Lecture 3 ARM Flashcards
(23 cards)
Seeing - how we create the objects we study
Using methods, you create a world as you interpret this through your writing -
Tension between being a scientist and how we claim authority
The study of others - both yourself as the other, and studying others than your own “kind”
Ethnography as study of others
Ethnography is supposed to, and can, “document sociocultural structures, processes and situations, as existing independently of the researcher”
The Savage Slot
Trouillot - decolonial perspective.
Anthropology reproduces a modernist dualism - between “the civilized, enlightened west” and “the rest”
Anthro occupy the “savage slot” as we were given the task from studying others than ourselves
But also study the “other “savages””
US vs THEM
HEREvs THERE
Orientalism (Edward Said)
The study of the exotic East seen as inferior to the superior West
Subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arab or Islamic people (East of Greece + North Africa)
The other as foil (Orientalism in social sciences)
1.Oriental despotism (Aristotle, Marx, Wittfogel) - “Orientals” are ruled by tyrannical leaders, but are also “naturally” submissive to these leaders. The only free is the despot.
2. Asiatic mode of production (Marx) - feudal govt system, cenralized power around despot, (no “freedom”) justification for Western colonialism
3. Yellow peril - derogatory term, against Asian immigrants’ skin colour
Evolutionism in anthropology
-stemming from social Darwinism - taken up and translated to the cultural world.
- some societies were considered “primitive” than others - they were a few steps back in time, our past, why we studied them
- possiblity of cross-cultural comparison
= social evolutionism
Imagined and pictured geographies of others
Cataloguing people of different places
Culture
Culture as a complex whole including knowledge, belief, art, law habits etc acquired by man as a member of society
Critique - cultures seen as bounded
Ethnography as knowledge of colonized others
- Directly and indirectly tied to colonialism
- Funded by colonial powers
- Dependent of colonial powers for access
- Gathering knowledge to bettering rule of these groups
- Not a state, bureaucracy etc - how do these societies then function?
Japanese imperalism
Japan had a massive colonial empire
- advocating pan-Asianism
- logic different than European as it was more of a racialized hierarchy of all asians, other asian states should look up to Japan - otherwise be colonised by the British or others
Guilt and Shame cultures
- gather political knowledge by learning from the enemy
- Ruth Benedict - US war information
- never went to Japan but talking to Japanese in concentration camps
- Japan is a culture of honor and shame (and cruel) vs US as a culture of innocent and guilt
- Started area studies - fudnig of studying knowledge of different societies to yeah understand the enemy
The role of the other (four points)
- Socially and historically constructed
- We produce the other as a mirror to the self - as something external to us (Western, modern, scientific, urban, knowing, enlightened)
- Others are thus different from “us” both geographically and socially
- We need the other to complete the self
The field - other related to this
- Here vs there
- Distance and separation between “fieldsite” and “home”
- Denies connection and movement of here and there
The “native’s” point of view?
Not suppose to overidentity with natives.
They will never see you as one of them
Just find out what the hell they are doing and their understanding of it
Functions of research (four points)
- Contextual (what is the nature of…)
- Explanatory (what factors influence…)
- Evaluative (how have affected - looking backward)
- Generative (forward looking - contribution to…)
Topics of ethnographic research
1.Looking for specificity (for people in places), micro-scale
2. Relational - gather data through relationships
3. Specificity vs representativeness
4. New insights - making the familiar strange and strange familiar
How to approach topic of research (three steps)
- Curiosity
- Be aware of own ignorance
- Have a “beginner’s” mind
Witchcraft among Azande
- Ways of distributing responsibilities of social misfortune
- Witches are those whose behaviour is least in accordance with social demands - socially disciplining effect
- Normative force
PREVIOUS: belief - it was allocated to belief, religion, spiritualness based on European biases - but it is about social normativity
Puzzle
A research problem is a puzzle - what do i not understand? how to combine
- your ignorance
- curiosity
- the puzzle of social beahviour
- outsider /insider
- why are they doing what they are doing?????
Research objects
The particular thing you will study
Must be
- bounded (to make it have an end) and specific
- feasible
- ethical
- created
How do we make resarch objects?
- Curiosity
- Ignorance
3.Puzzlement
Making it feasible
1 - who will be studied
2 - where will i study
3 - can i get access?
4 - when will i do the research
5 - what is my timeline
what are the existing perspectives on the topic?
Creating research objects
Putting together
- people
- practices
- structures
- ideas
