Culture, Social life and Sociocultural systems - Part 3:How do we study culture?

Culture, Social life and Sociocultural systems - Part 3:How do we study culture?

How do we study culture?

Ethnography not only refers to the process of fieldwork undertaken to obtain information, but also to the written results of that fieldwork.

The term "ethnography" can therefore be used in two ways:

• First, it is used for ethnographic research or fieldwork. This is the original research method of anthropology, which also distinguishes it from related disciplines such as sociology. Ethnogrphic research is usually characterised by an in-depth (ie intensive), first-hand study of a particular group of people that aims both to describe and interpret its way of life. Ethnographic research may also be undertaken as focused ethnographic studies, which are based on the investigation of a specified topic relating to the way of life of people, such as particular category of illness or the incidence of HIV and Aids within a specified community.

When doing fieldwork, anthropologists use many techniques, such as mapping space, taking census data, photography and filming, using historical archives, and recording people's life histories. The outstanding anthropological techniques, however, are interviewing and participant observation. Participant observation enables the anthropologist to obtain information on culture by living amoung the people who are the subjects of study, observing their social interactions on a daily basis, and participating as much as possible in their lives.

• Second, the term "ethnography" also refers to an anthropological monograph or detailed account (written report) of the way of life of a particular group of people, for example Stayt's The Bavenda.

A detailed account of the culture group of people does not necessarily have to be reproduced in a monograph. It may be contained in a collection of writings, which we call an "ethnographic study". An ethnographic study may also consist of a detailed account of one (or more) aspect(s) of the culture of a group of people. Many early anthropological studies were published in monographs. Today such monographs are rare, as anthropologists who undertake ethnographic research are more likely to investigate a single area pertaining to the culture of a group of people, which then becomes the focus of their studies. The enthnographic monograph and ethnographic study are the products of enthnographic research.

The meaning and implications of "doing" or "writing" ethnography have led to much discussion , arguement and disagreement among anthropologists. This partly because when anthropologists revisit groups that had been the subjects of enthnographic research in the past, they realised that their own (anthropologists') interpretations of the cultures of the people concerned were not necessarily the only relevant or appropriate ones. This realisation raised a number of questions. Whose interpretation of the cultures do anthropologists present their own or that of their subjects (ie, the people studied)? If it is their own, how accurately do anthropologists present their own, how accurately do ethnographies reflect the way in which the subjects interpret their culture?
Do the anthropologists' descriptions actually reflect the subjects' point of view, or have they been influence by the anthropologists' values, beliefs, political orientation, etc, even if this is unintentional? To what extent did the relationship between the anthropologist and his or her subjects influence the composition of the text?

Anthropologists then start looking at ethnographic as texts, that is, written compositions. They considered the extent to which ethnographies allow readers to develop an objective picture in their minds of the way of life of other people, and whether ethnographers' usage of particular linguistic methods such as figures of speech somehow influences the meaning they try to convey in their writing. Consequently, anthropologists start to reconsider their methods of conducting research and of writing ethnography. This gave rise to what has become known as "interpretative anthropology", which critically examines the ethnographic interpretations of other cultures.

This led ethnographers to experiment with other methods of "writing anthropology". This produced so-called "experimental ethnography" which together with continuing the traditional function of interpreting culture experimented with narrative methods, providing new methods for writing texts. This made it necessary to reconsider the theoretical, philosophical and epistemological issues associated with ethnographic representation.

In an experimental ethnography or narrative ethnography, the information is provided to the anthropologist first-hand by the narrator of the story. The narrator is involved in the construction of the work to ensure the ethnographic authority of the text. For that reason it is an authentic account of the narrator's life, not the anthropologist's interpretation of narrator's life story.

As we saw above, the term "ethnography" is mostly used for field investigation into the culture of a particular group of people. Nevertheless, worldwide charges resulting from processes such as gobalisation and the development of information technology have created and require new contexts for research. It has become necessary to identify new areas or places where ethnographic research can be conducted away from the usual focus of an anthropological investigation of a particular group of people, where culture is understood in terms of concepts such as "traditional versus modern", "developed" and "small-scale versus large-scale". Consequently, rather than identifiable places, fieldwork sites have become locations where different people are brought together for particular reasons to interact and collaborate with one another. As a result, new expectations, standards and ways of conducting ethnographic research have developed. A case in point is the development of multi-site or multilocale ethnography, a concept first associated with anthropologist George Marcus.

According to Marcus (1995:96-97), multi-site or multilocale ethnography "defines for itself an object of study that cannot be accounted for ethnographically by remaining focused on a single site of intensive investigation". This means that multi-site ethnography is mobile, and that, in reaction to various social and cultural changes, it becomes focused on a number of different sites by literally moving among them.

Marcus formulated the concept of "strategically situated (multi-site) ethnography". By this he meaant that, in some cases, ethnography does not move literally from one site to another, but remains fixed in a multi-site context. Consequently, whatever happens within a particular site where the research is conducted has implications for related sites, and vice versa. By analysing social and cultural connections between different sites, strategically situated ethnography aims to view the object of research in terms of the total system that it is part of. This is where it differs from conventional ethnography, with its holistic evalution of a group of people. It regards anything in the research context, which stretches beyond a particular site, as potentially relevant for the interpretation of cultural phenomena. For example, an anthropologist who studies the organisational culture of a banking group would have to visit branches in different places in order to obtain a proper perspective.

When conducting ethnographies, we distinguish between the emic and etic approach. "Emics" refers to the explanation and presentation of indigenous models of reality. "Etics" is the description and comparison of sociocultural systems according to the observer's or researcher's criteria.

Anthropologists using the emic perspective seek to understand how cultures look from the inside and what a person must know in order to think and act as a native. They analyse cultures using concepts and distinctions that are meaningful to the members of the culture they are studying. The aim of emic research is to generate understanding that a native would find meaningful or to help cultural outsiders gain a sense of what it might be like to be a member of the culture being described.

Anthropologists using an etic perspective seek to derive principles or rules that explain the behaviour of members of a culture, which can be used to compare one culture with another. The methods. The methods of analysis, concepts and distinctions used by etic anthropologists may not be part of the natives cultural awareness, or may even be in conflict with it. However, the aim of etic research is to generate useful scientific theories.

Consequently, when we refer to the emic approach, we mean the approach whereby the anthropologist lets the people speak, as it were. In other words, information is presented from the point of view of the people who are the subjects of research (the insiders); information is not merely the ideas and constructions of the anthropologist.

Still, the distinction between the emic and etic approaches cannot be rigidly and simplistically applied in anthropology. It is the combination of different models with different kinds of attempts at synthesis or generalisations that distinguishes anthropology from other disciplines.

End of Part 3

Thank you for reading.

Images are linked to their sources in their description and references are stated below.

Authors and Text Titles
Marcus & Fischer 1995: Ethnography in/of the world system
Nanda & Warms 2004: Cultural Anthropology
Pelto & Pelto 1997: Studying knowledge, culture and behavior in applied medical anthropology
Sir Edward Tylor 1958: Primitive Culture
Eriksen 2004: What is Anthropology
Aceves, JB & King 1979: Introduction to Anthropology
WA Haviland 2008: Anthropology: The Human Challenge 12th Edition
C Delaney 2004: Investigating Culture
Beattie, J 1964: Other cultures

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