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Collaborative Ethnography: Luke Eric Lassiter Receives Margaret Mead Anthropology Award

Published on October 29, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, development empowerment, fieldwork / methods, persons and theories

Anthropology professor Luke Eric Lassiter has received the 2005 Margaret Mead Award from the American Anthropological Association and the Society for Applied Anthropology. The Margaret Mead Award celebrates the tradition of bringing anthropology to bear on wider social and cultural issues. Lassiter received the award in part for his book, The Other Side of Middletown: Exploring Muncie’s African American Community as well as for his explorations of race relations and collaborative, community-based research and writing, according to Huntington News.

On his website, Lassiter explains the concept of Collaborative Ethnography. In his opinion, Collaboratice Ethnography is “among the most powerful ways to advance a more relevant and public scholarship”. Collaborative Ethnography, he explains,

(…) seeks to make collaboration an explicit and deliberate part of not only fieldwork but also part of the writing process itself. Community collaborators thus become a central part of the construction of ethnographic texts — which shifts their role from “informants” (who merely inform the knowledge on which ethnographies are based) to “consultants” (who co-interpret culture and its representation along with the ethnographer).

(…)

Such an approach also shifts the role of ethnographers: they are no longer the sole authorities on culture, but facilitators who use their skills to address community-centered questions and issues.

Lessiter has published extensively on this subject. Five articles on collaborative ethnography and public anthropology are available as pdf-documents on his website.

Ethnographic research on Friendster’s online communities

Published on October 26, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, cyberanthropology, fieldwork / methods, internet, journal articles / papers, Us and Them

In her most recent post, Danah Boyd gives us a round-up of her publications on Friendster, a popular social networking service where she has conducted ethnographic research. Among others, she studied how people publicly perform their social relations online. Most of her papers are available as pdf-documents >> read Danah Boyd’s round-up

The State of the Art of Qualitative and Ethnographic Research in Europe

Published on October 5, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, fieldwork / methods, journal articles / papers

Just a short note on the new issue of Forum Qualitatice Social Research FQS 6(3) focusing on the “state of the art” of qualitative research in Europe, including ethnography. Tons of interesting (looking) articles, impossible to list here. Strangely enough, many articles on ethnography are written by sociologists, they even talk about sociological ethnography >> continue to FQS 6(3)

Just a short note on the new issue of Forum Qualitatice Social Research FQS 6(3) focusing on the "state of the art" of qualitative research in Europe, including ethnography. Tons of interesting (looking) articles, impossible to list here. Strangely enough,…

Ethnic hybridity within identity politics: Thesis on Being A Nobel Savage in Brazil

Published on September 29, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, fieldwork / methods, indigenous people / minorities, journal articles / papers, Latin- and Central America, Native American, poverty

Interesting thesis in social anthropology by Knut Olav Krohn Lakså. The thesis has recently been published in the Digital Library at the University of Oslo

Knut Olav Krohn Lakså conducted fieldwork among the Pataxó Indians in Brazil. He wanted to see how indigenous groups use their ethnic identity as a political resource. He found many paradoxes: In order to be acknowledged as an Indian with certain rights, it is necessary to adapt to an enchanted romanticism of themselves as The Other in which they are portrayed as The Noble Savage, he writes:

For instance, at every meeting with IBAMA or FUNAI officials, the Pataxó were always careful to wear feathers, painting or other traditional outfits such as loincloth.

This performance hasn’t much with the Indians’ needs in common, he shows:

The Pataxó’s main problems are that they are poor, unemployed and stigmatized. (…) The Pataxó themselves are mainly concerned with everyday challenges. They want to feed their families. They want their children to grow up. They want a school and they want money. In short, they want to change their social position to achieve material goods — something quite the opposite of what the Western World wants from the Noble Savage.

>> download the whole thesis “Ethnic Hybridity Within Identity Politics. Being Indian and the Struggle for Land and Acknowledgement among the Pataxó in Bahia, Brazil (pdf, 3,4MB )

PS: A good illustration for “acting Nobel Savage” might be this website by Aboriginal Planet

Interesting thesis in social anthropology by Knut Olav Krohn Lakså. The thesis has recently been published in the Digital Library at the University of Oslo

Knut Olav Krohn Lakså conducted fieldwork among the Pataxó Indians in Brazil. He wanted to see…

“Knowledge of the bigger context is crucial for successful fieldwork”

Published on September 29, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Europe, fieldwork / methods

Wolfgang “Anthronaut” Wohlwend has returned from his two month fieldwork in a warehouse in Istanbul. He summarizes some of his experience with short-time fieldwork and gives us the advice: “Start at the general and go into the specific!”:

Two months are a very short period of time. The first half of this period I spent on becoming acclimatized to either climate, language and culture which numbed my senses to a big extent. When my senses awoke again in the remaining two weeks in the warehouse and another two weeks travelling in Turkey were simply not enough to build up anything sensible.

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What I was doing – participatory observation in a small scale enterprise – over two months can in my opinion only be succesful, when one knows the “bigger context”, i.e. the cultural frameworks, from general to specific, where the people working there move in.

(…)

On my small trip around Turkey, I had the impression, that I gathered much more insights and observations than in all the six weeks before. So I conclude, that one should do it exactly the other way round – Get to know the culture, then study the enterprise. Start at the general and go into the specific.

>> read the whole post

PS: Strangely enough I haven’t mentioned this blog earlier here (it has been part of the anthro-newspaper for a while, though), I really enjoyed following his fieldwork, many well written posts!

Wolfgang "Anthronaut" Wohlwend has returned from his two month fieldwork in a warehouse in Istanbul. He summarizes some of his experience with short-time fieldwork and gives us the advice: "Start at the general and go into the specific!":

Two months are…