Field Projects in Anthropology: A Student Handbook PDF
Preview Field Projects in Anthropology: A Student Handbook
THIRD EDITION FIELD PROJECTS IN ANTHROPOLOGY A STUDENT HANDBOOK JULIA G. CRANE University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill MICHAEL V. ANGROSINO University of South Florida, Tampa WAVELAND PRESS, INC. Prospect Heights, Illinois For information about this book, write or call: Waveland Press, Inc. P.O. Box 400 Prospect Heights, Illinois 60070 (847) 634-0081 Copyright © 1992, 1984 by Waveland Press, Inc. ISBN 0-88133-685-8 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in the United States of America 7 6 5 4 3 Contents Preface v Acknowledgments viii Introduction 1 Beginning Fieldwork 13 PROJECT 1 Proxemics 2 3 PROJECT 2 Making Maps 30 PROJECT 3 Charting Kinship 44 PROJECT 4 Interviewing Informants 53 PROJECT 5 Participant Observation 64 PROJECT 6 Collecting Life Histories 75 PROJECT 7 Using Personal Documentation 88 PROJECT 8 Digging into Cultural History 98 PROJECT 9 Analyzing Folklore Content 108 PROJECT 10 Doing Ethnosemantic Research 121 PROJECT 11 Designing a Survey 136 PROJECT 12 Studying Formal Organizations 150 PROJECT 13 lhking Photographs 159 PROJECT 14 Planning a Community Study 179 Index 191 iii Preface Q ome of our undergraduate students have asked, “How can I know whether or not I really want to be an anthropologist if I can’t practice being one?” How indeed? Practicing anthropology may include many experiences, but fieldwork, in particular, is often considered a sort of “rite of passage,” a necessary prerequisite for one to be considered a bona fide anthropologist. We feel it can also be important for anyone who wants to understand basic concepts and get a feeling for the anthropological perspective. Throughout a long period in the development of anthropology, students who were almost ready to go into the field for their first large-scale research learned from their major professors some of the ideas and techniques that had proved useful to them and others with whom they had worked. On at least some campuses, an aura of mystery seems to have surrounded this process of learning that would only take place at the feet of a guru. Even when some courses on field methods were finally created, most were tailored for advanced graduate students. During this period only a handful of books gave any useful insights. Fortunately, anthropologists have begun to write insightfully and candidly about their fieldwork experiences in many ethnographies. It is this spate of new information that has been invaluable in the writing of this book. Field Projects in Anthropology is primarily for undergraduates and for beginning graduate students. It is not intended as a complete manual of field techniques. Because anthropologists work in many kinds of situations, in societies that differ greatly from one another, they must be flexible, often learning in their own particular field situations a great deal about what avenues of approach to follow, what questions to ask, what projective tests to use, what kinds of v vi Preface photographs to take, what conversations to record —and also what areas to carefully avoid or delay in exploring. It would, therefore, be impossible to find agreement among anthropologists that any particular collection of projects, however chosen, satisfactorily represented the most basic and essential aspects of field research. Complete coverage is not our real aim. Rather, our aim is to present a series of projects that represent some of the most commonly used data-collection techniques. In carrying out the projects, each student will learn something about how and when to apply such techniques, or variants of them, in the field situation. Students using the projects in this book under the supervision of their instructors will not merely pick up a few suggestions and specific facts about fieldwork techniques, but they will experience the special sense of excitement and personal satisfaction that comes from having established significant human relationships with others whose lifeways are different from their own, as well as having perceptively and carefully gleaned insights into their cultural perspectives. The following fourteen projects represent areas of inquiry that have been traditional foci of anthropological research. For each topic we suggest a “method” or “data-collecting tool” by which the topic may profitably be investigated. This is to imply neither that the topic cannot be investigated by other means nor that the method cannot be used to investigate other topics. Moreover, it is obvious that no one research tool is self-sufficient. A good ethnography makes use of as many such tools as possible to gather a more nearly complete set of data about the culture being studied. We believe that in the descriptions of the methods and in the selected bibliographies for each chapter we have left sufficient leeway for the student, working under the knowledgeable guidance of his or her instructor, to experiment, modify, or amplify the method to suit his or her own research needs. The selected bibliographies are composed of items that we have found useful in describing the topic area and in planning the project, but they are not in any way exhaustive compilations of all extant literature in any of the selected areas of study. The entries are mainly to be used as initial points of reference, and they are, for the most part, those works that are most readily available and most directly relevant to the suggested projects. The student, on his or her own initiative or under the direction of the instructor, is encouraged to go beyond these basic references insofar as time, energy, and research potential permit. Although we present the projects in what seems to us to be a logical progression, we realize that the individual instructor must adapt the format of the book to his or her own particular course Preface vii outline. In general, though, the following comments may be of use in planning course work. The first four projects are designed so that even a beginning student in anthropology could reasonably carry them out. Each of them represents a basic area of field research and would be useful also as an early project in a more advanced field methods course. The beginning student can also get a feel for the “how-to” aspects of anthropology by trying his or her hand at these basic tasks. Projects 5 through 9 are somewhat more complex in nature. They require periodic observations or other data-gathering sessions on the part of the student. Ideally, they should be started fairly early in the semester to give the student sufficient time to do full justice to the research. Projects 10 through 14 can be made as complex or as basic as the instructor feels appropriate. Each can constitute a short-term effort, although more advanced students can make them the bases of more detailed, time-consuming studies. Project 14, in particular, may be used as a general summation of many methods and concepts in anthropology in the field. It should be noted that some of the projects may profitably be done in tandem; for example, combining the photographic series (Project 13) with the observation of ritual (Project 5). We suggest that the instructor and student look over the project descriptions at the beginning of the course in order to be sure of ways in which efforts may be combined. Where it proves feasible, you may wish to carry out all or most of the projects with members of a single group. Although anthropology is a serious scholarly discipline, we feel that it is also highly enjoyable. We hope that this book will help the student channel his or her natural curiosity about the customs and lifestyles of other peoples into anthropology’s scientific framework. Acknowledgments hroughout the course of our writing, we have constantly T solicited the comments and criticisms of our undergraduate and graduate students and of our colleagues. We acknowledge their help with deep appreciation, while claiming as our own the responsibility for any shortcomings in the book. Our research assistants for the first edition were Barbara Downey, Beverley Hurlbert, Linda Oldham Lester, and Isabel Terry. We again relied on Barbara Downey and Isabel Terry for the second and third editions, and also enjoyed the help of Dorie Kind, Donna Romeo, and Larry Metsch. Our patient friend Suphronia Jones-Cheek typed the third edition. We are deeply indebted to those upon whose work we have drawn, some of whom not only gave permission for us to use their ideas but assisted us in doing so. They include Professors Donald L. Brockington of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, J. Jerome Smith of the University of South Florida, and David M. Johnson and Gloria Wentowski of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University. For the third edition, three people each kindly read and commented upon one chapter in the area of their expertise: Professors Stephen Birdsall of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Malcolm Collier of San Francisco State University, and Richard Chaifen of Temple University. We were fortunate indeed to work with Charles Mohler and Bonnie Monfort Bopp on the first edition and with Neil Rowe and Thomas Curtin of Waveland Press on the second and third editions. Their expertise and sensitivity in the realm of books were of great assistance. viii
The list of books you might like
