Doing Anthropological Research

Chapter 1 - Exercise 1

GETTING STARTED: THE SEARCH FOR ANTHROPOLOGICAL QUESTIONS

Anthropology is often thought of as a discipline that connects ‘small places’ with ‘big issues’. It is not that we are interested in small places for the sake of small places, but rather that we think they can tell us important things about the wider world. As Clifford Geertz famously said, ‘anthropologists do not study villages, they study in villages’. To that end, one of the most important things for a good anthropology project is to connect issues of wider interest, with the places where you can research them. Even the most interesting topic will not produce a good project if you cannot think of a place to carry out the research that will illuminate that topic. When thinking about the relationship between ‘place’ and ‘issue’, we can start at either end.

Below you will find a list of potential research issues. Try to think of the types of research site where you will be able to explore those issues. There is also a list of research sites. Try to think of the issues that might be interestingly studied there.

Research issues

How are we related to our family?

What is happiness?

Why do people give to charity?

Why do we go to work?

What does praying do?

What is the relationship between nature and culture?

Where does the power of the state come from?

Research sites

Funeral directors

Fishing boat

Human rights NGO

Catholic church

Pre-natal clinic

Shoe factory

Poetry festival

Chapter 1 - Exercise 2

GETTING STARTED: THE SEARCH FOR ANTHROPOLOGICAL QUESTIONS

Carrying out a research project can be an excellent opportunity to develop new skills. A project will, however, also require that you have particular skills in order to carry it out. Carrying out fieldwork can be an excellent way, for example, to improve your language skills. However, at the same time, it is probably a mistake to think that you can carry out successful research in a country where you do not speak the language/s at all.

Write down a list of the skills you will need to carry out the project you are thinking about. Some of the things you might need, for example, are languages, ability to live independently in challenging conditions, the ability to talk about sensitive topics. The list could go on and on.

Write down a list of the skills you will need to carry out your proposed project.

Write down a list of the skills that you currently have.

Ask yourself whether any differences between the two lists can be bridged and how. If the gap is too large, think about doing a different project.

Chapter 3 - Exercise 1

ON THE PRIMARY IMPORTANCE OF SECONDARY RESEARCH

Secondary research

Read an ethnographic monograph, noting down everything you can learn from it about the process of secondary research that was followed; the sources of evidence; the balance of emphasis on primary versus secondary information; and the degree to which the author makes explicit any kind of rationale or strategy that guided the secondary research procedures. You may find it interesting, for comparison, to follow this up by reading a qualitative research monograph from another social science discipline such as social medicine, psychology or development studies.

Chapter 4 - Exercise 1

DOING RESEARCH: ANTHROPOLOGY AND ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELDWORK

‘Purity and danger’: connecting theory and method

This exercise uses the different approaches discussed in Chapter 4 to get you thinking about how anthropologists connect theory and method. First, read a classic piece of anthropological theory (Mary Douglas) in which the anthropologist makes the claim that dirt and pollution are ‘matter out of place’. Your task is to explore this theoretical argument through a particular methodological technique. To do this select one of the readings below (Thomas Csordas, Kevin Dwyer, Victor Turner or Loïc Wacquant) and remind yourself of the explicit or implicit methodological technique advocated in the article, and which we discuss in Chapter 4. This may include formal or informal interviews, participant observation, analysis of material culture or a combination of some, none or all of these. Your main task is to conduct a very small piece of research exploring Douglas’s argument/claim ‘in the style of’ your chosen reading/anthropologist. This involves making decisions about the research site through which you will explore Douglas’s theoretical claims, the methods you will use, and the types of information that it is important to collect. Do not spend more than two afternoons doing the research.

Once you have done your research, synthesise your research and reading into a 1,000-word written report. This should set your research material in context, provide relevant background material, evidence of an attempt at interpretation, and an attempt to link it to relevant anthropological material. The end product will be a 1,000-word fieldwork-based report.

You might find it helpful to gather a few classmates together and do this exercise at the same time so that you can learn from one another’s choices and experiences. Once you have completed your reports, exchange them and meet as a group to discuss your choices of methodology, the issues encountered and the ways in which you sought to link methodology and theory.

Theoretical reading

Douglas, M. 2002. Introduction in Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Purity and Taboo. London: Routledge.

Methodological reading (choose one of…)

Csordas, Thomas. 1994. ‘Words from the Holy People: A case study in cultural phenomenology’. In T. Csordas (ed.) Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dwyer, Kevin. 1982. Preface and Chapter 1, in Moroccan Dialogues:  Anthropology in Question. Prospect Heights, Ill: Waveland Press.

Turner, Victor. 1964. ‘Ndembu ritual’. In M. Gluckman (ed.) Closed Systems and Open Minds: The Limits of Naivety in Social Science. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd.

Wacquant, Loïc. 1995. ‘The pugilistic point of view: How boxers think and feel about their trade’. Theory and Society, 24(4): 489–535.