Anthropologists do not just study a group people, going to great lengths to become included in that group’s society and culture, to simply tell an immensely detailed story with the world. But rather, through their ethnographic fieldwork, anthropologists employ a methodology while studying a particular group of people, gathering as much detail and evidence as humanly possible of their experiences, then move on to interpret their work and make claims about that people’s way of life; to make meaning of the social experiences and of the lives of the people being. The relationship between anthropologist’s ethnographic fieldwork and the claims they make are rooted in the events that occur and the methodologies employed when working with a specific group of
…show more content…
In Paige West’s ethnographic piece, the use of cultural relativism is clear as she recognizes the different notions obtained by the U.S. government and the Gimi people of Papa New Guinea concerning space, reciprocity, lands, relationship to nature. For the Gimi, “land comes into being; it is produced but the physical, psychological, and material relations that people bring to it”, making it so that space is understood to be a process (West, 2006) whereas the conservationists, biologists and activists trying to conserve the environment in Papa New Guinea have differing definitions, thinking of land and the environment as external and as isolated from the social relations that create, seen as something to be dominated and used as a tool to exert influence. The failures of the Crater Mountain Conservation, West notes lie in the failure of the conservationists to understand the Gimi people’s way of life, such as the significance of reciprocity in Gimi society. The conservationist believed that meeting the economic needs of the native people would help the conservation succeed and that this could be done bringing capitalist notions of conservation and linking conservation to capitalism. The Gimi expected
In Paige West’s ethnographic piece, the use of cultural relativism is clear as she recognizes the different notions obtained by the U.S. government and the Gimi people of Papa New Guinea concerning space, reciprocity, lands, relationship to nature. For the Gimi, “land comes into being; it is produced but the physical, psychological, and material relations that people bring to it”, making it so that space is understood to be a process (West, 2006) whereas the conservationists, biologists and activists trying to conserve the environment in Papa New Guinea have differing definitions, thinking of land and the environment as external and as isolated from the social relations that create, seen as something to be dominated and used as a tool to exert influence. The failures of the Crater Mountain Conservation, West notes lie in the failure of the conservationists to understand the Gimi people’s way of life, such as the significance of reciprocity in Gimi society. The conservationist believed that meeting the economic needs of the native people would help the conservation succeed and that this could be done bringing capitalist notions of conservation and linking conservation to capitalism. The Gimi expected