Chapter 5 - Cultural Anthropology
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1. Ethnographic fieldwork: It is the primary way of conducting research and collecting data. It is a research
method that requires the researcher to be personally immersed in the daily social activities of some group of people
while conducting research.
2. Participatory action research: Involving local people in the applied research process is known as
participatory action research. / A mode of research in which the anthropologist and the community work together to
understand the conditions that produce the community's problems and find solutions to those problems.
3. Why do anthropologists choose primarily to use the ethnographic approach?-
: 1. The ethnographic approach takes a holistic view. By studying all aspects of a culture, even while focusing on a
particular issue, anthropologists are able to place issues in context.
2. The ethnographic approach depends on first-hand, experimental methods, which include face-to-face interactions
with people within the culture. This provides a deeper understanding of issues than can be acquired by other methods
or from an external perspective.
4. Qualitative dataš'xÚ : To get a better handle on a particular culture, an anthropologist begins by listening to
stories and other kinds of talk that give insight into the community. They are data gathered from personal interviews, ora
histories, observations, and interactions with community members. These data are important to the research process
and may be logged in anthropologists' field notes or digitally recorded and transcribed for later text analyses.
5. Field notes: The daily descriptive notes recorded by an anthropologist during or after an observation of a
specific phenomenon or activity
6. Quantitative dataxÏxÚ : They are numerical data such as population trends, morbidity and mortality rates,
household and community size, annual income, education levels, and any other data that can be counted. Quantitative
data are used to conduct statistical analyses and are good for comparing groups for following trends, and for telling
us how many.
For example, quantitative data can tell us whether men's attitudes to say marriage differ from women's, or how many
women of childbearing age have children under five years of age who are malnourished.
What quantitative methods are poor at, however, is answering the question why (e.g. Why do men's attitudes differ
from women's?).
7. OCAP principles: Principles of ownership, control, access, and possession that ensure First Nation commu-
nities actively participate in ethnographic research.
1/5
, Chapter 5 - Cultural Anthropology
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8. Literature review: A literature review is an overview, synthesis, and appraisal of secondary resources about
a particular issue or topic. Literature reviews look at the current state of knowledge about a topic and evaluate the
strengths and weaknesses of theoretical and methodological contributions.
9. Stage of field research*: 1. Selecting a research problem
2. Formulating a research design
3. Collecting the data
4. Analysing the data
5. Interpreting the data
6. Writing up and presenting the results
10. Research design: It is the overall strategy for conducting the research. In the research design stage, the
anthropologist must decide how to identify who might be willing to participate in a project, who to talk to, what methods
of data collection should be used, how long the research will take, and so on.
11. Research proposal: A written proposal required for funding anthropological research that spells out in
detail a research project's purpose, hypotheses, methodology and significance.
12. Participant observation: As the name implies, it means becoming involved in the culture under study
while making systematic observations of what people actually do.
Advantages of Participant Observation:
1. The fact that the anthropologist takes an interest in the local culture is likely to improve rapport And as trust levels
increase, so do the quantity and quality of the data an anthropologist is able to obtain.
2. It enables the anthropologist to distinguish between normative and real behaviour - that is, between what people
say they do and what people actually do. When an anthropologist conducts an interview, there is no way to know for
certain whether people behave as they say they do. The participant-observer, however, has the advantage of seeing
actual behaviour rather than relying on hearsay.
Disadvantage of Participant Observation:
1. Participant observation poses certain methodological problems that can jeopardise the quality of the data.
2. The data are often hard to code or categorise, which makes synthesising and comparing the data more challenging
3. Participant-observers face special problems when recording their observations because it may be difficult (e.g. To
record the details while attending circumcision ceremony)
4. A major methodological shortcoming of Participant Observation is that it can have an obtrusive effect on the people
being studied, known as the Hawthorne effect.
2/5
Study online at https://quizlet.com/_hutzqb
1. Ethnographic fieldwork: It is the primary way of conducting research and collecting data. It is a research
method that requires the researcher to be personally immersed in the daily social activities of some group of people
while conducting research.
2. Participatory action research: Involving local people in the applied research process is known as
participatory action research. / A mode of research in which the anthropologist and the community work together to
understand the conditions that produce the community's problems and find solutions to those problems.
3. Why do anthropologists choose primarily to use the ethnographic approach?-
: 1. The ethnographic approach takes a holistic view. By studying all aspects of a culture, even while focusing on a
particular issue, anthropologists are able to place issues in context.
2. The ethnographic approach depends on first-hand, experimental methods, which include face-to-face interactions
with people within the culture. This provides a deeper understanding of issues than can be acquired by other methods
or from an external perspective.
4. Qualitative dataš'xÚ : To get a better handle on a particular culture, an anthropologist begins by listening to
stories and other kinds of talk that give insight into the community. They are data gathered from personal interviews, ora
histories, observations, and interactions with community members. These data are important to the research process
and may be logged in anthropologists' field notes or digitally recorded and transcribed for later text analyses.
5. Field notes: The daily descriptive notes recorded by an anthropologist during or after an observation of a
specific phenomenon or activity
6. Quantitative dataxÏxÚ : They are numerical data such as population trends, morbidity and mortality rates,
household and community size, annual income, education levels, and any other data that can be counted. Quantitative
data are used to conduct statistical analyses and are good for comparing groups for following trends, and for telling
us how many.
For example, quantitative data can tell us whether men's attitudes to say marriage differ from women's, or how many
women of childbearing age have children under five years of age who are malnourished.
What quantitative methods are poor at, however, is answering the question why (e.g. Why do men's attitudes differ
from women's?).
7. OCAP principles: Principles of ownership, control, access, and possession that ensure First Nation commu-
nities actively participate in ethnographic research.
1/5
, Chapter 5 - Cultural Anthropology
Study online at https://quizlet.com/_hutzqb
8. Literature review: A literature review is an overview, synthesis, and appraisal of secondary resources about
a particular issue or topic. Literature reviews look at the current state of knowledge about a topic and evaluate the
strengths and weaknesses of theoretical and methodological contributions.
9. Stage of field research*: 1. Selecting a research problem
2. Formulating a research design
3. Collecting the data
4. Analysing the data
5. Interpreting the data
6. Writing up and presenting the results
10. Research design: It is the overall strategy for conducting the research. In the research design stage, the
anthropologist must decide how to identify who might be willing to participate in a project, who to talk to, what methods
of data collection should be used, how long the research will take, and so on.
11. Research proposal: A written proposal required for funding anthropological research that spells out in
detail a research project's purpose, hypotheses, methodology and significance.
12. Participant observation: As the name implies, it means becoming involved in the culture under study
while making systematic observations of what people actually do.
Advantages of Participant Observation:
1. The fact that the anthropologist takes an interest in the local culture is likely to improve rapport And as trust levels
increase, so do the quantity and quality of the data an anthropologist is able to obtain.
2. It enables the anthropologist to distinguish between normative and real behaviour - that is, between what people
say they do and what people actually do. When an anthropologist conducts an interview, there is no way to know for
certain whether people behave as they say they do. The participant-observer, however, has the advantage of seeing
actual behaviour rather than relying on hearsay.
Disadvantage of Participant Observation:
1. Participant observation poses certain methodological problems that can jeopardise the quality of the data.
2. The data are often hard to code or categorise, which makes synthesising and comparing the data more challenging
3. Participant-observers face special problems when recording their observations because it may be difficult (e.g. To
record the details while attending circumcision ceremony)
4. A major methodological shortcoming of Participant Observation is that it can have an obtrusive effect on the people
being studied, known as the Hawthorne effect.
2/5
