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ANTH 3-Cultural Anthropology

Class Project

The Micro-Ethnography

Starting today, you should begin assembling your Project representing your research process, The results of your fieldwork, and your reflections, ideas, or opinions. This project is continual, that is, it will be an “in process, working document,” which should evolve throughout the duration of class. Begin by obtaining a small (1/2-inch) notebook, or begin a journal, or start free-writing; basically, you need a method to use to describe your experiences in a systematic, consistent, organized way. Initially, you should work on identifying a topic, or a problem, or a society or social space that interests you and begin conducting a literature review in the library OR over the Internet.   

Please give me your general topic by 9/25/08.  You must obtain my “OK” to proceed. Keep the returned document for your Project!

You do a literature review by checking out books, periodicals, on-line texts, etc. for related articles that pertain to your topic.  Depending on your topic, this review can be quite large, or very small. You should then write a one- or two-page summary of your literature review as an annotated bibliography where you list the text you read in standard MLA style, and provide a sentence or two as a summary. On this foundation, you should write a research proposal.  This is basically a one- or two- page paper consisting of (a) the problem to be studied, (b) the social context to be investigated, (c) foreseeable difficulties and dangers of completing the project (and ways to ameliorate these aspects of your research), and (d) your proposed ethical method of data collection.

Your literature review and research proposal are due in class on 10/16/08. You must obtain my “OK” to proceed.  Keep the returned document for your Project!

 At this point, you may begin field research by making observations, interviewing people and /or taking notes.  As needed, continue your library or on-line research to “fill-in-the-gaps” in your project. Probably by early November, you should begin to finalize your project by taking the information obtained through your library work and your fieldwork, including your information and observations collected in the field, into a final form. The precise contents of the project will be different for everyone as the research should vary from topic to topic, as well as data collection techniques, and personal style in expression. 

Every Completed Project must include:

·        The original, returned project proposal (1-2 pages max.)

·        The original, returned annotated bibliography / literature review (1-2 pages max.)

·        ALL observation data and /or interview transcripts (will vary.)

·        notebooks and /or journals (will vary.)

·        miscellaneous artifacts, texts, photocopies, print-outs and / or images collected during the research process (will vary considerably.)

·        final ethnographic interpretation (7-10 page ethnographic paper)

Research Projects are due in class on 11/25/08!!

Your Project will be assessed on the basis of the following criteria:

·        the extent of effort you have devoted to all aspects of the Project

·        the application of ethnographic methods

·        the quality of analysis and interpretation of data

·        creativity in research application, data analysis, and writing,

·        over-all presentation of ethnographic paper (expression, structure, spelling, consistency in citations, typing/word-processing, and illustrations, if any).

Other Helpful Stuff:

Anthropology Code of Ethics

AAA Code of Ethics

How to Do Ethnographic Research: A Concise Guide (an excellent site). Go here second!!

Ethnographic Methods

Be sure the sites you choose are reputable sources of information.  How can you tell? Try Perdue University’s Online Writing Lab: Evaluating Sources of Information—it’s long, but full of helpful advice to writers.

Evaluating Sources of Information

For help with MLA citations, try Capital Community College Library:  A Guide for Writing Research Papers Based on Modern Language Association (MLA) Documentation.  This is an excellent resource—again, lengthy.

A Guide for Writing Research Papers

Fieldwork: The Anthropologist in the Field: An excellent site detailing the various aspects of fieldwork by an anthropologist, Laura Zimmer-Tamakoshi who worked among the Gende of New Guinea.

Dr. Laura Zimmer-Tamakoski's 'The Anthropologist in The Field'