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Introduction to Social Anthropology B

Lecture 2

Participant Observation

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Participant Observation Last week: Unity and diversity, culture, fieldwork, problem of taking the

voice of the other.Relevant reading on history of anthropology• Eriksen, E.T. (2001, 2nd ed.), Small places, large issues: an

introduction to social and cultural anthropology, London: Pluto Press. Chapter 1.

Relevant reading on the problems of ethnography and the practice of anthropology

• Metcalf, Peter 2002 They Lie, We Lie: Getting on with Anthropology• Kelly, Patty 2004 “Awkward Intimacies: Prostitution, Politics and

Fieldwork in Urban Mexico,” pp. 3-17 in Hume and Mulcock 2004 Anthropologists in the Field: Cases in Participant Observation

Relevant reading on validity and authenticity of ethnographic accounts• Paula Saukko Doing Research in Cultural Studies Chap 1.

http://www.sagepub.co.uk/upm-data/9423_010044ch1.pdf

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Why choose the method of participant observation?

• The study of ‘other’ cultures

• Verstehen

• Exploration

“Asking the questions that I would not otherwise have thought of”

• Giving a voice to the ‘other’ – research ‘with’ rather than research ‘on’.

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Who to study?

• Going to the mountains and wilderness

• Social isolates

• Permissions and possible sites

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My own fieldwork sites

• Finnevarra - County Clare

• St Maurice - Val d’Aosta

• Old people’s home in Teignmouth

• Stari ludi - Bosnia

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County Clare 1966

• The rural West of Ireland in the 1960s was amongst the poorest parts of Europe.

• Now the Celtic tiger but at the time it was an area which had seen massive out-migration since the Irish famine

• In the 1950 and 60s many Irish people of both sexes moved to English cities and manual occupations.

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• Irish identity is constructed in opposition to English identity.

• Irish nationalist intellectuals who drew on Irish history – Gaelic in its Irish form and the stories legends and cultural forms.

• A folk tradition of the rural poor, drawn upon by the cultural entrepreneurs but was also informed by the nationalist revival.

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Tommy Fahey• A single man unmarried in his late fifties. By local reputation

a very bad farmer because he drank but mostly because he was inattentive to his farm. He much preferred touring local hostelries to sing and perform his music. His music was nothing special, the local popular songs, a mixture of music hall ballads, country music and traditional songs sung unaccompanied

• But the place and the family name are identified with providing the minstrels to the kings of Connaught . Thus this ageing man, who failed to marry or to work his farm properly in marginal agriculture in a backward region was able to create an identity which placed himself in an ancient and revered tradition of Irishness.

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Mary Daley

• I made a cultural error of a stranger. I said, you feel sad when your children have to go. Making the assumption that was obvious to an outsider, all the children left first to secondary school then to work in England. It almost reduced her to tears, no she said they won’t have to go.

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Val d'Aosta in 1970/1

• St Maurice was 500 people amongst the highest continuously inhabited villages in Europe. They were transhumant dairy farmers - making a cheese called Fontina. The local everyday language was a distinctive dialect which has also become a symbol of local identity.

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• The elite and the landless poor left the rural areas while only the middle peasants, attached to the village by their ownership of land stayed behind. As the 20C progressed land lost its value, the successful members of the village elite educated their children who subsequently left to find professional employment.

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• Mademoiselle A, taught me to speak Valdotain. She had emigrated to American with her father where she lived until she was twelve. She had been the school teacher but was now retired in her late sixties. He was very religious, and almost a recluse. She lived on her own in an enormous house. She lived in a house she could not afford to maintain and indeed was partial derelict, where it was both impractical and below her station to maintain herself. Large prestige house of previous generation now a liability, successful middle farmers building their own new modern houses. Joseph A. He was an old widower, a fit eighty year old. He also lived in large house in a different hamlet, although his property was partially let to an active farmer. He was also very isolated socially (partly for reason I outline below) but nevertheless well off by the standards of local older people because of a first world war American veterans pension.

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Reciprocity and isolation

• There was an ethic of ‘competitive equality’. People strove to avoid putting themselves in superior or inferior positions to others.

• They had elaborate institutions of turn taking to avoid invidious notions of precedent.

• Important all favours where asked for not proffered, to avoid giving the potential for insult.

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Local knowledge

• Traditional knowledge in a globalising world is being lost but some still value it and can be a source of status and self identity. Skills and knowledge of a good fruitier, could command by local standards good wages.. The shop keeper in chief-lieu also doubled as the local midwife.

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Bosnia 1990

With Zeljka Mudrovcic, I conducted interviews with 36 people and with members of the administration of the community in which they were living. We asked this sample of elderly people to recount their personal histories.

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• Yugoslav policy to encourage labour migration. Many Bosnians went to work in Germany to participate in 1960/70s growth as gastarbieters. The Bosnia economy was supported by a large volume of Deutchmark remittances, and indeed the Mark was the effective currency of the area in times of economic crisis. There was considerable circulatory and return migration. There are major differences between urban and rural Bosnia. The standard of living decreased and dependence on agriculture and remittances increased the further away from Sarajevo that you went. Welfare was enterprise/industry based or for ‘partizans’.

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• Some informants had grown up in families twenty or thirty strong. Crucially the senior women were in charge and its was daughters in law who were the workforce. It is daughters in law who most dislike the extended family obligations. So although she could say that her son was ‘good to me’, and the household was economically sound, the loss of expectations by an older woman that she should be in charge of large households with many female hands for the domestic activity, expresses itself in a feeling of loss.

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A Croat women in her late sixties proudly showed us her skill as a weaver. She had a large handloom in a room in her home and spun, dyed and wove local wool. She was concerned that these skills were being lost, that the young people did not value them. Without tourism or a folk revival movement such skills although they can provide meaningful identities for some older people seem destined to be lost.

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Finding a site - Alternative priorities

• survey• comparison• case study• typical case• extreme case• community• sub-culture• occupation• institution

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Gaining access

• Sponsors and gatekeepers

• Negotiating and establishing an acceptable role

• age, gender,

• visibility

• role of the stranger

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• Learning the language

• Immersion

• Socialisation

• Culture shock

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Collecting data• What constitutes data?• being selective, organising time• sensitive to the situation• self-aware• observation• public and outdoor life• domestic and private life• use of informants• well informed informant• participation

Making mistakes, difficult and problematic situations

• [Kelly, Patty 2004 “Awkward Intimacies: Prostitution, Politics and Fieldwork in Urban Mexico,” pp. 3-17 in Hume and Mulcock 2004 ]

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Ethnography as social science or travellers tales?

• What is the ‘truth’ in terms of ethnographic description?

• Reliability

• Validity

• authenticity - thick description (Clifford Geertz)

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Making sense of the experience

• Translating one culture in terms of another.

• artistic and imaginative achievement (metaphor)

• dominant cultural assumptions form context of translation – c.f. noble savage / primitive peoples

• mode of communication - academic paper, thesis, ethnographic film, novel

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Moral and philosophical issues

• Involvement and detachment, going native and other ethical dilemmas

• Ethnographies tell you about the ethnographer (Rabinow, Paul. 1977 Reflections on

fieldwork in Morocco.)

• What responsibilities do ethnographers have to their subjects?