Fieldwork and Ethics

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• Fieldwork and Ethics

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• 3)????(fieldwork ethnography)
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Shakespeare in the Bush, Laura Bohannan, Natural
History, Aug/Sept. 1966

• It is claimed that great literature has
  cross-cultural significance. L. Bohanan describes
  the difficulties she encountered and the lessons
  she learned as she attempted to relate the story
  of Hamlet to the Tiv of West Africa in their own
  language.
• Assumptions about human motivations, morality,
  and the nature of reality are embedded in a
  cultural context and limit the possible
  understanding of the story.
• Key terms ethnocentrism, cross-cultural
  misunderstanding, cultural relativism

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Questions

• What was L. Bohannans original beliefs about the
  universality of the classics?
• Was L Bohannan successful in her attempt to
  convey the true meaning of Shakespeares Hamlet
  to the Tiv?
• What difficulties did she find in communicating
  the dramatic themes?
• How did the Tiv react to the marriage of Hamlets
  mother to his uncle? How was this different from
  Hamlets own emotional reaction?
• Why do the Tiv believe that a chief should have
  more than one wife?
• Consider how the elders interpret various actions
  to fit Tiv culture and in so doing redefine the
  central meaning of the play. What are the most
  important parts of Hamlet that the Tiv found
  necessary to reinterpret?
• In what way does this story illustrate the
  concepts of naive realism and ethnocentrism?

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Body Ritual among the Nacirema, Horace Miner,
American Anthropologist, June 1956

• The rituals, beliefs and taboos of the Nacirema
  provide us with a test case of the objectivity of
  ethnographic description and show us the extremes
  to which human behavior can go.
• Mystical beliefs and ritual are hardly absent
  from the modern world.
• Key terms ethnocentrism, culture, ritual

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Questions

• How do the Nacirema feel about the human body?
• Do you think that the charms and magical potions
  used by the Nacirema really work?
• Can you list those aspects of life in which magic
  plays a role?
• What is your opinion of the importance of body
  ritual, and if you went to live among the
  Nacirema, would you tell them of your opinion?
• Living among the Nacirema, you might find that
  their behaviors sometimes may appear bizarre. Do
  you think the Nacirema themselves feel this way?
• Do the examination and analysis of the rituals of
  this tribe shed any new light on the meaning of
  culture and help us reflect on our own way of
  life?
• WHO are the Nacirema?

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Empirical research

• Based on, guided by, or employing observation and
  experiment rather than theory. From the Greek
  word emperikos meaning experience, skilled.
• Shorter Oxford English Dictionary

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How does sociological imagination differ from
common sense?

• Lower-class people are more likely to commit
  crimes than upper-class people.
• It makes sense to choose a college major in the
  same field as ones intended career, because most
  graduates are employed in the general field of
  their college major.
• The amount of money spent on a schools facility
  has a strong effect on the academic success of
  its pupils.
• A substantial proportion of the people on welfare
  could work if they really wanted to.
• Husbands are more likely to kill their wives in
  family fights than wives are to kill their
  husbands.
• Every society forbids sexual relations between
  parent and child and between brother and sister.
• Physicians can correctly diagnose the medical
  problems of most patients who bring complaints to
  them.

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Common Sense

• Common sense views are not always so relentless
  contradicted by sociological research. Indeed,
  intuition and common sense in sociology are a
  rich source insights. But they can provide only
  hunches. The hunch must be tested by the methods
  of science.
• ethnocentrism
• Examples?

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Durkheimian Paradigm (cultivation of
sociological imagination)
The Rules of Sociological Method (1893). What
is a Social Fact? Social facts are ways of
acting, thinking, and feeling, external to the
individual and endowed with a power of coercion,
by which they control him - objective realities
that can be observed in a manner consistent with
scientific methods Suicide A Study in Sociology
(1897)
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Suicide A Study in Sociology (1897)

• Social facts are discovered by statistical
  methods.
• Suicides are more than individual acts, they are
  the consequences of broad social trends.
• The suicide victims acts which seem to express
  his personal temperament are really (caused) by a
  social condition high suicide rates reflect
  weaknesses in the web of relationship among
  members of a society, not the weakness of
  character or personality in the individual.
• EX1 Harvard anthropologist Arthur Kleinmans
  study of suicide in rural China (2001)
• Ex2 In the West we ask of a suicide, Why? In
  China the question is more commonly, Who? Who
  drove her to this? Who is responsible
• M. Wolf (1975 112)

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The Validity of Soft Data Ethnography and
Fieldwork

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???????????

• DATA
• Information in raw or unorganized form (such as
  alphabets, numbers, or symbols) that refer to, or
  represent, conditions, ideas, or objects.
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• www.businessdictionary.com

• Language ??
• Ideas ??
• Norms values
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• Material Culture
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What does it MEAN to be tanned?
Language Ideas Norms values Material Culture

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Sociological Research Methods

• Ethnography
• Observational study / fieldwork (detached
  participant observation)
• Surveys
• -standardized open-ended
• -sampling
• Experiments

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BRONIALAW MALINOWSKI (1884-1942)

• participant observation
• immersing oneself in the local community
  (long-term residence)
• working through the native language
• Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922)
• the goal of ethnographic fieldwork is to
• grasp the native point of view, his relation to
  life, to realize his vision of his world (1922
  25)

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The validity of soft data

• participant observation
• immersing oneself in the local community
  (long-term residence)
• working through the native language
• the goal of ethnographic fieldwork is to
• grasp the native point of view, his relation to
  life, to realize his vision of his world
• (Malinowski 1922 25)

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FIELDWORK

• Gain specialist knowledge by going to live in the
  society of their choice
• Go for a year or more try to live as far as
  possible as the people they are interested
• Find out exactly what it is like to be a member
  of the society in question
• Learn the language of the people concerned
• (working with interpreters gives a wholly
  inadequate view)
• NOTE Social closeness distinguishes sociologists
  / anthropologists from other social scientists

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The Social Closeness Between the Observer and the
Observed

• Your class (social and economic status),
  ethnicity/nationality, gender, age and other
  factors (religious beliefs and institutional
  affiliations) all affect how you will be
  interpreted by the local people.

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Social closeness

• A meeting of cultural traditions in a wide
  context misunderstandings, understandings and
  surprises are likely.
• Fieldwork as a risky business (interpretation
  translation) offending miscommunication.
• Rich points for unexpected moments when
  problems in cross-cultural understanding emerge.
• Opportunities for insight

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Ethnography

• Limitations
• Can be used to study only relatively small groups
  or communities
• Findings might apply only to groups or
  communities studied not easy to generalize on
  the basis of a single fieldwork study

• Strength
• Usually generates richer and more in-depth
  information than other methods
• Provide a broader understanding of social
  processes

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Ethnographic Research A Key to Strategy (March
2009 Harvard Business Review)

• Ken Anderson
• - Corporate ethnography isnt just for innovation
  anymore. Its central to gaining a full
  understanding of your customers and the business
  itself. The ethnographic work at my company,
  Intel, and other firms now informs functions such
  as strategy and long-range planning.
• - Our goal is to see peoples behavior on their
  terms, not ours. While this observational method
  may appear inefficient, it enlightens us about
  the context in which customers would use a new
  product and the meaning that product might hold
  in their lives.

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What is Ethnorgaphic Research ?

• Highly investigative
• Diagnostic view
• A free flowing discussion amongst
• a small number of people
• Does not produce numbers
• To understand consumer attitudes
• and motivations
• Aid development of Ideas
• Advertising
• It is more of an Art than Science

Insight to refine and optimize Ideas, concepts
and creative
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How does ethnography enrich traditional
qualitative research ?
Study the fish
Hang out with the fish
Ethnographic immersion
Classical qualitative research
Both approaches are valid, but they uncover
different things
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Insights run deep
Insight comes from understanding whats above and
below the surface
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EX qualitative market research

• A way to collect, analyze and interpret data that
  involves OBSERVING what people do and LISTENING
  to what they say.
• The research process is UNSTRUCTURED and can
  generate a large amount of detailed info. in a
  short space of time.
• But the info. must be interpreted, summarized and
  synthesized by the researcher.
• A subjective and time-consuming task
• - Dictionary of Business (page 301)

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Social closeness

• A meeting of cultural traditions in a wide
  context misunderstandings, understandings and
  surprises are likely.
• Fieldwork as a risky business (interpretation
  translation) offending miscommunication.
• Rich points for unexpected moments when
  problems in cross-cultural understanding emerge.
• Opportunities for insight

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Participant OBSERVATION

• Does it mean becoming a full participant in the
  activities of the people (going native)?
• Allowing the fieldworker to collective more
  detailed data than does interview alone
• Firsthand observations allow us to see how
  diverge from the culturally defined, idealized
  model of behavior.
• EX Malinowskis study of incest on Trobriand
  Island (sexual relations between a man and his
  mothers sisters daughter).

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????(??)???????????(Kleinman 1989)

• Disease ???????????????(etic ?
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• Illness????????(sick person)???(emic )????????
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?Claire Sterk ????????(????)??(2000)

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  Stories)3)??(????)
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Preparing for Ethnographic Fieldwork

• Well grounded in the different theoretical
  perspectives (??????)and gain background
  knowledge
• Research design formulation of a strategy to
  examine a particular topic and specifies the
  appropriate methods for gathering the riches
  possible data (Wheres the culture?).
• Taking into account the types of data to be
  collected (how those data relate to existing
  social scientific knowledge)
• Specify what types of methods will be used for
  investigation.

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Working in the field

• Site Selection
• EX. Meads 9 month study of adolescent women in
  Samoa (1925)
• Attempt to prove Boass cultural determinist
  (constructivist) agenda ie. why Samoan
  adolescents had more tranquil transition from
  childhood to adult hood
• Arrangement made by Franz Boas

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Working in the field

• Developing a Role and Gaining Rapport (without ?
  ? you are sunk!)
• Rapport acceptance to the degree that a working
  relationship is possible
• Communication problems
• Trust on the part of the study population
  depending on the researcher presents
  herself/himself (role assignment).
• Suspicions?

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Preparing for Ethnographic Fieldwork

• Analysis of available data
• Archival data, including photos, films,
  missionary reports, business and government
  surveys, musical recordings, birth/death/marriage
  and tax records, and landholding documents.
• Any data that helps place the communities to be
  studied in a broad context.
• Historical material in archives help the
  fieldworker evaluate the usefulness of the
  observations and interviews he or she will
  document.
• Archival data can enrich the info sources prior
  to field research

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Working in the field

• Gift Giving and Interpersonal Exchange
• Gifts should be culturally and ethnically
  appropriate
• Learning the LOCAL rules of exchange is important
  
• Q what constitutes an appropriate or an
  inappropriate gift how to deliver the gift
  (timing, in private or public, wrapped or
  unwrapped) and how to behave as a gift giver and
  recipient, etc.

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Microcultures and Fieldwork

• Your class (social and economic status),
  ethnicity/nationality, gender, age and other
  factors (religious beliefs and institutional
  affiliations) all affect how you will be
  interpreted by the local people.
• EX a fieldworker who is a young, unmarried
  female studying child-rearing practices may not
  be taken seriously because she is not herself a
  mother.

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Fieldwork Techniques

• participant observation
• - inductive vs. deductive research (do we have
  to form a hypothesis?)
• - direct / naturalistic observation
• - making accurate descriptions of the physical
  locale and daily activities
• - person/place interaction (human meaning is at
  stake) People/people interaction
• - time-allocation analysis (recording how much
  time the people in the market spend in various
  activities (gender division of labor, etc.)
• - talk is behavior too

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Fieldwork Techniques

• Tips Get Rid of Your Assumptions
• Keep you mind OPEN to things other than you
  already think
• The unexpected might be whats REALLY important
• Be From the Other Planet (you are NOT the
  native)
• this means you are just trying to figure it out
  and question things in a new
• its extremely important to have the other
  planet stance esp. when what you are
  investigating is very familiar
• (ex. Theres the fish dont see the water
  problem as cultural beings we cant see the
  rules and rituals
• culture is practiced and not everything is
  explicit

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Fieldwork techniques

• Identifying key informants
• collaboration with key informants is an integral
  part of qualitative research
• Interviews and Questionnaires
• unstructured interviews
• open-ended conversations with informants to gain
  insight into the culture of the market
  collecting life stories, personal narratives, and
  stories of everyday life before the forceful
  closing of the market
• get real stories, get real detail

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Fieldwork techniques

• Tips
• Be open-ended, dont close off responses. Let
  the interviewee takes the lead in setting the
  direction of the conversation. But you need to
  discover what themes are important to the
  interviewee. Remember you dont know the meaning
  (even as a native). You should leave knowing
  how the person sees that world at least
  regarding that issue.

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Fieldwork techniques

• structured questions limit the range of possible
  responses
• Surveys and questionnaires
• Ideally, one should have enough familiarity with
  the field-site to be able to design a formal
  questionnaire or survey
• Tips Everything is Data
• - the purposeful, the mistake, the planned, the
  unplanned the match of talk and behavior, the
  mismatch the happiness, the anger, the whatever
• - an answer is data, so is lack of an answer
• Get details in words and observations (rumors
  and gossip are key source of data)

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Fieldwork techniques

• Recording Culture
• Field Notes (daily logs and scratch notes)
• Tape recording, photography and video-taping
• Tips Record it and think about it afterwards.
  Take it in, you may not know whats important
  until laterlater observation, comments, or
  thinking.
• Data Analysis
• What is it? What really happens?
• 2) What might it MEAN? What really matters?

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??????Scientific vs. Humanistic Orientations

• Positivism
• DEDUCTIVE research
• Hypothesis testing, gathering data, assessing
  findings
• Fieldwork should be objective and unbiased
• To see is to believe
• Seeking explanation
• Creating universal laws
• (or making truth claims?)

• Interpretivism
• INDUCTIVE research
• AVOID hypothesis formation
• Understanding and Interpreting the SUBJECTIVE
  meanings of cultures
• Peoples stories, talk, and myth (field data)
• Ethnography as a WRITING process

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Mitchell Duneier, Mitchell. 1999. Sidewalk.

• An eloquent study of Greenwich Village street
  vendors. 
• Winner of LA Time Book Prize.

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Ethics ??

• What do sociologists / anthropologists tell them
  about what they are researching and why? What
  kinds of obligations do they have to them?
• 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.
• Academic reciprocity

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It should not be forgotten that the researchers
primary ethical obligation is to the people being
studied !

• 1) Patrick Tierney (accuser) vs.
• Napoleon Chagnon (accused and author of The
  Fierce People)
• 2) Steven Mosher (expelled from the Stanford
  University for violating the ethical codes)
• 3) Mr. Bs study of neighborhood organizations in
  urban China (undisclosed)

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Did Napoleon Chagnon harm the Yanomami Indians of
Vanezuela?

• Journalist Patrick Tierney states that Napoleon
  Chagnon (author of The Yanomamo) exaggerated
  Yanamami aggressiveness and actually caused the
  violence by giving machetes to tribesmen.

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Dangers in the Field

• Even anthropologists get culture shock!
• Dangers from the physical environment can be
  FATAL (ex. Death of Fei Xiaotongs wife in Yunnan
  and Michelle Rosaldo in the highlands of the
  Philippines)
• Ethnical misconducts add to the dangers.

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Scientific vs. Humanistic Orientations

• Positivism
• DEDUCTIVE research
• Hypothesis testing, gathering data, assessing
  findings
• Fieldwork should be objective and unbiased
• To see is to believe
• Seeking explanation
• Creating universal laws
• (or making truth claims?)

• Interpretivism
• INDUCTIVE research
• AVOID hypothesis formation
• Understanding and Interpreting the SUBJECTIVE
  meanings of cultures
• Peoples stories, talk, and myth (field data)
• Ethnography as a WRITING process

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Difficulties of Conducting Empirical Research

• Strong motivation to verify hypothesis at the
  expense of overlooking negative evidence.
• The greatest impediment to scientific innovation
  is usually a conceptual lock, not a factual lock
  (Gould 1989 226)
• The impossibility of beginning with objective and
  little culture-bound hypothesis in
  anthropology/sociology

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