ANTH 0780 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Social Stratification, Cultural Anthropology, Animism
Document Summary
Ethnographers strive to establish rapport (a good, friendly working relationship based on personal contact, with their hosts. Key cultural consultants: people who by accident, experience, talent, or training can provide the most complete or useful information about particular aspects of life. Most ethnographers enter the field with a specific problem to investigate, and they collect data relevant to that problem. Emic perspective: concerned with how local people think: focus shifts from local observations, categories, explanations, and interpretations to those of anthropologist (insider perspective) Etic perspective: interpretation given to a cultural event or behavior by the scientific observer (outsider perception) Code of ethics of the american anthropological association: recognizes that anthropologists have obligations to their scholarly field, to the wider society, and to the human species. Participant observation: technique used by ethnographers to work to gain the trust of people in the communities they study so that they can become a part of community life as they study it.