Ethnography:%20How%20we%20learn%20what%20we%20know

1
Ethnography How we learn what we know

• Ethnographic inquiry
• What is ethnography?
• How is it done?
• Is it testable?
• Examples of ethnographic work
• Indigenous peoples
• Fieldwork

2
Ethnography

• Ethno refers to human culture
• Graphy means description of
• A research process used in the scientific study
  of human interactions in social settings
• Used extensively in anthropology
• Has become increasing popular in many different
  fields over the past few years
• Nursing, education, market research, business,
  etc

3
Ethnography

• Ethnographers should take note of all impressions
• including senses,
• details about the physical setting including
  size, space, noise, colors, equipment and
  movement,
• about people in the setting, such as number,
  gender and race, appearance, dress movement,
  comportment, feeling and tone.

4
Ethnography

• Interactional Detail - observing events in an
  intimate microscopic manner to recount what
  happened in fine detail
• Key Events - focusing on key eventssuch as
  weddings, funerals, etcis a useful way to
  organize your fieldnotes it involves selecting
  noteworthy incidents out of the flow of ongoing
  activity

5
Ethnography

• Purpose to describe and explain a facet or
  segment of group social life
• Hypotheses and questions begin as a broad
  statement about the purpose of the research, then
  are allowed to emerge more specifically as data
  are amassed.

6
Ethnography

• Data - verbal descriptions of people,
  interactions, settings, objects and phenomena
  within the context being studies
• Data Sources the people, settings, and relevant
  objects being observed

7
Ethnography

• Data Collection done by the researcher through
  observation, often combined with formal and
  informal interviews
• Data treatment and analysis presentation of
  verbal descriptions and/or logical analysis of
  information to discover salient patterns and
  themes

8
The Process

• A question or concern is identified for study
• A group to study is identified
• Typically small
• Typically purposively selected

9
The Process

• Permission to study the group is obtained
• The researcher observes the group
• Privileged observer just observes
• Participant observer functions as part of the
  group

10
The Process

• Researcher watches and listens attentively and
  records as much detail as possible (this is
  called naturalistic observation).
• Large amounts of notes are typically generated
  (My example, 15 tapes hundreds of pages of
  transcriptions).
• This process may last a week or two or could be
  years.
• The researcher analyzes the notes, identifies
  themes, looks for answers to research questions,
  and makes logical inferences.

11
The Process

• The final step is to write the research paper
  describing the process, observations, findings,
  and conclusion.
• Often rich descriptions are provided so the
  readers can make their own interpretations.
• This is often described as reflective.
• So, How do we get to the thick description?

12
Analyzing Data

• Asking questions of your data
• What are people doing? What are they trying to
  accomplish?
• How exactly do they do this? What specific means
  and/or strategies do they use?
• How do members talk about, characterize, and
  understand what is going on?
• What assumptions are they making?
• What do I see going on here? What did I learn
  from these notes?
• How to get from data to analysis?

13
Coding Data

• Coding leads you well on your way to transforming
  your fieldnotes into writings that speak to wider
  audiences
• You will sift through your notes and look for
  threads that can be woven together

14
Coding

• Definition gives line-by-line categorization of
  specific notes
• Coding allows you to discover/create original
  theory in your data
• Grounded theory and emergent theory
• Read line-by-line through your fieldnotes,
  writing codes in the margins and re-read them
  until you have exhausted all possibilities of
  codes (themes, issues, ideas)

15
Strengths and Weaknesses

• Strengths
• Looks at the situation holistically
• May arrive at greater understanding of the
  problem than other research processes
• Concerns
• Possible bias on the part of the observer (which
  leads to validity concerns)
• Generalizability (how generalizable are the
  findings from a small, purposely selected group)

16
Criteria for Judging Qualitative Research

• Credibility would the group being observed say
  the findings were credible? Are the findings
  logical and reasonable?
• Transferability Would a reader be willing to
  transfer the results to another group or setting?
• Dependability the researcher accurately
  describes the context, setting and changes that
  may have occurred during the study.
• Conformability if there were additional
  observers, would they describe the situation the
  same and arrive at the same conclusions.

17
When to Conduct Ethnographic Research

• To define a problem when the problem is not clear
  
• To define a problem that is complex and embedded
  in multiple systems or sectors
• To identify participants when the participants,
  sectors, or stakeholders are not yet known or
  identified
• To clarify the range of settings where the
  problem or situation occurs at times when the
  settings are not fully identified, known, or
  understood
• To explore the factors associated with the
  problem in order to understand it

18
Making a Living Five Adaptive Strategies

• Foraging
• Horticulture
• Pastoralism
• Agriculture
• Industrialism

19
Ethnographic Examples

• Foragers
• Very few such groups remain
• Eskimos/Inuit (Alaska/Canada)
• !Kung (Africa)
• Aboriginal Australians

20
Foragers

• All humans were foragers until 10,000 B.P.
• Out-populated by food producers (J. Diamond)???
• Bands
• Social mobility
• Egalitarianism
• Gender-based division of labor
• Age-based social distinctions

21
Forager Subsistence

• Anthropologists have identified three major
  variations of the foraging subsistence pattern
• Pedestrian diversified hunting and gathering on
  foot
• Equestrian concentrating on hunting large
  mammals from horseback
• Aquatic concentrating on fish and/or marine
  mammal hunting usually from boats

22
Population Levels

• Foraging population densities are very low. 
• In harsh, relatively unproductive environments,
  densities of foragers have been as low as one
  person per 10-50 square miles. 
• In rich environments, the densities have been as
  high as 10-30 people per square mile. 
• The optimal community size usually is about 25-30
  people, depending on the availability of food and
  water
• Thus high degree of stability
• Most of human history as Foragers

23
TODAY almost completely exterminated
24
Ethnographic Examples

• Horiculturalists
• Tribal peoples living a ethnohistorical lifeway
  in the present?
• Few such groups remain
• Yanomami
• Ashaninka
• Kuikuru

25
Horticulturalists - Agriculturalists

• Horticulture an agricultural technology
  distinguished by the use of hand tools to grow
  domesticated plants.
• Does not use draft animals, irrigation, or
  specially prepared fertilizers.
• How are the subsistence practices, social
  organization, and political organization
  structured?

26
(No Transcript)
27
The oasis theory

• A type of environmental determinism.
• Southwest Asia became dryer 12 to 15,000 years
  ago.
• People congregated around oases.
• People collected the seeds of wild grasses
• This led to plant cultivation.
• Cultivation of plants attracted wild cattle and
  sheep and goats.
• This led to animal domestication.
• Problem Domestication did not occur first at
  oases

28
Population growth theory

• Hunting, fishing and gathering were very
  productive
• So productive that population grew.
• More people needed more food
• People in marginal areas decided to domesticate
  animals and plants to provide new food
• Problems.
• Domestication is gradual and would not provide
  people with more food in the short term.
• Assumes domestication was intentional. However,
  people cannot predict which plants or animals
  could be domesticated.

29

• Seasonal stress theory of plant domestication
• The earliest plant domestication took place
  around the margins of evaporating lakes. For
  example, the Jordan River Valley.
• Beginning in the Mesolithic, the climate became
  warmer with seasonal droughts (these are seasonal
  stresses.)
• Annuals are best adapted to this environment,
• wild cereal and grains produce abundant seeds and
  survive for long periods of drought.
• People collected wild plants, for example, wheat,
  barley, and rye.
• They used sickles, which meant that plants with
  tough stems and seeds that did not readily
  scatter were the most likely to be carried back
  to settlements.
• Some lost seeds germinated at disturbed sites
  such as latrines, garbage pits, and burned over
  areas.
• People began to promote growth of these annuals.

30
The Ashaninka and Yanomami as Examples

• Incredible knowledge of the forest.
• Technology such as hoe, plow, steel.
• Women cultivate.
• Men slash and burn.
• Same plot for 1-3 years.
• Fallow 25 years.

31

• Remaining indigenous horticulturalists

32
(No Transcript)
33
(No Transcript)
34
(No Transcript)
35
(No Transcript)
36
Social Organization

• No division of labor beyond age gender
• NO SPECIALISTS
• Unranked kinship
• Bilateral kindred
• Little property, storage
• Matrilocality
• Patrilocality
• SIBLING EXCHANGE

37
Political organization

• Informal, flexible authority.
• Headman resolves disputes
• Fission? When individual villages get to big
• Ego/Enviro counterbalanced by shamans
• Keeper-of-Game

38
Political Organization

• What are the potential social cleavages?
• Gender, remember the Yanomami?
• Privacy
• Feuding
• Jealousy
• Often balanced by religion

39
Pastoralists Africa

• Domesticated Ungulates
• Diet of 88 Milk
• Blood Cake, drink, ritual
• Meat, all types
• Dung
• Urine, medicine and curing of hides
• Skin, bones, horns

40
(No Transcript)
41
Pastoralists The Maasi

• How does herding work on the savanna?
• Grazers of grass cattle (wet season MILK) and
  sheep (dry MILK)
• Browsers (leaves) Camels (annual milk), goats
  (dry milk)

42
(No Transcript)
43
(No Transcript)
44
(No Transcript)
45
(No Transcript)
46
(No Transcript)
47
(No Transcript)
48
Animal Husbandry

• How did we get from Hunting to Herding?
• Animal Husbandry
• Transition 10,000 BP
• This was also period of agriculture development
• First sheep and goats
• Later cattle, pigs, camels, horses

49

• The hilly flanks theory of animal domestication
• Wild sheep and goats were domesticated in the
  hilly flanks or the foothills of the Zargos
  Mountains in present day Iraq and Iran
• Wild sheep and goats migrated up and down
  mountains due to the seasonal availability of
  grasses.
• Sheep and goats grazed in the lowlands during the
  winter and in the high past years. In the summer.
  
• People follow these animals, and became very
  familiar with their behavior and habits
• By 11,000 years ago, the percentage of immature
  sheep remains increased.
• This indicates the presence of herd management
• Females were spared for breeding and people were
  feasting on ram lambs.
• By 8000 years ago, domesticated sheep and goats
  were being kept at villages like Jericho.

50
Pastoral Nomadism

• All members of the pastoral societyfollow the
  herd throughout the year.
• Transhumance (seasonal movement of group with
  herd) or Agro pastoralism
• Part of group follows herd other part maintains
  a home village (usually associated with some
  cultivation)
• Move to cool highland valleys in the summer and
  warmer lowland valleys in the winter.

51
Patterns of Pastoralism

• Small herd-management units consisting of
  extended patrilocal households
• Marriage
• Bride Wealth/Bride Price the cost of children
• Wealth stratification
• Patron-client ties established on the basis of
  cattle loaning relations with neighboring
  pastoral groups based upon animal raiding
• Decentralized political organization

52
Subsistence

• More productive than foraging
• 10,000 kg of biomass per km2
• Maasai 2 6 km2 per person
• Animal husbandry by elders
• Stock-raiding
• Care for herds by women children
• Foraging
• Cash economy

53
Economy

• Pastoral economies
• based upon domesticated herd animals
• members of such economies may get agricultural
  produce through trade or their own subsidiary
  cultivation

54
Means of Production

• Means of production include land, labor,
  technology, and capital.
• Land the importance of land varies according to
  method of production
• Land is less important to a foraging economy than
  it is to a cultivating economy.
• Labor, tools, and specialization nonindustrial
  economies are usually, but not always,
  characterized by more cooperation and less
  specialized labor than is found in industrial
  societies.

55
Industrialism

• Major changes in agriculture, manufacturing,
• production, and transportation had a profound
• effect on the socioeconomic and cultural
• conditions globally.
• Typical characteristics of an industrial society
• include
• a division of labor
• cultural rationalization
• a factory system and mechanization
• the universal application of scientific methods
  to problem-solving
• time discipline and deferred gratification
• bureaucracy and administration by rules
• and a socially and geographically mobile
  labor-force.

56
Industrial Production

• Non Agriculture
• Factory
• Energy
• Media
• Leisure
• Information
• Military
• Communication
• Politics?

• Agriculture
• Major crops
• Food
• Drink
• Fiber
• Pharma
• Fuel
• Animal Production
• Cattle - milk, hide
• Pig meat, oil
• Chicken egg, meat

57
(No Transcript)
58

• Industrial Europe

59

• Potatoe Farm

60

• Cattle Lot

61

• Shantys and Hotels

62

• Detriot Ghetto

63
A post industrial strategy?

• Is there one? Perhaps in the USA, but can the
  same be said in the manufacturing centers of the
  globe?
• Are we living in an information society? What
  does that mean?
• Are there new strategies for living in this
  society?
• I would argue, while there are new strategies, we
  are still living within a capitalist society, our
  subsistence patterns have not changed. Our
  political organizations and agricultural
  practices are very much the same. What has
  changed?
• Globalization of trade, the rise of the
  information infrastructure, the spread of throw
  away capitalism.