The following are some reading tips and strategies for the study of anthropology. Read actively, not passively. Active reading involves questioning, critiquing, re-examining and engaging in the text you're reading. It requires greater concentration and focus while you read and leads to improved understanding of the information that's most important.
Click here for full text and images of Chapter 2: Doing Fieldwork: Methods in Cultural Anthropology. FINDING THE FIELD. My first experience with fieldwork as a student anthro-pologist took place in a small indigenous community in northeastern Brazil studying the Jenipapo-Kanindé of La-goa Encantada (Enchanted Lake). I had planned to conduct an independent …
A key anthropological research strategy involving both participation in and observation of the daily life of the people being studied. (page 82) Reflexivity. A critical self-examination of the role the anthropologist plays and an awareness that one's identity affects one's fieldwork and theoretical analyses. (page 84) Engaged anthropology.
Terms in this set (49) 19th Century Evolutionism: McGee and Warms. § Anthropology-combined 3 streams of thought. Study of cultural differences among societies. Struggle to explain the antiquity of humans and the artifacts left from lives. Investigation of biological origins of humans and other species.
One strategy a person should employ to increase retention is to develop one's vocabulary.
To promote long-term retention with the material being learned, one should note questions they have in the margins of the book as they are reading, and then go back and answer these questions as they review.
Reading comprehension is the ability to understand the main ideas and details of the information read. Interpretation of the information requires: summarization and developing your own ideas. Jonathan is a double major and has loads of reading to do this semester.
Carl should create and study note cards with verb conjugations , and definitions, tenses, and pronunciations of unfamiliar words . He should also immerse himself in the language through various forms of media to increase his exposure to words in formal and informal settings.
In the Five-Part reading system, the 5 P's are: Prepare, Preview, Predict, Process, Paraphrase. Kyle is an auditory learner with strong verbal/linguistic and interpersonal intelligence. He is earning a B.S. in Psychology with a minor in Business.
Paul has never had the attention span to sit and read a book but has still managed to perform well in school. Now that he is in college, he is finding the textbooks are much more challenging than what he has encountered in the past. He struggles a lot with vocabulary and in interpreting some of the more challenging texts. He should try to take up more personal reading to improve his overall skill development.
Increasingly, anthropologists are conducting ethnographic research in complex, technologically advanced societies such as the United States and in urban environments elsewhere in the world. For instance, my doctoral research took place in the United States. I studied identity formation among undocumented Mexican immigrant college students in Minnesota. Because some of my informants were living in Mexico when my fieldwork ended, I also traveled to Veracruz, Mexico, and spent time conducting research there. Often, anthropologists who study migration, diasporas, and people in motion must conduct research in multiple locations. This is known as multi-sited ethnography.
The cultural anthropologist’s goal during fieldwork is to describe a group of people to others in a way that makes strange or unusual features of the culture seem familiar and familiar traits seem extraordinary.
Fieldwork is the most important method by which cultural anthropologists gather data to answer their research questions. While interacting on a daily basis with a group of people, cultural anthropologists document their observations and perceptions and adjust the focus of their research as needed.
Typically, those groups had relatively simple economies and technologies and limited access to larger, more technologically advanced societies. Early ethnographers sought to understand the entirety of a particular culture. They spent months to years living in the community, and in that time, they documented in great detail every dimension of people’s lives, including their language, subsistence strategies, political systems, formation of families and marriages, and religious beliefs. This was important because it helped researchers appreciate the interconnectedness of all dimensions of social life. The key to the success of this ethnographic approach was not only to spend considerable time observing people in their home settings engaged in day-to-day activities but also to participate in those activities. Participation informed an emic perspective of the culture, something that had been missing in earlier social science research.
Anthropologists use ethnography to study people wherever they are and however they interact with others. Think of the many ways you ordinarily interact with your friends, family, professors, and boss. Is it all face-to-face communication or do you sometimes use text messages to chat with your friends? Do you also sometimes email your professor to ask for clarification on an assignment and then call your boss to discuss your schedule? Do you share funny videos with others on Facebook and then later make a Skype video call to a relative? These new technological “sites” of human interaction are fascinating to many ethnographers and have expanded the definition of fieldwork.
When anthropologists conduct fieldwork, they gather data. An important tool for gathering anthropological data is ethnography —the in-depth study of everyday practices and lives of a people. Ethnography produces a detailed description of the studied group at a particular time and location, also known as a “ thick description, ” a term coined by anthropologist Clifford Geertz in his 1973 book The Interpretation of Cultures to describe this type of research and writing. A thick description explains not only the behavior or cultural event in question but also the context in which it occurs and anthropological interpretations of it. Such descriptions help readers better understand the internal logic of why people in a culture behave as they do and why the behaviors are meaningful to them. This is important because understanding the attitudes, perspectives, and motivations of cultural insiders is at the heart of anthropology.
Increasingly, cultural anthropologists are using quantitative research methods to complement qualitative approaches. Qualitative research in anthropology aims to comprehensively describe human behavior and the contexts in which it occurs while quantitative research seeks patterns in numerical data that can explain aspects of human behavior. Quantitative patterns can be gleaned from statistical analyses, maps, charts, graphs, and textual descriptions. Surveys are a common quantitative technique that usually involves closed-ended questions in which respondents select their responses from a list of pre-defined choices such as their degree of agreement or disagreement, multiple-choice answers, and rankings of items. While surveys usually lack the sort of contextual detail associated with qualitative research, they tend to be relatively easy to code numerically and, as a result, can be easier to analyze than qualitative data. Surveys are also useful for gathering specific data points within a large population, something that is challenging to do with many qualitative techniques.
They simply want to get through the assigned pages. Active reading is KEY to the study of anthropology. Pick a good time to read. Reading social science texts and articles requires concentration.
Second, anthropological texts often use a style of presenting arguments in an unfamiliar way that employs theoretical language. The following are some reading tips and strategies for the study of anthropology.
Organization is key in developing an effective research paper. Each section of your paper should build on other sections and support the main argument of the paper. As an anthropology student you'll likely be required to write book reviews and ethnographic analyses. Book reviews are not the same thing as book reports.
Many students are surprised to discover that anthropology is an intellectually exciting and stimulating field of study. The study of anthropology also helps students develop critical thinking skills that will prepare them for a variety of job opportunities and career paths. There are four major areas of study within the field ...
Writing is a big component of the study of anthropology. If you struggle to write effectively, and convincingly, you'll struggle with anthropology . There are also nuances to writing style and conventions that are unique to the study of anthropology that students need to know and employ in their own writing. Below we'll explore types of writing in anthropology, writing styles and conventions, and tips for effective anthropological writing.
It is true the discipline of anthropology got its start by studying "exotic" or "native" cultures (i.e. cultures different from 'our' own). However, the discipline of anthropology today is no longer the study of the "unique", "exotic", "primitive", or "dying" cultures of the world.
There are four major areas of study within the field of anthropology: archaeology, physical anthropology (sometimes called biological anthropology), linguistic anthropology and socio-cultural anthropology (also known as ethnology). Two of the most critical skills you should focus on developing, if you want to excel in your studies of anthropology, ...
Others resisted the label because of long-standing family and inter-personal conflicts in the community. Fieldwork is the most important method by which cultural anthropologists gather data to answer their research questions.
The cultural anthropologist’s goal during fieldwork is to describe a group of people to others in a way that makes strange or unusual features of the culture seem familiar and familiar traits seem extraordinary. The point is to help people think in new ways about aspects of their own culture by comparing them with other cultures.
Another classic example of a style of anthropological writing that attempted to make the familiar strange and encouraged readers to consider their own cultures in a different way is Horace Miner’s Body Ritual among the Nacirema (19 56). The essay described oral hygiene practices of the Nacirema (“American” spelled backward) in a way that, to cultural insiders, sounded extreme, exaggerated, and out of context. He presented the Nacirema as if they were a little-known cultural group with strange, exotic practices. Miner wrote the essay during an era in which anthropologists were just beginning to expand their focus beyond small-scale traditional societies far from home to large-scale post-indus-trial societies such as the United States. He wrote the essay primarily as a satire of how anthropolo-gists often wrote about “the Other” in ways that made other cultures seem exotic and glossed over features that the Other had in common with the anthropologist’s culture. The essay also challenged U.S. readers in general and anthropologists in particular to think differently about their own cultures and re-examine their cultural assumptions about what is “normal.”
Off the Veranda. Fortunately, the reign of armchair anthropology was brief. Around the turn of the twentieth cen-tury, anthropologists trained in the natural sciences began to reimagine what a science of humanity should look like and how social scientists ought to go about studying cultural groups.
When anthropologists conduct fieldwork , they gather data. An important tool for gathering an-thropological data is ethnography —the in-depth study of everyday practices and lives of a people. Ethnography produces a detailed description of the studied group at a particular time and location, also known as a “ thick description ,” a term coined by anthropologist Clifford Geertz in his 1973 book The Interpretation of Cultures to describe this type of research and writing. A thick description explains not only the behavior or cultural event in question but also the context in which it occurs and anthropological interpretations of it. Such descriptions help readers better understand the inter-nal logic of why people in a culture behave as they do and why the behaviors are meaningful to them. This is important because understanding the attitudes, perspectives, and motivations of cultural in-siders is at the heart of anthropology.
This is important because understanding the attitudes, perspectives, and motivations of cultural in-siders is at the heart of anthropology. Ethnographers gather data from many different sources. One source is the anthropologist’s own observations and thoughts.
In the field, anthropologists must temporarily suspend their own value, moral, and esthetic judgments and seek to understand and respect the values, morals, and esthetics of the other culture on their terms.
Anthropologists need to collect genealogical data to understand current social relations and to reconstruct history.
Ethnography- Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942), who spent most of his professional life in England, is generally considered the founder of ethnography. nterpretive anthropology considered the task of describing and interpreting that which is meaningful to natives. refl exive ethnography. Here the ethnographer puts his or her personal feelings and reactions to the fi eld situation right in the text.
Sailing and weaponry allowed expanded influence. Concept of degenerationism provided a biblically based explanation of cultural diversity from the Renaissance until the 18th century. Prior to the destruction of the Tower of Babel, all people were in a single civilization.
Organic analogy= compared human societies to biological organisms. Coined the phrase "survivval of thefitest.". believed evolution was a general moral forces pervading the universe and that the mechanisms of evolution were Lamarkian, involving the transmission of learned behavior from one geneation to the next.
Moral dilemmas and ethical controversies--- the controversy surrounding Jared Diamond's account of his father in law who chose not to avenge his family and the Paupa New Guinean man who didn't have to think twice about avenging his family. Man accu sed under China's red rule refused to exile his accuser, shows the human capacity for forgiveness. New Guinea man who watched his father being killed and was sent into exile but returned later and became close friends with the man who killed his father and ate his father's body.
Marx- theory of social evolution, all thought was a product of cultural institutions rather than cause. Examined the conflict generated by increasing wealth of the bourgeoisie capitalists and the proles. Social change was an evolutionary process marked by revolution in which new levels of social, political, and economic development were achieved through class struggle.
5. H istorical linguistics is useful for anthropologists interested in historical relationships among populations. Cultural similarities and differences often correlate with linguistic ones. Linguistic clues can suggest past contacts between cultures. Related languages—members of the same language family—descend from an original protolanguage. Relationships between languages don't necessarily mean there are biological ties between their speakers because people can learn new languages.
the role of cultural traits and practices aimed at conflict resolution. the evolutionary history of present-day cultural patterns. the role of cultural traits and practices in contemporary society. the symbolic value that cultural traits and practices held with members of contemporary society.
how in matters of life or death, biology is ultimately more important than culture.
Psychologists study individuals, but anthropologists study individuals as representative of something more: a collective phenomenon that is more than the sum of its parts. Despite the variety of research techniques the ethnographer may utilize in the field, in the best studies the hallmark of ethnography remains.
Culture is a key aspect of human adaptability and success.
Culture guides the beliefs and behavior of the people exposed to it.
The human propensity to classify phenomena in certain ways is acquired through enculturation.A) Human minds have certain universal characteristics that originate in common features of the Homo sapiens brain and lead people everywhere to think similarly regardless of their society or cultural background.
biological means of adaptation, mostly thanks to advanced medical research. E) technological means of adaptation, such as the creation of virtual worlds that allow us to escape from day-to-day reality. Click card to see definition 👆. Tap card to see definition 👆. B) Cultural means of adaptation.