John Burgess

Writing Assignment #1

Due: September 29, 2013

Ethnography: How to be, and where to be

To understand another culture one must not only strive to understand them through

observation but one must take the next step and become a member of the society to truly

understand the culture. Living, eating, speaking, and learning the ways of a people can

especially make it easier for culture contact to have a positive outcome versus the other, more

exploitive type of contact. Ethnographic research has been heralded as anthropology’s oldest

and more important disciplines, since its humble start in the 1870’s anthropologists made their

way onto every piece of land and into every society that modern societies have infiltrated.

Throughout the years of research, fieldwork and documentation ethnography has moved and

evolved as the needs and demands of modern society dictate. Starting with imperialism

through colonialism all the way to modern day globalization ethnographers have made it their

mission to understand traditional or native peoples and to document and exercise their art in

creating ways for culture contact to not take on negative connotations. They strive to make the

most peaceable and understanding interactions of people, whether they are the Bushman of

Botswana or the Eskimo people of North America. However peaceful emissaries and the like

have often turned in information that ultimately leads to the destruction of cultures or the

diminishment of an older society to even the extinction of a whole way of life. Ethnographic

studies have been paramount in revitalizing societies and in the very least studying and perhaps

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the preservation of artifacts and language to place a monument in the annals of history that are

not long forgotten.

Anthropologists have not always had a framework, or guideline in which they can base

their studies or even their actions upon. As anthropology first emerged in the 1870’s it was

difficult for the early pioneers to understand and calculate traditional peoples, often referring

to them as primitive due to their nature of living, however this ethnocentric view lead to many

of sub-disciplines within anthropology today. Chief amongst them is the idea of the salvage, or

urgent anthropology; a way for anthropologists to attempt in many ways to save and revitalize

a culture thought to be in danger of disappearing forever. Through documentation,

anthropologists have been able to save many cultures from total extinction, and through hard

work preservation is alive and well. Not often were the needs of traditional people taken into

account by early settlers or companies pursuing their own greed or expansion by rights of

conquest. Many times when the culture contact would happen, traditional peoples were swept

under the rug, by violence, force or coercion, known as colonialism to most. While

technologically more advanced than the territories they had entered, European interests were

not indebted to the people already living there, and if fact were a great source of labor, leading

to “Government-sponsored programs designed to compel tribal communities or ethnic

minorities to abandon their ancestral culture for those of the controlling society” (Haviland,

Prins, McBride, Walrath, Cultural Anthropology, 47). This style of acculturation has led to many

traditional people becoming displaced, living in poverty and often times becoming desperate

dregs being shunned by modern society, lacking an identity. In 1932, Margaret Mead a leading

anthropologist, particularly in the area of ethnography sought out the Omaha Indians of

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Nebraska to study the community breakdown and the loss of traditional values due to the

encroachment of the United States. Her work, which inspired many other anthropologists to

study acculturation leading to outstanding works documenting and understanding how culture

change happens.

Throughout the historically short life in anthropology many have done fieldwork in

traditional societies, however during the 1930’s and into the Cold War era many westerners

were being shunned from places that had previously been havens for anthropologist’s

fieldwork. It was a dawn of a new era, post-Great War Europe had a political powder keg on its

hands, the world’s markets were collapsing and people everywhere were suffering. Margaret

Mead once again led a new charge for ethnography; along with her close friend and peer Ruth

Benedict began to study cultures from a distance, especially during World War II. They had

begun a new era that would lead to many governments becoming more keenly interested in

the field of anthropology than before, where it had been seen as sort of an explorers dream, or

a museum’s folly; a quest for knowledge. They had begun to study the “enemies” newspaper,

literature, photographs and even popular films that might promote an idea of a nation’s

character, or predisposition, something warring nations could use to their advantage, on and

off the battlefield. By the end of the war this practice would shape the next era of

ethnography, which was to include the study of contemporary state societies, especially the

larger super powers of the time. Hortense Powdermaker, an anthropologist who first studied

islanders had come home in search of a new issue that might be better understood and solved

was segregation which was alive and well in the United States during the 1930’s and well into

the 1950’s. Powdermaker was able to make the connection of “…the importance of the mass

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media in shaping people’s worldviews” (Haviland, Prins, McBride, Walrath, Cultural

Anthropology, 49). By the end of World War II many other anthropologists had begun studying

large-scale societies convincing many nations and even the UN that anthropologists work could

greatly benefit the advancement of all peoples and all cultures worldwide.

As anthropology has aged throughout the years so has the discipline of ethnography, it

has changed and morphed into much more than simply recovering artifacts and cataloguing

people into context. It has been used worldwide over and over again to solve problems,

understand cultural differences and help smooth out the rough edges of cultural contact. As the

discipline has become more refined so have the methods in which to conduct the research,

even fieldwork has a blueprint that can lead to a basic understanding or even a deep

understanding of an idea or culture previously unknown to modern societies. Beginning with

the most basic of just asking questions in a free form method, to the more formal interviews of

setting aside time anthropologists learn much from just speaking with the people whose culture

they wish to study. Spatial mapping and geographical oddities are part of an anthropologists

toolkit, “Even if cartographers have mapped the region, standard maps seldom show

geographic and spatial features that are culturally significant to the people living there”

(Haviland, Prins, McBride, Walrath, Cultural Anthropology, 57). Modern technology, especially

the advent of the GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) system, which can anywhere in the world

give you precise, uniform coordinates to track your position or even the migratory patterns of

Afghan nomadic tribes. The most significant of the techniques might be that of the using film,

both still and video have advanced so much since the early years of the 20 th century. With

digital cameras, and flash drive devices the amount of data that can be collected through video

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and sound is insurmountable, entire dialects can be recorded live while the person who tells

their tale can be on the screen at the same time proving time and time again to be an

indispensable aspect of anthropology, especially the field of ethnography.

A vast wilderness in South America, the concrete jungle of Los Angeles, the bush of

Botswana, to the sweet warm tropics of the Pacific ocean anthropologists have found

themselves covering the world from corner to another in search of the next great culture, and

through ethnography the ideas and history of traditional and contemporary societies may never

be forgotten. The works of early ethnographers like Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict to the

more contemporary works of Powdermaker and Malinowski to the UN’s leading expert Alfred

Metraux ethnography is ever expanding. There never seems to be any shortage of problems, in

both modern and traditional societies that anthropologists are unwilling to get involved with

and get down and dirty with the culture in question. They have perchance changed the outlook

for many traditional people through the work of Rodolfo Stavenhagen, the UN’s Special

Rapporteur on advocacy anthropology, wherein the anthropologists takes a stand and

politically charged one at that to preserve or advance the rights of a group or culture.

Ethnography is held to a higher standard, it is both innovative and preservative, it aims to help,

educate, benefit and build upon itself. One cannot just photograph a culture to understand it,

living with the people is not enough, if ethnography is to work the anthropologist must be

willing to fully embed themselves with their work and understand that they may have to work

quickly, diligently and methodically to acquire the desired results. In doing so, one will have no

other choice but to become one of us and endure ethnography to continue anthropologists

unending work.