Exam 3: Fieldwork and Ethnography

Evaluate the El Dorado controversy around anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon. You must demonstrate that you know when and where the contested activities occurred, and how the population was allegedly affected. Conclude by stating why this might have been seen to violate ethical standards, and what the American Anthropological Association (AAA) ultimately found on review of the evidence presented.

Making the strange seem more familiar is an overarching outcome of which method of conducting anthropology?

Ethnology is the process of ________ and can be used to examine activities, trends, and patterns of power across cultures.

You are conducting research among a group of migrant farmworkers in southern Florida, and you realize that some of them are undocumented. You know that you are able to protect their identities, even if you publish your findings widely, because of your commitment to what ethical principle?

Compare Nancy Scheper-Hughes's early ethnographic fieldwork in Alto do Cruzeiro with her current research and work with Organs Watch. How has globalization affected her fieldwork?

What aspect of life do anthropologists tend find particularly useful when decoding radically different cultures?

Evaluate the merits of the long-term participant observation advocated by Bronislaw Malinowski relative to merits of the methods of "armchair" anthropology, discussing both these concepts in the context of today's social media networks and the Internet as avenues for conducting research.

Franz Boas is credited with developing the concept of cultural relativism. What made cultural relativism radical at that time?

What are the core moral and ethical concerns of anthropological research? Why are they necessary?

What is one of the personal obstacles that ethnographers will likely need to overcome while conducting long-term fieldwork?

E. E. Evans-Pritchard's approach to anthropology has been criticized for being ahistorical. What was one of the major shortcomings of his work?

An anthropologist writes an ethnography of coal miners in West Virginia purely from their own, "insider's" point of view. What perspective is the anthropologist using?

An anthropologist publishes their book about their fieldwork in Morocco. The anthropologist interviewed many people in the field and publishes much of those raw interviews as part of the text in each chapter. Why is this a polyvocal approach?

Discuss Horace Miner's article "Body Rituals among the Nacirema." What is the subject of the ethnography? What was Miner's purpose in writing it, and how did he approach that purpose?

Explain why ethnography is considered both a science and an art.

What do anthropologists call community members who guide, advise, and teach the ethnographer during fieldwork?

What is one of the typical first steps taken during the planning stages of a fieldwork project?

Why is fieldwork often considered a rite of passage for students?

What was Nancy Scheper-Hughes's role in Alto do Cruzeiro when she first arrived there?

What is the significant difference between quantitative and qualitative data?