Cultural Anthropology
This course is the comparative study of culture and human societies. It explores the general principles of social and cultural life, and the characteristics of specific societies and cultures. The study has both local and global perspectives, and is increasingly concerned with urban as well as rural societies. Anthropology contributes to the understanding of such contemporary issues as war and conflict, the environment, poverty, problems of injustice, inequality and human rights.
This course places emphasis on the study of small groups through the tradition of participant observation, but places special emphasis on comparative perspectives which challenge cultural assumptions. The objects of inquiry include kinship relations, symbolism, language, ethnicity, stratification, gender and power relations.
The course will enable students to explore the principles of social and cultural life and the characteristics of specific societies and cultures; develop knowledge and critical understanding of the cultural diversity and processes of change within and between societies; and learn the techniques and strategies used in the generation of anthropological data and to appreciate the methodological issues involved in research.
Textbook:
· Barker, John. (2008) Ancestral Lines: The Maisin of Papua New Guinea and the Fate of the Rainforest. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.
· Bourgois, Philippe. (2003) In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
· Shostak, Marjorie. (1981) Nisa:The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press.
· Sandstrom, Alan (1991) Corn is Our Blood: Culture and Ethnic Identity in a Contemporary Aztec Indian Village. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.
· Weiner, Annette B. (1988) The Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea. New York, NY. Holt Rinehart &Winston.
This course places emphasis on the study of small groups through the tradition of participant observation, but places special emphasis on comparative perspectives which challenge cultural assumptions. The objects of inquiry include kinship relations, symbolism, language, ethnicity, stratification, gender and power relations.
The course will enable students to explore the principles of social and cultural life and the characteristics of specific societies and cultures; develop knowledge and critical understanding of the cultural diversity and processes of change within and between societies; and learn the techniques and strategies used in the generation of anthropological data and to appreciate the methodological issues involved in research.
Textbook:
- Haviland, William et al. (2009) Cultural Anthropology. 3rd Canadian Edition. Toronto, Canada: Nelson Thomson Canada Ltd.
· Barker, John. (2008) Ancestral Lines: The Maisin of Papua New Guinea and the Fate of the Rainforest. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.
· Bourgois, Philippe. (2003) In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
· Shostak, Marjorie. (1981) Nisa:The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press.
· Sandstrom, Alan (1991) Corn is Our Blood: Culture and Ethnic Identity in a Contemporary Aztec Indian Village. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.
· Weiner, Annette B. (1988) The Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea. New York, NY. Holt Rinehart &Winston.
SOCIAL AND CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY GUIDE
Click the above title for a copy of the IBO guide to Social and Cultural Anthropology
Below are some important sections from the actual document.
Part 1: What is anthropology? (SL and HL)
All students of social and cultural anthropology should be familiar with the set of core terms, the methods used by anthropologists and issues associated with the construction of ethnographic accounts. The teaching of part 1 should be integrated with the study of ethnography throughout the entire course. Part 1 will help students to better understand part 2. Students should have an understanding of how the terms, methods and different approaches to the construction of ethnographic accounts are connected with the historical context of the discipline.
1.1 Core terms and ideas in anthropology
While reading anthropological material, students will encounter core terms and ideas. These terms and ideas are used to describe and analyse individuals and groups in their social contexts. Students should be taught that these terms have theoretical and historical contexts. The meanings of these terms change over time, and new terms and ideas are constantly emerging. The following list of core terms and ideas is not exhaustive. They should not be presented and studied as isolated entities.
Agency
Agency is the capacity of human beings to act in meaningful ways that affect their own lives and those of others. Agency may be constrained by class, gender, religion and other social and cultural factors. This term implies that individuals have the capacity to create, change and influence events.
Community
Community is one of the oldest concepts used in anthropological studies. Traditionally, it referred to a geographically bounded group of people in face-to-face contact, with a shared system of beliefs and norms operating as a socially functioning whole. Communities existed within a common social structure and government. More recently, communities have also been defined as interest groups accessed through space, as in “Internet communities” or “communities of taste”. With the advent of globalism and global studies that often question the stability of territories, space and place, community is now a highly contested concept.
Comparative
Anthropologists strive to capture the diversity of social action and its predictability by focusing on the way in which particular aspects of society and culture are organized similarly and differently across groups. While social action is frequently innovative, there are limits to its diversity, and patterns identified in one group resemble patterns identified in another.
Cultural relativism
For anthropologists, cultural relativism is a methodological principle that emphasizes the importance of searching for meaning within the local context. Non-anthropologists often interpret cultural relativism as a moral doctrine, which asserts that the practices of one society cannot be judged according to the moral precepts and evaluative criteria of another society. In its extreme form, this version of cultural relativism can lead to a non-analytical position that is contrary to the critical commitments of the discipline.
For anthropologists, cultural relativism attempts to recognize and address the problem of ethnocentrism.
Ethnocentrism is the tendency to evaluate the practices of others in terms of one’s own criteria. Generally, ethnocentrism has the effect of giving greater worth to the social or cultural context of the evaluator than to the context being evaluated, and hinders understanding across social boundaries.
Culture
Culture refers to organized systems of symbols, ideas, explanations, beliefs and material production that humans create and manipulate in the course of their daily lives. Culture includes the customs by which humans organize their physical world and maintain their social structure. While many anthropologists have thought of culture simply as shared systems of experiences and meanings, more recent formulations of the concept recognize that culture may be the subject of disagreement and conflict within and among societies.
Human awareness of culture may be only partly conscious, and humans learn to manipulate cultural categories throughout their lives. It is this ability to manipulate and transform culture that distinguishes humans from other animals.
Ethnographic
Anthropology places considerable emphasis on its empirical foundation based on a direct engagement with particular people and their social and cultural context. Ethnographic materials are usually gathered through participant observation.
Ethnographically grounded anthropology can be contrasted with 19th century “armchair” anthropology conducted by scholars with no first-hand acquaintance with the societies they analysed, and with “common sense” or journalistic accounts of a particular society.
Meaning
Meaning is both constructed and transmitted through cultural categories. These attribute particular significance to persons, relations, objects, places and events. This enables people to make sense of, and give order to, their experiences, which may in turn reinforce or change meaning. The analysis of meaning is a principal focus of contemporary anthropological thinking.
Process
Social process is what humans actually do, including human action that may work against social structure.
Social process is the dynamic counterpoint of social structure. Anthropologists who focus on processes emphasize the possibility of change over time and the importance of human agency, that is, the ability to challenge existing structures and create new structures.
Process is linked to role, the dynamic counterpart of status, consisting of the behaviour associated with a person’s status (for example, a doctor is entitled to prescribe medicine and does not divulge information about the health of the patient).
Qualitative
The data that anthropologists gather during fieldwork comes in many forms because anthropologists are trying to capture the complexity and diversity of social life. This data may be textual (oral or written), observational, or impressionistic, or may take the form of images or sounds. Much of the data cannot be reduced usefully to quantitative forms without losing the essence of the material as perceived from an anthropological viewpoint.
Social reproduction
Social reproduction is the concept that, over time, groups of people reproduce their social structure and patterns of behaviour. This includes not only the enculturation of individual human beings but also the reproduction of cultural institutions, and material means of production and consumption. Social reproduction may be contested, leading to social change.
Society
Society refers to the way in which humans organize themselves in groups and networks. Society is created and sustained by social relationships among persons and groups. The term “society” can also be used to refer to a human group that exhibits some internal coherence and distinguishes itself from other such groups.
1.2 The construction and use of ethnographic accounts
Ethnography is the basic raw material for a course in social and cultural anthropology. Students must therefore be able to understand and evaluate ethnographic materials. The data in ethnographic accounts was not collected for the specific purpose for which the student is using it. The student can only work with the available data presented in the ethnography. Thus the student must learn how to use such materials to answer anthropological questions. This requires the development of skills for the thoughtful and critical understanding of how ethnography is constructed: the research question, the theoretical orientation and the processes used to decide what data is included.
Selection of ethnographies
Whatever ethnographies are selected must take into account the requirements indicated in the syllabus outline. It is advisable to select a range of ethnographies to cover different core terms, themes and, in addition for HL students, different theoretical perspectives. In practice, two or more ethnographies may cover the same as well as different terms, themes and perspectives. These should include some more contemporary ethnographies. Ethnographic films and other visual or virtual media may be used in the teaching of ethnography, but these must be treated in the same critical and reflective manner as the written ethnographies. Students need to identify ethnographic materials in terms of place, author, time, ethnographic present, ethical considerations, methodology and theoretical perspective.
Using various ethnographic materials students are required to study four societies at HL and three societies at SL.
Representation in ethnographic accounts
Understanding the relationship between fieldwork data and ethnographic accounts is central to the syllabus.
The transformation of fieldwork data into ethnographic accounts presents a variety of challenges that are commonly discussed as problems of representation. The anthropologist aims to reproduce the reality of the people studied but recognizes differences between their own accounts and those of the people studied.
The anthropologist has the task of connecting local perceptions to their analytical framework.
Contemporary anthropologists recognize that the distinctions they capture should be examined critically.
Ethnographic materials reflect the specific perspective of an observer and are open to interpretation. Any ethnographic writing or reading should be examined with the following observations in mind:
• social groups are internally diverse and have a variable sense of identity
• different anthropologists may see and represent the same group differently
• actors and observers always operate within a social context
• anthropologists make decisions about what is studied and how it is studied
• all anthropological accounts are produced for a particular audience.
Decisions
Ethnographic accounts are often the product of many years of work, from the initial observation to field notes, analysis and the written report. Today, most contemporary ethnographic accounts focus on a specific set of questions but necessarily link their particular focus to broader patterns at play in the society in question and beyond. At all stages, what is recorded or what is not recorded is the product of decisions.
Anthropologists differ in the extent to which they allow these decisions to be stated in the ethnographic accounts they produce. Decisions are influenced by the anthropologists’ theoretical orientation, the audience served by the research and the goals of the research.
Reading ethnography
Each ethnography presents a point of view, which may be explicit or implicit. When reading ethnography, the student needs to identify the claims, examine the evidence and evaluate whether the data supports the claims and conclusions. Evaluation of evidence requires clear definitions of concepts and variables to support claims and theories. Ethnographic findings can be validated by comparison within a society, within a region or by cross-cultural comparison.
1.3 Methods and data collection
The ethnographic method is one of the distinguishing features of social and cultural anthropology. The methods selected by an anthropologist for collecting data in the field relate to the theoretical perspective of the anthropologist and the production of the final ethnographic text.
There are a number of methods and issues of data collection that anthropologists commonly need to consider in their preparation for fieldwork and during the data gathering phase of their work. These include the following.
• Fieldwork
• Participant observation
• Collection of data
• Qualitative and quantitative data
• Analysis and interpretation
• Ethical issues
Fieldwork
Anthropological accounts are based on detailed and wide-ranging data collected over a substantial period of time. The time that an ethnographer spends studying a group is a process called “fieldwork”.
Fieldwork with a particular group often takes place more than once and involves a long-term personal engagement between the ethnographer and the group. However, in many contemporary fieldwork settings ethnographers cannot have direct face-to-face contact over a prolonged period with any group.
For example, work in densely populated urban settings or in a virtual environment requires a rethinking and
reconceptualizing of the relations between ethnographer and the group being studied.
Participant observation
In the course of fieldwork, many ethnographers become involved as fully as possible in the activities that they study, rather than acting as detached bystanders. At the same time they must seek to preserve some analytical distance. The extent of their participation and its effect on the activity depend on a variety of factors, including the nature of the activity, the rapport between observers and the particular members of the group being studied or “actors”, and the goals of the research. Participant observation has traditionally been the main method in anthropological fieldwork.
Ethnographers and the actors develop social ties in the course of fieldwork. All parties involved must constantly negotiate the nature of these ties. Social relations in fieldwork are as complex as other social relations that human beings form in the course of their lives.
Collection of data
Ethnographers use a broad variety of techniques in collecting data, including interviewing, observation, note-taking, audio and visual recording, discussing recordings with members of the group being studied, keeping journals, collecting censuses, life histories, questionnaires, archival materials, material culture and genealogies. Data may also be collected in a variety of forms that illustrate different aspects of a given society and culture at a given time and place. These may include expressive forms and internal accounts such as music, lyrics, literature, letters, stories and films/movies. The nature of the data and the techniques used to collect it depend on the goals of the research. Each technique provides a partial view and therefore cannot stand alone, nor be used uncritically. It is essential that any such material should be examined from an anthropological perspective. The body of data collected during fieldwork is often substantial, and is used selectively in analysis and in writing up the results of the fieldwork. Fieldwork data is often supplemented with the materials gathered in libraries and museums.
Qualitative and quantitative data
Qualitative data consists of texts, lists and recordings, which do not lend themselves to numerical representation, while quantitative data can be expressed in numbers. For most anthropologists, qualitative data is more crucial than quantitative data, although the quantitative often provides useful support for the qualitative.
Analysis and interpretation
The analysis of anthropological data consists of discovering consistencies and other recurrent patterns in the data. This discovery process often relies heavily on the anthropologist’s theoretical framework and on the relevant works of other anthropologists. Anthropologists recognize that description and analysis are never free of theoretical and personal biases but always involve selection and interpretation. See part 1.2.
Ethical issues
Ethnographers are bound by ethical principles governing their conduct as fieldworkers and as professional practitioners. Among other things, these principles dictate that the ethnographer respects the dignity of the members of the group being studied, gives attention to the possibility that any disseminated information may be used against the best interests of those being studied, and recognizes any power differentials between the parties involved in fieldwork. Ethics is also concerned with the relationship between ethnographers and their colleagues, students and audiences. What constitutes ethical conduct is often the subject of debate and is best understood in context.
Part 2: Social and cultural organization (SL and HL)
Both SL and HL students must have an understanding of all eight themes listed below as 2.1 to 2.8. When designing a course of study, each theme must be given equal importance. Themes can be treated in any order. The themes are closely interconnected and should not be taught in isolation from each other. They should be taught in relation to ethnographic material. Teaching of the themes should emphasize patterns and processes of change in society and culture and that anthropological knowledge changes over time.
Examples of topics for detailed study are given for each theme. Teachers should not attempt to cover all of the examples given; rather these should emerge from the ethnographies chosen for study. The lists are not exhaustive, and teachers may explore other possibilities. Examples of topics for detailed study are often relevant to more than one theme.
2.1 Individuals, groups and society
Description Examples
The person is embedded in social structures and cultural dynamics that shape individual identity and actions. The individual is committed to different groups simultaneously. Both the nature of the group and the individual’s commitment to it are dynamic and context-dependent. The person’s actions may either reinforce or undermine these structures and dynamics. Anthropologists seek to understand these actions with reference to the structures in which the individual is embedded, even though the individual’s own understanding may make no reference to these structures. This is often described as a tension between structure and agency.
• Socialization
• Status and role
• Gender and sexuality
• Personhood
• Conformity and nonconformity
• Public and private
• Social and group identity (for example, ethnicity and race, nationality, class, age, religious identity)
• Ritual (for example, rites of passage, rites of revitalization)
• Social movements (for example, environmental movements, human and cultural rights, indigenous movements)
• Modernity
• Globalization
2.2 Societies and cultures in contact
Description Examples
Societies have always interacted with one another and they define themselves, in significant ways, through these interactions.
• Population movement (for example, migration, forced removal, refugees)
• Ethnocide and genocide
• Indigenous movements
• Modernity
• Revitalization
• Tourism and travel
• Colonialism and post-colonialism
• Resistance
2.3 Kinship as an organizing principle
Description Examples
Kinship can be seen as a basic unit of human social relations. It is structured in many different ways to define groups and the differences between them. Kinship groups are not static units but define fields of relationship and meaning through which economic and political processes occur.
• Family and household
• Marriage
• Rights and property
• Rules of descent and residence
• Corporate descent groups
• Gender relations
• Migration
• Globalization
2.4 Political organization
Description Examples
Political organization takes many forms, but all have the common element of ordering internal and external relations.
• Power, authority and leadership
• Formal and informal political systems (for example, egalitarian, rank, stratified, state, global)
• Social control and legal systems
• Inequality (for example, class, caste, ethnicity, age, gender, health and illness)
• Social organization of space and place
• Status and role
• Conflict and resistance
• Ideology
• Nation building
• Colonialism and post-colonialism
• Social movements
• Globalization
2.5 Economic organization and the environment
Description Examples
Societies interact with and transform the environment in the production, allocation and consumption of material and symbolic goods.
• Division of labour
• Space and place
• Systems of production and consumption (for example, subsistence, peasant, industrial, transnational)
• Exchange systems (for example, reciprocity, redistribution, market)
• Scale (for example, local, global)
• Environmentalist movements
• Social views of the environment
• Development (applied anthropology, for example, advocacy, medical)
• Industrialization and proletarianization
• Urbanization
• Commodification
• Colonialism and post-colonialism
• Globalization
2.6 Systems of knowledge
Description Examples
Systems of knowledge are ways of organizing and comprehending social and natural environments.
• Symbolism
• Arts and expression
• Classification systems
• Relationships with the environment
• Interaction, media and communication
2.7 Belief systems and practices
Description Examples
This element focuses on beliefs and ideologies both sacred and secular.
• Religion
• Religious movements
• Myths
• Rituals
• Witchcraft, magic, sorcery and divination
• Conversion and syncretism
2.8 Moral systems
Description Examples
By enabling and constraining behaviour, moral systems regulate the life of the individual in society.
• Ethics
• Justice
• Taboos
• Suffering
• Good and evil
• Purity and impurity
• Honour and shame
• Globalization
Below are some important sections from the actual document.
Part 1: What is anthropology? (SL and HL)
All students of social and cultural anthropology should be familiar with the set of core terms, the methods used by anthropologists and issues associated with the construction of ethnographic accounts. The teaching of part 1 should be integrated with the study of ethnography throughout the entire course. Part 1 will help students to better understand part 2. Students should have an understanding of how the terms, methods and different approaches to the construction of ethnographic accounts are connected with the historical context of the discipline.
1.1 Core terms and ideas in anthropology
While reading anthropological material, students will encounter core terms and ideas. These terms and ideas are used to describe and analyse individuals and groups in their social contexts. Students should be taught that these terms have theoretical and historical contexts. The meanings of these terms change over time, and new terms and ideas are constantly emerging. The following list of core terms and ideas is not exhaustive. They should not be presented and studied as isolated entities.
Agency
Agency is the capacity of human beings to act in meaningful ways that affect their own lives and those of others. Agency may be constrained by class, gender, religion and other social and cultural factors. This term implies that individuals have the capacity to create, change and influence events.
Community
Community is one of the oldest concepts used in anthropological studies. Traditionally, it referred to a geographically bounded group of people in face-to-face contact, with a shared system of beliefs and norms operating as a socially functioning whole. Communities existed within a common social structure and government. More recently, communities have also been defined as interest groups accessed through space, as in “Internet communities” or “communities of taste”. With the advent of globalism and global studies that often question the stability of territories, space and place, community is now a highly contested concept.
Comparative
Anthropologists strive to capture the diversity of social action and its predictability by focusing on the way in which particular aspects of society and culture are organized similarly and differently across groups. While social action is frequently innovative, there are limits to its diversity, and patterns identified in one group resemble patterns identified in another.
Cultural relativism
For anthropologists, cultural relativism is a methodological principle that emphasizes the importance of searching for meaning within the local context. Non-anthropologists often interpret cultural relativism as a moral doctrine, which asserts that the practices of one society cannot be judged according to the moral precepts and evaluative criteria of another society. In its extreme form, this version of cultural relativism can lead to a non-analytical position that is contrary to the critical commitments of the discipline.
For anthropologists, cultural relativism attempts to recognize and address the problem of ethnocentrism.
Ethnocentrism is the tendency to evaluate the practices of others in terms of one’s own criteria. Generally, ethnocentrism has the effect of giving greater worth to the social or cultural context of the evaluator than to the context being evaluated, and hinders understanding across social boundaries.
Culture
Culture refers to organized systems of symbols, ideas, explanations, beliefs and material production that humans create and manipulate in the course of their daily lives. Culture includes the customs by which humans organize their physical world and maintain their social structure. While many anthropologists have thought of culture simply as shared systems of experiences and meanings, more recent formulations of the concept recognize that culture may be the subject of disagreement and conflict within and among societies.
Human awareness of culture may be only partly conscious, and humans learn to manipulate cultural categories throughout their lives. It is this ability to manipulate and transform culture that distinguishes humans from other animals.
Ethnographic
Anthropology places considerable emphasis on its empirical foundation based on a direct engagement with particular people and their social and cultural context. Ethnographic materials are usually gathered through participant observation.
Ethnographically grounded anthropology can be contrasted with 19th century “armchair” anthropology conducted by scholars with no first-hand acquaintance with the societies they analysed, and with “common sense” or journalistic accounts of a particular society.
Meaning
Meaning is both constructed and transmitted through cultural categories. These attribute particular significance to persons, relations, objects, places and events. This enables people to make sense of, and give order to, their experiences, which may in turn reinforce or change meaning. The analysis of meaning is a principal focus of contemporary anthropological thinking.
Process
Social process is what humans actually do, including human action that may work against social structure.
Social process is the dynamic counterpoint of social structure. Anthropologists who focus on processes emphasize the possibility of change over time and the importance of human agency, that is, the ability to challenge existing structures and create new structures.
Process is linked to role, the dynamic counterpart of status, consisting of the behaviour associated with a person’s status (for example, a doctor is entitled to prescribe medicine and does not divulge information about the health of the patient).
Qualitative
The data that anthropologists gather during fieldwork comes in many forms because anthropologists are trying to capture the complexity and diversity of social life. This data may be textual (oral or written), observational, or impressionistic, or may take the form of images or sounds. Much of the data cannot be reduced usefully to quantitative forms without losing the essence of the material as perceived from an anthropological viewpoint.
Social reproduction
Social reproduction is the concept that, over time, groups of people reproduce their social structure and patterns of behaviour. This includes not only the enculturation of individual human beings but also the reproduction of cultural institutions, and material means of production and consumption. Social reproduction may be contested, leading to social change.
Society
Society refers to the way in which humans organize themselves in groups and networks. Society is created and sustained by social relationships among persons and groups. The term “society” can also be used to refer to a human group that exhibits some internal coherence and distinguishes itself from other such groups.
1.2 The construction and use of ethnographic accounts
Ethnography is the basic raw material for a course in social and cultural anthropology. Students must therefore be able to understand and evaluate ethnographic materials. The data in ethnographic accounts was not collected for the specific purpose for which the student is using it. The student can only work with the available data presented in the ethnography. Thus the student must learn how to use such materials to answer anthropological questions. This requires the development of skills for the thoughtful and critical understanding of how ethnography is constructed: the research question, the theoretical orientation and the processes used to decide what data is included.
Selection of ethnographies
Whatever ethnographies are selected must take into account the requirements indicated in the syllabus outline. It is advisable to select a range of ethnographies to cover different core terms, themes and, in addition for HL students, different theoretical perspectives. In practice, two or more ethnographies may cover the same as well as different terms, themes and perspectives. These should include some more contemporary ethnographies. Ethnographic films and other visual or virtual media may be used in the teaching of ethnography, but these must be treated in the same critical and reflective manner as the written ethnographies. Students need to identify ethnographic materials in terms of place, author, time, ethnographic present, ethical considerations, methodology and theoretical perspective.
Using various ethnographic materials students are required to study four societies at HL and three societies at SL.
Representation in ethnographic accounts
Understanding the relationship between fieldwork data and ethnographic accounts is central to the syllabus.
The transformation of fieldwork data into ethnographic accounts presents a variety of challenges that are commonly discussed as problems of representation. The anthropologist aims to reproduce the reality of the people studied but recognizes differences between their own accounts and those of the people studied.
The anthropologist has the task of connecting local perceptions to their analytical framework.
Contemporary anthropologists recognize that the distinctions they capture should be examined critically.
Ethnographic materials reflect the specific perspective of an observer and are open to interpretation. Any ethnographic writing or reading should be examined with the following observations in mind:
• social groups are internally diverse and have a variable sense of identity
• different anthropologists may see and represent the same group differently
• actors and observers always operate within a social context
• anthropologists make decisions about what is studied and how it is studied
• all anthropological accounts are produced for a particular audience.
Decisions
Ethnographic accounts are often the product of many years of work, from the initial observation to field notes, analysis and the written report. Today, most contemporary ethnographic accounts focus on a specific set of questions but necessarily link their particular focus to broader patterns at play in the society in question and beyond. At all stages, what is recorded or what is not recorded is the product of decisions.
Anthropologists differ in the extent to which they allow these decisions to be stated in the ethnographic accounts they produce. Decisions are influenced by the anthropologists’ theoretical orientation, the audience served by the research and the goals of the research.
Reading ethnography
Each ethnography presents a point of view, which may be explicit or implicit. When reading ethnography, the student needs to identify the claims, examine the evidence and evaluate whether the data supports the claims and conclusions. Evaluation of evidence requires clear definitions of concepts and variables to support claims and theories. Ethnographic findings can be validated by comparison within a society, within a region or by cross-cultural comparison.
1.3 Methods and data collection
The ethnographic method is one of the distinguishing features of social and cultural anthropology. The methods selected by an anthropologist for collecting data in the field relate to the theoretical perspective of the anthropologist and the production of the final ethnographic text.
There are a number of methods and issues of data collection that anthropologists commonly need to consider in their preparation for fieldwork and during the data gathering phase of their work. These include the following.
• Fieldwork
• Participant observation
• Collection of data
• Qualitative and quantitative data
• Analysis and interpretation
• Ethical issues
Fieldwork
Anthropological accounts are based on detailed and wide-ranging data collected over a substantial period of time. The time that an ethnographer spends studying a group is a process called “fieldwork”.
Fieldwork with a particular group often takes place more than once and involves a long-term personal engagement between the ethnographer and the group. However, in many contemporary fieldwork settings ethnographers cannot have direct face-to-face contact over a prolonged period with any group.
For example, work in densely populated urban settings or in a virtual environment requires a rethinking and
reconceptualizing of the relations between ethnographer and the group being studied.
Participant observation
In the course of fieldwork, many ethnographers become involved as fully as possible in the activities that they study, rather than acting as detached bystanders. At the same time they must seek to preserve some analytical distance. The extent of their participation and its effect on the activity depend on a variety of factors, including the nature of the activity, the rapport between observers and the particular members of the group being studied or “actors”, and the goals of the research. Participant observation has traditionally been the main method in anthropological fieldwork.
Ethnographers and the actors develop social ties in the course of fieldwork. All parties involved must constantly negotiate the nature of these ties. Social relations in fieldwork are as complex as other social relations that human beings form in the course of their lives.
Collection of data
Ethnographers use a broad variety of techniques in collecting data, including interviewing, observation, note-taking, audio and visual recording, discussing recordings with members of the group being studied, keeping journals, collecting censuses, life histories, questionnaires, archival materials, material culture and genealogies. Data may also be collected in a variety of forms that illustrate different aspects of a given society and culture at a given time and place. These may include expressive forms and internal accounts such as music, lyrics, literature, letters, stories and films/movies. The nature of the data and the techniques used to collect it depend on the goals of the research. Each technique provides a partial view and therefore cannot stand alone, nor be used uncritically. It is essential that any such material should be examined from an anthropological perspective. The body of data collected during fieldwork is often substantial, and is used selectively in analysis and in writing up the results of the fieldwork. Fieldwork data is often supplemented with the materials gathered in libraries and museums.
Qualitative and quantitative data
Qualitative data consists of texts, lists and recordings, which do not lend themselves to numerical representation, while quantitative data can be expressed in numbers. For most anthropologists, qualitative data is more crucial than quantitative data, although the quantitative often provides useful support for the qualitative.
Analysis and interpretation
The analysis of anthropological data consists of discovering consistencies and other recurrent patterns in the data. This discovery process often relies heavily on the anthropologist’s theoretical framework and on the relevant works of other anthropologists. Anthropologists recognize that description and analysis are never free of theoretical and personal biases but always involve selection and interpretation. See part 1.2.
Ethical issues
Ethnographers are bound by ethical principles governing their conduct as fieldworkers and as professional practitioners. Among other things, these principles dictate that the ethnographer respects the dignity of the members of the group being studied, gives attention to the possibility that any disseminated information may be used against the best interests of those being studied, and recognizes any power differentials between the parties involved in fieldwork. Ethics is also concerned with the relationship between ethnographers and their colleagues, students and audiences. What constitutes ethical conduct is often the subject of debate and is best understood in context.
Part 2: Social and cultural organization (SL and HL)
Both SL and HL students must have an understanding of all eight themes listed below as 2.1 to 2.8. When designing a course of study, each theme must be given equal importance. Themes can be treated in any order. The themes are closely interconnected and should not be taught in isolation from each other. They should be taught in relation to ethnographic material. Teaching of the themes should emphasize patterns and processes of change in society and culture and that anthropological knowledge changes over time.
Examples of topics for detailed study are given for each theme. Teachers should not attempt to cover all of the examples given; rather these should emerge from the ethnographies chosen for study. The lists are not exhaustive, and teachers may explore other possibilities. Examples of topics for detailed study are often relevant to more than one theme.
2.1 Individuals, groups and society
Description Examples
The person is embedded in social structures and cultural dynamics that shape individual identity and actions. The individual is committed to different groups simultaneously. Both the nature of the group and the individual’s commitment to it are dynamic and context-dependent. The person’s actions may either reinforce or undermine these structures and dynamics. Anthropologists seek to understand these actions with reference to the structures in which the individual is embedded, even though the individual’s own understanding may make no reference to these structures. This is often described as a tension between structure and agency.
• Socialization
• Status and role
• Gender and sexuality
• Personhood
• Conformity and nonconformity
• Public and private
• Social and group identity (for example, ethnicity and race, nationality, class, age, religious identity)
• Ritual (for example, rites of passage, rites of revitalization)
• Social movements (for example, environmental movements, human and cultural rights, indigenous movements)
• Modernity
• Globalization
2.2 Societies and cultures in contact
Description Examples
Societies have always interacted with one another and they define themselves, in significant ways, through these interactions.
• Population movement (for example, migration, forced removal, refugees)
• Ethnocide and genocide
• Indigenous movements
• Modernity
• Revitalization
• Tourism and travel
• Colonialism and post-colonialism
• Resistance
2.3 Kinship as an organizing principle
Description Examples
Kinship can be seen as a basic unit of human social relations. It is structured in many different ways to define groups and the differences between them. Kinship groups are not static units but define fields of relationship and meaning through which economic and political processes occur.
• Family and household
• Marriage
• Rights and property
• Rules of descent and residence
• Corporate descent groups
• Gender relations
• Migration
• Globalization
2.4 Political organization
Description Examples
Political organization takes many forms, but all have the common element of ordering internal and external relations.
• Power, authority and leadership
• Formal and informal political systems (for example, egalitarian, rank, stratified, state, global)
• Social control and legal systems
• Inequality (for example, class, caste, ethnicity, age, gender, health and illness)
• Social organization of space and place
• Status and role
• Conflict and resistance
• Ideology
• Nation building
• Colonialism and post-colonialism
• Social movements
• Globalization
2.5 Economic organization and the environment
Description Examples
Societies interact with and transform the environment in the production, allocation and consumption of material and symbolic goods.
• Division of labour
• Space and place
• Systems of production and consumption (for example, subsistence, peasant, industrial, transnational)
• Exchange systems (for example, reciprocity, redistribution, market)
• Scale (for example, local, global)
• Environmentalist movements
• Social views of the environment
• Development (applied anthropology, for example, advocacy, medical)
• Industrialization and proletarianization
• Urbanization
• Commodification
• Colonialism and post-colonialism
• Globalization
2.6 Systems of knowledge
Description Examples
Systems of knowledge are ways of organizing and comprehending social and natural environments.
• Symbolism
• Arts and expression
• Classification systems
• Relationships with the environment
• Interaction, media and communication
2.7 Belief systems and practices
Description Examples
This element focuses on beliefs and ideologies both sacred and secular.
• Religion
• Religious movements
• Myths
• Rituals
• Witchcraft, magic, sorcery and divination
• Conversion and syncretism
2.8 Moral systems
Description Examples
By enabling and constraining behaviour, moral systems regulate the life of the individual in society.
• Ethics
• Justice
• Taboos
• Suffering
• Good and evil
• Purity and impurity
• Honour and shame
• Globalization