Thus, before the anthropologist attends, say, a religious ceremony, she must have the consent of those participating in the ritual and they must be fully aware of the anthropologist’s intentions. Before data collection devices of any kind are used, e.g., recorders, cameras, etc., the anthropologist must have the consent of those with whom she is working. Second, no one with whom the anthropologist is working should ever be identified by name in print; pseudonyms should be used to protect the identity of the individual. This actually works to the benefit of the fieldworker since individuals are much more likely to be ingenuous and forthcoming if they know that they will not be held accountable for their comments. In some cases, however, this may encourage the interviewee to exaggerate or otherwise embellish their accounts since they are anonymous; the anthropologist will have to call on their best judgment in such situations. This ethical requirement is crucial since some individuals may be involved in serious political clashes or religious rifts and could potentially suffer as the result of certain comments. The one exception to this ethical requirement is the case where individuals seek recognition for their comments and/or participation in the fieldwork project. Names may be divulged in such a context. In the past, those with whom the anthropologist worked were referred to as “informants.” This term, however, now has so many negative connotations that it is rarely used. Most anthropologists today use terms such as respondents, consultants, or contacts. This writer prefers the latter. One might assume that there are some things that are universally embraced as positive, e.g., courage, trustworthiness, and empathy. One might even include generosity in that list but he or she would be wrong at least up to a point. Richard Lee would learn this lesson while doing fieldwork among the !Kung Bushmen in the Kalahari (1969/2001). (The ! actually represents a clicking phoneme in the Bushmen language, not a punctuation mark.) Lee decided that he would show his appreciation for the people with whom he had been working by purchasing an ox for the Christmas feast. (The !Kung, of course, do not celebrate Christmas themselves but picked up the story from neighboring pastoral peoples who themselves had learned the story from Christian missionaries; the !Kung join them in their Christmas celebrations.) He travelled far and wide until he found an enormous beast that would feed all of the visiting Bushmen and then some. Once the Bushmen learned of Lee’s purchase and his plans to give the ox away on Christmas, the trouble began. One contact after another, even those considered to be reliable, told Lee that he should be ashamed to offer them a haggard old animal that would leave them all starving. /gaugo’s comments were typical (/ is also a phoneme in the Bushmen language): “/ontah [the Bushmen’s name for Lee; it means “whitey”], you have always been square with us,” he lied. “What has happened to change your heart? That sack of guts and bones of Yahave’s will hardly feed one camp, let alone all the Bushmen around /ai/ai [the local compound]. … Perhaps you have forgotten that we are not few, but many. Or are you too blind to tell the difference between a proper cow and an old wreck? That ox is thin to the point of death” (2001:224). And so it went day after day until Lee became so discouraged that he thought about skipping the Christmas feast altogether. But, his curiosity got the best of him and he had to be there to see what happened. The animal was killed and the butchering began. Lee reports that there was at least two inches of fat on the huge ox, a prized food by the Bushmen. As it was now clear that the animal was loaded with fat and meat, Lee proudly shouted about what an amazing animal it was for the feast. Nevertheless, the negative comments and barbed remarks continued. Lee was truly puzzled and quite hurt by this time. So what was going on? Well, Lee was being taught a lesson in cultural relativity. In this case, gift-giving, generosity, and reciprocity all meant something unique to the !Kung. Here’s how one of his contacts put it: “…when a young man kills much meat he comes to think of himself as a chief or a big man, and he thinks of the rest of us as his servants or inferiors. We can’t accept this. We refuse one who boasts, for someday his pride will make him kill somebody. So we always speak of his meat as worthless. This way we cool his heart and make him gentle” (2001:227). In the !Kung culture, pride would lead to selfishness and egoism, character attributes that could be fatal for hunter-gatherers living in the harsh arid climes of the Kalahari. Rather, it is a quiet and unassuming generosity that is valued and that is constantly reinforced by custom and etiquette. Lee, Richard. Eating Christmas in the Kalahari. Natural History Magazine 78(10), 1969. Reprinted in Applying Anthropology: An Introductory Reader, 6th ed., Aaron Podolefsky and Peter J. Brown, eds., pp. 223-227. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield. 2001. Productivity In regard to the interaction between the anthropologist and her contacts, participant-observation has long been championed as the method of choice. The general intent of participant-observation is to reduce the social distance between the researcher and the researched so that a meaningful interaction between the two parties might occur. If one over-emphasizes participation, she will lose her objectivity and be unable to communicate her findings to a universal audience; that is, after all, the aim of anthropology: to “convert” cultural knowledge into a universal idiom. For example, it is known that religious adherents, insiders par excellence, are not generally reliable, objective sources of information regarding the religion they practice. On the other hand, if one over-emphasizes observation, she will rarely turn up anything culturally meaningful; little or no insight will be gained regarding the emic perspective. This could be said of the researcher working among the Tsembaga who ignores the natives’ disease etiology and focuses only on the mosquitoes. Given the potential pitfalls of over-emphasizing either participation or observation, it is generally agreed that a balance of the two is desirable, i.e., the anthropologist should decrease the social distance between herself and her contacts just enough to access the culture in a rich and meaningful way but not so much that she loses her objectivity. Some anthropologists (this writer included) depart a bit from this traditional treatment of participant-observation in favor of an approach somewhat derisively referred to as “going native;” this writer prefers the term “cultural immersion.” In this case, the anthropologist will do everything she possibly can (within reason and while abiding by the strict ethical code that guides fieldwork) to decrease the social distance between herself and her contacts. This will involve living among those with whom she is working and essentially undergoing an intense bout of enculturation. The anthropologist may participate in specific cultural activities in an attempt to gain greater access to the people with whom she is working. For example, after working for about a year in Trinidad among those who practice the Orisha religion, this writer had hit a wall so to speak. It seemed as though I had gotten about as close as I could to my contacts and the religion they practiced. Nevertheless, I still did not have access to certain places, and I still could not engage in certain activities; I assumed (correctly as it turned out) that there was knowledge associated with these places and activities that was not being shared with me due to my status as an “outsider.” After some discussion with my closest contacts, I discovered that if I wanted to progress any further with my fieldwork, I would have to become initiated in the religion. This posed a quandary as I did not embrace the beliefs and tenets of the Orisha religion with the same degree of enthusiasm as my contacts and even they were aware of that fact. Nevertheless, I had a great deal of respect and admiration for my contacts and the religion they practiced, so I agreed to go through the three-day ordeal. Needless to say, my work benefitted greatly as a result of my initiation into the religion. Cultural immersion need not be so dramatic, however. For example, one of the primary gestures a fieldworker can make to ingratiate herself to the people with whom she is working is the sharing of food. Food and the culture of food go far beyond merely eating whatever is available, nutritious, palatable, and digestible. Like virtually everything else humans do regarding production and reproduction, the simple biological act of consumption, like the simple biological act of copulation, an imminently natural, survival-oriented activity, is overlain with layer after layer of cultural ideology. Some foods invoke feelings of ethnic pride in certain peoples, for example, crawfish (crayfish) in the Cajun culture in Louisiana and curry crab in Tobago. In any event, certain foods are often intimately linked to the people that consume them and diets are manifestly cultural, as confirmed by the existence of the many dietary taboos around the world. For these reasons, the anthropologist should do her best to partake and imbibe (with gusto!) whenever offered food and drink by her contacts. The technique of cultural immersion assumes that the fieldworker will eventually be able to extricate herself from the conceptual space of her contacts and report her findings objectively. Since fieldwork is often done at a place far removed from the home base of the anthropologist, the ethnographic reportage can often be written up after the researcher leaves the area in which the fieldwork was done and returns home. The cultural immersion technique, then, gives us the best of both worlds: the balanced approach of participant-observation which actually involves a somewhat compromised version of both participation and observation gives way to a strategy (cultural immersion) in which the observer has a rich corpus of information and knowledge with which to work. The reader should not make the mistake of assuming that fieldwork of this sort is methodical, rote, and perfunctory as it can be quite trying emotionally. In fact, as one gradually internalizes the customs, language, gestures, etc., of another culture, she may become disoriented and suffer what is known as culture shock. The individual undergoes such an intense period of enculturation in their own culture from birth that the peculiar customs, practices, and habits associated with their “home” culture become second-nature to them; the typical individual is no more aware of the “culturized” aspects of their existence than is a fish aware of the water in which it lives. Thus, the internalization of the lifeways of the “other” can leave the fieldworker estranged from the conceptual and emotional foundation that has served to “ground” their existence since birth. The resulting disorientation, which can manifest itself in the form of depression, loneliness, or anxiety, can, in some cases be debilitating and has the potential to distort the fieldworker’s perception of the culture in which they are working. For this reason, among others, for example personal biases and prejudices, the anthropologist must always be aware of how their involvement in the field and the ideology they bring with them to the field might affect their ethnographic reportage. Thus, reflexivity should be as much a part of the anthropologist’s “toolbox” as her cameras, notebooks, and training.
Explanation / Answer
You might apply the qualitative research methods, because through this it can be characterized as the attempt to obtain an in-depth understanding of the meanings and 'definitions of the situation' presented by researchers, rather than the production of a quantitative 'measurement' of their characteristics or behavior.
This also allows to apply the methods with ethical and benefical procedures tu both, researcher and surrouended and implied community in. Furthermore, qualitative interviewing techniques are employed by some researchers to gather textual data that are subsequently coded and analyzed statistically thus quantifying the qualitative data. The results of such analyses generate an understanding of cognitive categories, or how people perceive the relationship among categories in some domain.
Remember that the goal of understanding a phenomenon from the point of view of the participants and its particular social and institutional context is largely lost when textual data are quantified. so it is necessary a combination of one or more research methods has been referred as ‘Triangulation’. Researchers should have more than one way to show how we arrived at the conclusions of our research; field notes, interviews, and site documents which work together to support our claims.
Related Questions
Navigate
Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.