Bronislaw Malinowski

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Bronislaw Malinowski
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Fieldwork

• An extended period of close involvement with a
  group of people, during which anthropologists
  gather the information they need to understand a
  particular way of life.

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Participant Observation

• Living as closely as possible to the people whose
  culture is under study.
• Participation in the lives of the people being
  studied.

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Fieldwork is risky

• Because we face our own vulnerability.

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• We face the shock of the unfamiliar.

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Culture Shock

• Panic that develops when an anthropologist or a
  traveler goes to an unfamiliar place or society,
  and cannot understand what is happening around
  them.

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Fieldwork is risky

• Risk offending informants.

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Ethnocentrism

• The opinion that ones own way of life is natural
  or correct, and indeed, is the only true way of
  being fully human.

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Cultural Relativism

• To try and understand the other culture in its
  own terms, sympathetically enough that the
  culture appears to be a coherent and meaningful
  design for living.

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Interpretation

• When something foreign, strange, or separated in
  time, space or experience is suddenly made
  familiar, made present, made comprehensible.

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Intersubjectivity

• The common-sense, shared meanings constructed by
  people in their interactions with each other and
  used as an everyday resource to interpret the
  meaning of elements of social and cultural life.

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• What defines belonging to the group? How are
  group boundaries policed?
• Can skateboarding be seen as a form of art? Why?
• Reflect on Peraltas role as a participant
  observer.
• Is Stacy Peraltas documentary a good form of
  ethnographic translation?
• How is skateboarding subculture appropriated by
  the mainstream?