Chapter2 Flashcards
Define the Hawthorne Effect
- When people modify some aspect of their behavior simply in response to the fact that they are being studied.
- when people modify their responses or behavior in ways that they believe conform to observers expectations.
Who is Bronislaw Malinowski?
He was one of the first anthropologists to describe himself as avowdely scientific in his approach to ethnographic research
- He claimed his study set a new high standard for objectivity.
- Wrote a 500 page essay of three years of fieldwork titled, Argonauts of the Western Pacific
Who is Michel Foucault?
- Claimed scientific knowledge is primarily a discourse of power, a way in which bureaucracies, corporations, and other institutions exert control over others.
- Claims that in practice those institutions claiming a command of scientific knowledge in turn employ that discourse to justify their control over other members of society.
- Those that control the flow of knowledge have power over those that do not, their voice is more important.
Define positivism
- the workings of a society according to general laws that could be identified through scientific observation.
- social scientists views over the perspectives of those they study is intrinsic to anthropology.
Who is Auguste Comte?
He coined the term positivism as an attempt to explain the workings of the society according to general laws that could be identified through scientific observation.
-Creating general laws to account for the workings of the universe could provide models for understanding human behavior.
Describe the difference between etic and emic
The etic point of view (that of an objective scientific observer) are more systematic, coherent, and logical than explanations base on an emic point of view, or how native people explain their own behavior.
Describe “omniscent third-person”
- A narrative style that avoids writing themselves into the story.
- Postmodernists believe that an honest ethnographer should abandon the omniscient third person narrative style and write themselves into the story by using the first person noun “I”.
- Writing it like your’e every where at once.
Describe reflexivity
- the ways that cultural practices involve consciousness and commentary on themselves.
- Therefore, postmodernists believe researchers can do this by abandoning the omniscent third person and include “I” in their accounts.
Describe epistemological relativism
the view that knowledge (and/or truth or justification) is relative – to time, to place, to society, to culture, to historical epoch, to conceptual scheme or framework
Describe “crisis of representation”
the result of an uneasy interplay of two projects in anthropology: first, ethonography ‘s commitment to a systematic (if gradual, or partial) description of given cultural and social units; and second, anthropology ‘s chronic dream (somewhat shattered lately) of discovering an encompassing totality.
Describe “functionalism”
Developed by Bronislaw Malinowski, Functionalism is holistic in the sense that all cultural traits are functionally interrelated and form an integrated social whole.
-It wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t required to function
Positivism
The philosophy that science is unbiased and objective information, it doesn’t matter who the investigator is.
-There is a level of truth out there that is unbiased.
Emic
- how it looks to the insider, how they interpret it
- Insider view
- Ex:// Cows have 2000 souls in them
Etic
- Implies that you are applying scientific standards to other peoples “stuff”
- Scientific view
Describe Privilege and silencing
-Highly correlated
-When racial, gender, religious, or class will insulate themselves in society influencing privilege for some which results in silencing of those less privileged.
Ex:// White privilege
