Ethnography

As a Fulbright fellow and masters’ student in social anthropology at Rutgers, I am actively conceptualizing the ethnographic project I wish to pursue at Harvard’s Ph.D. Program in Social Anthropology: the changing co-production of queer ethno-sexualities within the trans-cultural seascape extending across the Strait of Hormuz. As a queer man, atheist, and ethnic Baloch raised and based in a heteronormative Muslim Arab Gulf country (the UAE), coming from a family rooted in the Iranian Eastern…

easiest way to learn about another culture might be through careful observation and active participation, while using technology to read up on information is yet another way of learning about other cultures. The internet is teeming with “short ethnographies” in form of travelogues and newspaper articles that explain the basics of another culture to the potential…

A Tale of Two Countries Seth Holmes’s article, “‘Is it worth risking your life?’: Ethnography, risk and death on the U.S. – Mexico border,” describes the many hazardous risks of crossing the border by providing a detailed account of Holmes’s personal experience embarking on the border journey with the Triqui indigenous group. Holmes emphasizes the grave encounters migrants face not only in the desert, but with public opinions and policies as well. Before reading Holmes’s article, I had…

In the movie Divergent, the setting is in the futuristic and post-apocalyptic Chicago. The society is divided into five factions based on human virtues: Amity, Abnegation, Candor, Dauntless, and Erudite. Individuals who don’t belong to any of the five factions are called Factionless. People choose their factions at the age of 16 after their psychological aptitude tests. The test indicates what faction for which they are best suited and people normally choose according to the test result, though…

In Between: An examination of three anthropologists’ moments of liminality Liminality is a term used in anthropology to describe a period of transition concerning social structure and understanding. Liminality consists of a pre-liminal state, a liminal period, and a communitas state. The pre-liminal state is characteristically defined as a time when events occur under specific conditions that start to press against an individual’s normal social structure and thought process. The liminal period…

On September 22, 1805, the explorers finally emerged from the mountains near present-day Weippe, Idaho, exhausted and nearly starving. They met the Nez Perce Indians and got dried fish and roots from them. Lewis and Clark set up camp on the banks of the Clearwater River, a branch of the Snake River, which was a branch of the Columbia River. On October 7, they left camp and started down the Clearwater River in their five newly hollowed dugouts they had made. They reached the Snake River on…

Another main theme of the book is the connection to the past and ancient cultural ideals shepherding has kept regardless of the modernization surrounding the Lake District. Throughout the book, Rebanks references how in many ways, the lifestyle has held tight to the core values of farming. While there was a shift to machinery and quad bikes in order to make life a little easier on the farmers, the overall work and beliefs have remained the same for generations. One quotes states, “the past and…

Rudolf von Laban. While still a high school student, she opened a private dance school for young black children. Adolescent; When Dunham was a student at the University of Chicago, she took a leave and went to the Caribbean to study dance and ethnography. She later came back to graduate and submitted a thesis in anthropology. She didn’t meet the requirements for the degree and realised her calling was in performance. At the height of her career in the 40’s and 50’s, Dunham was a celebrity all…

she had become a part of a stronger female community (Miller et al. 2013:63). Ahmadu wanted to experience this initiation for herself to better understand people who do not agree with it, like human rights groups. This explains person-centered ethnography, meaning Ahmadu wanted to understand how she –the individual- was impacted from the culture that uses female genital cutting (Miller et al. 2013:52).Ahmadu wanted to know what people are thinking mentally and how they are influenced by the…

The word “culture” is used in many different contexts and by many different disciplines. Although it is a concept that is constantly being used, it does not have a solid definition. If there is a definition of culture, it has changed many times throughout history, especially throughout the history of anthropology. Alfred Kroeber once said that culture, in the sense of a “set of attributes and products of human societies, and therewith of mankind, which are extrasomatic and transmissible by…