Deck 3: What Is Ethnographic Fieldwork

Question 1

What did Roger Lancaster learn from the confrontation he experienced in the "popular store"?

A) He had been accepted as a part of the neighborhood.
B) He had neglected to inform enough people about his project.
C) Anthropologists are observed even when they are not aware of it.
D) Anthropology is a dangerous profession.

Answer 1

C

Question 2

The ethnographic research method that relies primarily on face-to-face contact with people as they go about their daily lives is called

A) Controlled comparison.
B) Interviewing.
C) Scientific observation.
D) Participant-observation.

Answer 2

D

Question 3

An extended period of research during which an anthropologist gathers firsthand data about life in a particular society is called

A) Fieldwork.
B) Graduate school.
C) Scientific observation.
D) Controlled comparison.

Answer 3

A

Question 4

Which of the following research methods is NOT used by cultural anthropologists?

A) Archival and library research.
B) Psychological testing.
C) Questionnaire administration.
D) All of the above are used.

Question 5

Which of the following is involved in deciding where an anthropologist will do his or her fieldwork?

A) Intellectual debates in anthropology.
B) Whether visas and research clearances are available in a specific country.
C) The interests of funding agencies.
D) All of the above.

Question 6

Cultural anthropological fieldwork is

A) Not always done in a non-Western society.
B) Responsible for the majority of anthropological knowledge.
C) A collaborative effort on the part of both anthropologist and informant.
D) All of the above.

Question 7

According to the text, different traditions of anthropological research are

A) Helping to create a decolonized anthropology.
B) Driving the field apart.
C) Emphasizing national differences in anthropological research.
D) Taking anthropologists away from field research.

Question 8

The jolt that often accompanies an encounter with cultural practices that are unexpected and unfamiliar is called

A) Participant-observation.
B) Fieldwork.
C) Dialogue.
D) Culture shock.

Question 9

The text suggests that fieldwork and culture shock are related in which of the following ways?

A) Fieldwork permits culture shock to be avoided.
B) Fieldwork institutionalizes culture shock.
C) Culture shock makes cross-cultural learning difficult.
D) Culture shock distorts the data gathered through fieldwork.

Question 10

The people who become a cultural anthropologist's key informants tend to be

A) The equivalent of college professors in their own society.
B) The busiest people in the society, because they know the most.
C) People who are rather marginal in the society.
D) Outcasts.

Question 11

Which of the following statements describes the kinds of people who tend to become an anthropologist's key informants?

A) They can figure out how to answer the questions that anthropologists are asking.
B) They tend to be rather marginal in their own societies.
C) They have the ability to explain even the most obvious things to a foreigner in a variety of ways.
D) All of the above are true.

Question 12

How do anthropologists obtain funding for their research?

A) They pay for it themselves.
B) They get research grants from private agencies.
C) They get research grants from governmental agencies.
D) All of the above are true.

Question 13

Which of the following is NOT an approach to ethnographic fieldwork?

A) The positivist approach.
B) The reflexive approach.
C) The multisited approach.
D) All of the above are approaches to ethnographic fieldwork.

Question 14

Which of the following is a principle of positivist science?

A) Reality can be known through the five senses.
B) A single scientific method can be used to investigate any domain of reality.
C) Facts and values are separate from one another.
D) All of the above are true.

Question 15

Positivists accept that

A) Reality can be known through the five senses.
B) It is necessary to be sensitive to the way things ought to be and not just they way things are.
C) Human beings are significantly different from other kinds of natural phenomena.
D) All of the above are true.

Question 16

The belief that facts and values have nothing to do with each other is a principle of

A) Positivism.
B) Anthropology.
C) Intersubjectivity.
D) Coevolutionary theory.

Question 17

The production of objective knowledge about reality that is absolute and true for all times and places is a goal of

A) Anthropology.
B) Intersubjectivity.
C) Positivism.
D) Fieldwork.

Question 18

According to the text, anthropological knowledge is

A) Subjective.
B) Objective.
C) Intersubjective.
D) True.

Question 19

Which of the following pairs of anthropologists did fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands?

A) Evans-Pritchard and Hutchinson.
B) Kumar and Valentine.
C) Rabinow and Briggs.
D) Weiner and Malinowski.

Question 20

According to the text, all anthropological knowledge is a product of the dialectic between observation and

A) Ethnocentrism.
B) Reflection.
C) Science.
D) Subjectivity.

Question 21

The subject matter of the social sciences differs in what major respect from the subject matter of the physical sciences?

A) It involves human beings who belong to the same species (and possibly the same society) as the scientists themselves.
B) Social scientific facts are separate from social values.
C) Physical scientists can capture objective samples of reality, whereas social scientists cannot.
D) People cannot be studied; they can only be understood.

Question 22

According to the text, what keeps cultural anthropology from being one person's subjective impressions of other people?

A) The fact that fieldwork is a dialogue.
B) The fact that anthropology is a science.
C) The fact that anthropologists are trained to avoid ethnocentrism.
D) Nothing; that is what cultural anthropology is.

Question 23

The term anthropologists conventionally use to refer to the people in the culture from whom they gather data is

A) Associates.
B) Informers.
C) Informants.
D) Intersubjects.

Question 24

Recognizing the humanity of one's informants has nothing to do with trying to come up with a subjective, imaginative impression of what it must be like to live their lives. This is because

A) Informants do not have inner lives.
B) Such imaginative effort is solitary, whereas fieldwork is a dialogue.
C) Objectivity requires anthropologists to avoid identifying with their informants.
D) Getting your informants' opinions about things contaminates the data.

Question 25

Reflexivity is

A) An automatic response.
B) A key principle of positivist science.
C) The outcome of objective observation and dispassionate analysis.
D) Thinking about thinking.

Question 26

"Situated knowledge" is knowledge that includes explicit information about

A) How the researcher made sure that only the best possible informants were relied on as sources of information.
B) How the researcher's data will produce useful knowledge guaranteed to help people with specific problems.
C) The sociocultural background and commitments of researchers and their informants.
D) The research methodologies the researcher has used.

Question 27

In her published ethnography, the anthropologist Bettylou Valentine states her own conclusions, but she also allows her informants a voice, permitting them, in a final chapter, to state where and why they disagree with her. Such an ethnography is

A) An example of incomplete analysis.
B) An example of reflexive analysis.
C) A vivid experience of the open-endedness of the dialogue between anthropologist and informant.
D) Both b and c

Question 28

Hermeneutics means

A) Interpretation.
B) Objectivity.
C) Translation.
D) Fieldwork.

Question 29

According to Paul Rabinow, the comprehension of the cultural self by the detour of the comprehension of the cultural other

A) Is the central problem of interpretation in the fieldwork context.
B) Leads anthropologist and informant to enter into the dialectic of fieldwork.
C) Can produce cross-cultural facts.
D) Is all of the above.

Question 30

According to the text, even if anthropologist and informants are from very different cultures with different languages, what do they share?

A) A common humanity.
B) The fieldwork situation.
C) An understanding of each others' motives.
D) Nothing.

Question 31

When early anthropologists tried to test their hypotheses in a series of different cultural settings, in an attempt to approximate the laboratory conditions of a positivist scientist, they were employing

A) Statistical sampling.
B) The dialectic of fieldwork.
C) The method of controlled comparison.
D) None of the above.

Question 32

The dialectic of fieldwork refers to the

A) Personal and financial connection between the anthropologist and the informants.
B) Anthropologist's knowledge that he or she will return home while the informants must stay.
C) Mutual construction of cross-cultural knowledge about the informant's culture by anthropologist and informant together.
D) Gradual discovery of the truth about a society through the anthropologist's careful research.

Question 33

The dialectic of fieldwork leads to the construction and growth of cultural anthropological knowledge because

A) Good anthropologists are always fluent in the language of their informants.
B) Both anthropologist and informant are active agents.
C) Key informants are usually bicultural.
D) The informant is always right.

Question 34

According to Arjun Appadurai, the advantage(s) of collaborative approaches that involve anthropologists and such colleagues as grassroots activists could be

A) A new conversation about research.
B) New ideas about what counts as new knowledge.
C) How to measure the researcher's accountability to the people among whom he or she works.
D) All of the above.

Question 35

In the text, Arjun Appadurai calls for collaborative approaches that would include anthropologists and

A) Grassroots activists.
B) Local bureaucrats.
C) National intellectuals.
D) Marketing researchers.

Question 36

"Rich points," Michael Agar's expression discussed in the text, are

A) Cases with many different meanings.
B) Places where the anthropologist must pay more for information because it is so sensitive.
C) Moments when the anthropologist's informants finally figure out the questions being asked.
D) Unexpected moments when problems in cross-cultural understanding emerge.

Question 37

As related in the text, Daniel Bradburd and Anne Sheedy learned about the decision making among the Komachi by

A) Participating proactively in the Komachi decision-making process.
B) Asking people how they made decisions.
C) Drawing conclusions based on Komachi responses to their questions and interpretations.
D) Studying the astronomical constellations recognized by the Komachi.

Question 38

The work of Daniel Bradburd and Anne Sheedy, discussed in the text, illustrates the fieldwork process of

A) Translation.
B) Participant-observation.
C) Archival research.
D) Both a and b

Question 39

The questions that anthropologists ask in the field are determined by

A) Their informants.
B) The field situation itself.
C) The discipline of anthropology.
D) All of the above.

Question 40

The difficulties faced by Nita Kumar in her fieldwork in Banaras were in part a result of

A) Her British accent.
B) Being Indian.
C) Being a foreigner.
D) Knowing too much about the weavers with whom she wished to work.

Question 41

Which of the following was NOT a way in which Nita Kumar was removed from the people of Banaras with whom she worked?

A) Age.
B) Education and upbringing.
C) Language.
D) Region.

Question 42

According to the text, an unwritten but questionable rule of thumb for fieldworkers is

A) That the informant is always right.
B) To never become romantically involved.
C) To never work on Sunday.
D) That questions must be understood by the informants.

Question 43

Eric Luke Lassiter urges that ethnographers go beyond the dialectic of fieldwork to do what?

A) Move in with their informants and become one of them.
B) Recognize that the informants' voices are the only voices that count.
C) Produce collaborative written ethnographic texts in which informants become "co-intellectuals" alongside the trained ethnographer.
D) Abandon ethnographic writing for activism.

Question 44

Eric Luke Lassiter found that for Ralph Kotay, a Kiowa singer with whom he worked, the key issue of concern when it came to writing about Kiowa cultural practices was

A) Whether his name appeared on the ethnographic text as the sole author.
B) Who has control and who has the "last word."
C) How writing about Kiowa culture practices inevitably distorts them.
D) How intrusive ethnographers were, because they wanted information that their informants did not wish to share.

Question 45

Emily Martin carried out a multisited ethnography by following which metaphor?

A) The metaphor of authenticity.
B) The metaphor of flexibility.
C) The metaphor of purity.
D) The metaphor of pollution.

Question 46

Which of the following sites was NOT one of the places where Sawa Kurotani studied the lives of Japanese corporate wives?

A) Tokyo.
B) New York City.
C) The Research Triangle area of North Carolina.
D) A small city in the U.S. Midwest.

Question 47

When Paul Rabinow found that Ibrahim had made up a story about relatives in another city to try to get Rabinow to pay for the trip, he discovered

A) That he could trust no one in Morocco.
B) The shock of otherness.
C) The correctness of his informants.
D) The surprise of pseudo-friendship.

Question 48

What was the consequence of Rabinow's anger toward Ali that prompted him to let Ali out of the car?

A) Ali refused to have any more to do with him.
B) It took Rabinow months of work to reestablish good relations with other Moroccans.
C) After they made up, his relationship with Ali improved.
D) Although he and Ali made up, their relationship had cooled.

Question 49

The differences between the field experiences of Paul Rabinow and those of Jean Briggs illustrate

A) The significance of ruptures of communication in fieldwork.
B) The difficulty of knowing what appropriate behavior in a particular society might be.
C) The importance of local knowledge in field research.
D) All of the above.

Question 50

Field data are the product of long discussions between researcher and informant in which both try to figure out a world that they share. In a word, they are

A) Objective.
B) Subjective.
C) Nonobjective.
D) Intersubjective.

Question 51

When do the facts of anthropology speak for themselves?

A) When anthropologist and informant talk together.
B) When a well-trained anthropologist has spent several months in the field.
C) When they are presented in an anthropological monograph.
D) Never.

Question 52

What role was Jean Briggs pushed to take among the Utku with whom she worked?

A) Activist.
B) Aunt.
C) Daughter.
D) Historian.

Question 53

The Utku were scandalized when Jean Briggs openly expressed her anger to the white fisherman who damaged their canoes because

A) The fisherman had paid for the damage.
B) She was an adopted daughter who had spoken unbidden and in anger.
C) An anthropologist should not attempt to resolve local conflicts.
D) She directed anger toward her own people.

Question 54

Learning about another culture is often greatest

A) Once the anthropologist has been accepted as a member of the group.
B) Once the anthropologist learns to live by the motto "the informant is always right."
C) Following a rupture of communication between anthropologist and informant.
D) Once the anthropologist has learned to avoid culture shock.

Question 55

How do fieldworking anthropologists study disorderly global processes in the contemporary world?

A) They do not; it is impossible.
B) They continue to study small groups of people in one place and how global processes affect them.
C) They follow objects, people, metaphors, or a particular topic from site to site.
D) Both b and c

Question 56

Multisited ethnography focuses on

A) Visiting several different places.
B) Cultural processes that are not contained by geographical boundaries.
C) Visiting the same place several times over a period of several years.
D) The traditional anthropological topics-such as kinship-in large cities.

Question 57

Which of the following is a drawback of multisited ethnography?

A) It can dilute the intensity of involvement with informants.
B) It can create cross-cutting commitments for the anthropologist.
C) It can direct attention to global processes that might otherwise not be relevant.
D) Both a and b

Question 58

According to David Hess, cited in the text, what is a fact?

A) A piece of reality.
B) A taken-for-granted item of common knowledge.
C) What is left when everything is explained.
D) Whatever the anthropologist says it is, after careful research.

Question 59

Fieldwork institutionalizes shock. How does this fact affect the way anthropological knowledge is constructed?

Question 60

Participant-observation is the classic method of anthropological research. Many anthropologists would argue that no proper understanding of another culture can be attained without it. What is so valuable about participant-observation? What would be missed if anthropologists did not engage in it during fieldwork?

Question 61

What kinds of preparations do anthropologists make before going into the field, and why?

Question 62

Give an example of a reflexive experience you might have had, and explain how it affected your views of yourself and your own culture.

Question 63

Facts do not speak for themselves, but must be interpreted. Discuss.

Question 64

What are the advantages and disadvantages of the positivist approach to anthropological research?

Question 65

Compare and contrast the positivist and reflexive approaches to ethnographic research.

Question 66

What are the advantages and drawbacks of multisited field research?

Question 67

In the text, situated knowledge is said to be very important for contemporary ethnographic research. What is situated knowledge? How would your situation affect the kind of field research you might do?

Question 68

Discuss the effects of fieldwork on the informant and on the researcher.

Question 69

Rabinow writes, "There is no primitive, there are only other men leading other lives." What does he mean? What are the implications of such a view for the way anthropologists carry out their research?