Anthropology Chapter 3

Front 1

participant observation

Back 1

-gathering information by living as closely as possible to the people whose cultures anthropologists are studying while participating in their lives
- requires both being there and stepping back
- get facts, understand, translate
- NOT based on positivism (laboratory science)

Front 2

positivism

Back 2

*- studying the world scientifically by looking for facts on the natural world
- the view that there is a reality "out there" that can be known through the sense and that there is a single, appropriate set of scientific methods for investigation that reality
- opposite of participant observation
- based on: materialism and reductionist reasoning

Front 3

objective v. subjective knowledge. fact.

Back 3

objective=knowledge about reality that is absolutely true

subjective=knowledge about the world that is based on cultural experience

fact= a widely accepted truth
(anth embraces this fact)
- thinks data distorts the reality of human experience

Front 4

studying a persons Life History. strengths and limitations

Back 4

- strengths: get to become an insider to another person's world
- limitations: can't really generalize from one person. can one persons life really represent entire culture?
- the "humanizing affects" of fieldwork

Front 5

Inter-subjective and Interpretation

Back 5

- inter-subjective: the relationship between one persons subjective understanding and another persons subjective understanding that results through communication
- interpretation: the process of understanding cultural experience that is based on inter-subjective knowledge

Front 6

cultural translation

Back 6

- results from inter-subjectivity
- the process of learning to describe one culture in terms that can be understood by another culture
- a good translation communicates SUBTLETY the TRUE MEANING

Front 7

the problem of going native?

Back 7

- sometimes become so wrapped up in the culture that one cannot step back out to translate it into anything meaningful for outsiders to understand
- need to step back and
--understand
--analyze
--generalize

Front 8

cultural essentialism

Back 8

- generalizations about culture
- problem is that all generalizations are based on distortions of reality

Front 9

informants

Back 9

- people in a particular culture who work with anthropologists and provide them with insights about their way of life
- but cannot really generalize from just one person..

Front 10

dialectic of fieldwork

Back 10

- building an understanding between informants and anthropologists

Front 11

multisited fieldwork

Back 11

- doing fieldwork at more than one site

Front 12

fieldwork

Back 12

- an extended period of close involvement with the people who the anthropologist is interested in
- the time where anthropologists collect most of their data

Front 13

ethnography

Back 13

- an anthropologists written or filmed description of a culture

Front 14

4 types of anthropologists

Back 14

1) biological- studies the human body
2) cultural- studies cultures
3) archeology- studies fossils
4) linguistic- studies languages