Chapter 7 Methods of Analysis

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Chapter 7 Methods of Analysis
Left Margaret Mead in Samoa, c. 1920 Right
Bronislaw Malinowski in Papua New Guinea, c. 1915
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Todays Objectives

• How do cultural anthropologists begin and carry
  out their research?
• What aspects of culture do cultural
  anthropologists attempt to discover?
• Be able to explain the difference between an emic
  and etic perspective.
• Review for test on Monday.

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Fieldwork Research Strategies

• Before going to the field
• Adopt a theoretical perspective
• Formulate a research design
• Analyze available data
• In the field
• Get over culture shock
• Learn the language
• Observe (participant, naturalistic)

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Fieldwork Observation Strategies

• Key informants
• Provide the anthropologist with insight
• Usually interested in own society
• Shostak and Nisa
• Interviews
• Structured
• Unstructured

Nisa, a Ju/hoansi woman
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Fieldwork Data Collection

• Methods of recording
• Field notes
• Tape-recorder
• Videocamera
• Random sampling
• Quantitative data
• Census, diet, income numbers
• Etic perspective
• Qualitative data
• Beliefs, values, politics non-quantifiable
• Emic perspective

A Turkana man (Kenya) using an ethnographers
videocamera
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Fieldwork - Ethics

• AAA statement of ethics
• Responsibility to informants
• First do no harm (cannot exploit)
• Consult with informants (consent)
• Anonymity
• Explanation of culture
• Responsibility to scholarship and science
• No fabrication, plagiarizing
• Disseminate findings to fellow scientists
• Make data available (HRAF)
• Responsibility to the public
• Put information in proper context
• Publish information in understandable language

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Data Analysis

• Ethnography
• Descriptive monograph
• Result of data collection
• Statistics
• Independent variable produces an effect
• Dependent variable affected by another
• Multidimensional hypotheses

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Movie The Yanomamo

• The Yanomamö people live in Central Brazil, in
  almost complete seclusion in the Amazon rain
  forests of South America.
• Many anthropologists feel they are perhaps the
  last culture to have come in contact with the
  modern world.
• Napoleon Chagnon worked with them for decades
  1960s through 1980s.
• c. 40 mins

Top Yanomamo man Bottom N. Chagnon in Brazil
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Variables Studied - Subsistence

• All humans have to eat
• The way we choose to eat reflects cultural and
  environmental choices.
• Cultural ecology
• Biomes (geographic area of climate/food)
• Subsistence patterns
• Foraging or hunting-and-gathering (2mya)
• Horticulture
• Pastoralism
• Intensive agriculture

Top Hunting Bottom Gathering
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Variables Studied - Demography

• The study of population and its relationship to
  society.
• Demographic anthropology is an important
  subfield.
• Fertility fecundity, birth rate
• Mortality life expectancy, mortality rates
• Migration push and pull factors
• Carrying capacity max population per biome

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Variables Studied - Technology

• All human techniques and methods of reaching a
  specific subsistence goal or of modifying or
  controlling the natural environment.
• Goods things (material culture)
• Services actions (non-material culture)
• Cultural materialism

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Variables Studied - Economy

• Social relationships that organize production,
  exchange, and consumption of goods and services.
• Production - creation
• Exchange - transfer
• Consumption use
• Division of labor
• Three different approaches
• Formalist, substantivist, modern

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Variables Studied Social Structure

• Status
• Ascribed versus achieved
• Role
• Social stratification
• The Family
• Nuclear versus extended
• Marriage
• Endogamy versus exogamy
• Monogamy versus polygamy
• Polyandry and polygyny

Top Nuclear Left Extended Bottom Polygynous
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Variables Studied Social Structure

• Gender
• Sex versus gender
• Enculturation
• Division of labor
• Status
• Age
• Enculturation
• Division of labor
• Status stratification, age grades
• Rites of passage
• Van Gennep separation, marginalization,
  aggregation

Zuni berdache
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Variables Studied Political Org.

• Political Power
• Based on authority
• Different systems (Service)
• Band small, close kin relationships
• Tribe early political systems
• Chiefdom centralized authority over economic,
  social, religious aspects
• State centralized bureaucracy with power and
  authority over large areas

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Variables Studied Political Org.

• Decision-making
• Field
• Political arena
• Warfare and feuds
• Law and social control
• Ethos
• Moral code
• Sanctions

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Variables Studied - Religion

• Often studied using a symbolic approach
• Myths assumed knowledge
• Rituals repetitive behaviors that communicate
  sacred symbols
• Specialists shamans, priests, etc.
• Movements
• Cognition
• Pascal Boyer How does religion make sense to
  people?

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Cross-Cultural Research

• AKA ethnological research
• HRAF Human Relations Area Files
• Ethnographic data on 300 societies
• Initiated by G.P. Murdock from Yale
• Help anthropologists figure out whats universal
  and whats culture-specific.
• Problems
• Faulty reporting
• Hard to understand change

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Review for Test 1
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Format

• 10 Multiple choice questions
• 10 True/False questions
• 3 Short essay questions
• Answer question thoroughly.
• Write at least 4 to 5 complete sentences. 

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Examples (from ANT210)

• True/False
• There is no concrete evidence of language in any
  australopithecine.
• Anthropology is divided into six different
  fields.
• Multiple Choice
• Language and art come together in
• A. Calligraphy
• B. Kinship
• C. Grammar
• D. Politics
• Short Answer
• Describe at least three theories in cultural
  anthropology that were discussed in class. What
  kinds of information are these theoreticians
  interested in? What kinds of questions would
  they ask a member of another culture?
• Is anthropology a science? What methods do
  anthropologists use that make you think it is or
  is not?

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Chapter 1 - Review

• Four subfields of anthropology
• What do these anthropologists study?
• Scientific method
• Deductive, inductive
• Variables and hypotheses
• Why should we study anthropology?

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Chapter 2 Human Evolution

• Origin myths and cosmologies
• Darwin
• Natural selection (only the best survive)
• Mutation of genes
• Primates how are humans similar? How are we
  different?
• Which hominids were the first to
• walk on two feet?
• make tools?
• master fire?
• talk?
• What is important about the Upper Palaeolithic?
• Why do we need to know about evolution in this
  class?

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Chapter 3 The Nature of Culture

• What constitutes culture?
• Shared knowledge of material and non-material
  things.
• Class definition Culture is a combination of
  objects, actions, and emotions that is passed on
  (whether or not youre aware of it) through
  language and symbolic learning by social
  interaction in order for humans to adapt to their
  environment.
• Or, create your own
• How is culture passed on?
• Learning, language
• What constitutes culture?
• Values, beliefs, norms
• Define and explain cultural relativism and
  ethnocentrism
• What are some cultural universals?

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Chapter 4 - Enculturation

• Are humans animals? Do they have similar
  instincts? Explain.
• Use ideas such as open/closed instincts,
  learning, reflexes, drives, biograms
• What do humans have instead?
• Incest taboos reasons, purpose
• Culture-and-personality school
• Psychoanalytic approaches
• Structuralism
• Cognitive anthropology

See also slides, notes from Chapter 6
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Chapter 5 - Language

• Nonhuman communication
• What can this teach us about human language
  acquisition?
• Give examples of humans teaching animals
  communication skills Do you think the animals
  are really learning? Provide examples.
• How does animal and human communication differ?
• Human language
• What changes to bodies had to occur?
• What are some theories of language acquisition?
• Explain the field of historical linguistics.
• What do sociolinguists study and why?
• Nonverbal communication kinesics and proxemics

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Chapter 6 - Theories

• Theories
• 19th century evolutionism
• Diffusionism
• Historical particularism
• Functionalism
• 20th century evolutionism
• Cultural materialism
• Marxist anthropology
• Symbolic and cognitive approaches
• Sociobiology
• Feminist anthropology
• Postmodernism
• Why do we have these theories?
• Whats the difference between 19th century
  explanations and those that are most recent
  (symbolic, cognitive, postmodern, etc.)?
• Are any of these theories by themselves adequate
  to explain culture in terms of human behavior,
  cultural change, symbolization, etc.?

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Chapter 7 - Methods

• Fieldwork
• How is it started?
• How is it done?
• Name some methods of data collection.
• Analysis
• Whats the difference between qualitative and
  quantitative data?
• Whats the difference between the emic and etic
  perspectives in anthropology?
• What kinds of information are anthropologists
  interested in?
• Demography, subsistence, technology, economy,
  social structure, political organization, religion