Table Of ContentTHIRD EDITION
FIELD PROJECTS IN
ANTHROPOLOGY
A STUDENT HANDBOOK
JULIA G. CRANE
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
MICHAEL V. ANGROSINO
University of South Florida, Tampa
WAVELAND
PRESS, INC.
Prospect Heights, Illinois
For information about this book, write or call:
Waveland Press, Inc.
P.O. Box 400
Prospect Heights, Illinois 60070
(847) 634-0081
Copyright © 1992, 1984 by Waveland Press, Inc.
ISBN 0-88133-685-8
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means
without permission in writing from the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America
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Contents
Preface v
Acknowledgments viii
Introduction 1
Beginning Fieldwork 13
PROJECT 1 Proxemics 2 3
PROJECT 2 Making Maps 30
PROJECT 3 Charting Kinship 44
PROJECT 4 Interviewing Informants 53
PROJECT 5 Participant Observation 64
PROJECT 6 Collecting Life Histories 75
PROJECT 7 Using Personal Documentation 88
PROJECT 8 Digging into Cultural History 98
PROJECT 9 Analyzing Folklore Content 108
PROJECT 10 Doing Ethnosemantic Research 121
PROJECT 11 Designing a Survey 136
PROJECT 12 Studying Formal Organizations 150
PROJECT 13 lhking Photographs 159
PROJECT 14 Planning a Community Study 179
Index 191
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Preface
Q
ome of our undergraduate students have asked, “How can
I know whether or not I really want to be an anthropologist if
I can’t practice being one?” How indeed? Practicing anthropology
may include many experiences, but fieldwork, in particular, is often
considered a sort of “rite of passage,” a necessary prerequisite for
one to be considered a bona fide anthropologist. We feel it can also
be important for anyone who wants to understand basic concepts
and get a feeling for the anthropological perspective.
Throughout a long period in the development of anthropology,
students who were almost ready to go into the field for their first
large-scale research learned from their major professors some of the
ideas and techniques that had proved useful to them and others with
whom they had worked. On at least some campuses, an aura of
mystery seems to have surrounded this process of learning that
would only take place at the feet of a guru. Even when some courses
on field methods were finally created, most were tailored for
advanced graduate students.
During this period only a handful of books gave any useful
insights. Fortunately, anthropologists have begun to write
insightfully and candidly about their fieldwork experiences in many
ethnographies. It is this spate of new information that has been
invaluable in the writing of this book.
Field Projects in Anthropology is primarily for undergraduates
and for beginning graduate students. It is not intended as a complete
manual of field techniques. Because anthropologists work in many
kinds of situations, in societies that differ greatly from one another,
they must be flexible, often learning in their own particular field
situations a great deal about what avenues of approach to follow,
what questions to ask, what projective tests to use, what kinds of
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vi Preface
photographs to take, what conversations to record —and also what
areas to carefully avoid or delay in exploring. It would, therefore,
be impossible to find agreement among anthropologists that any
particular collection of projects, however chosen, satisfactorily
represented the most basic and essential aspects of field research.
Complete coverage is not our real aim. Rather, our aim is to present
a series of projects that represent some of the most commonly used
data-collection techniques. In carrying out the projects, each student
will learn something about how and when to apply such techniques,
or variants of them, in the field situation.
Students using the projects in this book under the supervision
of their instructors will not merely pick up a few suggestions and
specific facts about fieldwork techniques, but they will experience
the special sense of excitement and personal satisfaction that comes
from having established significant human relationships with others
whose lifeways are different from their own, as well as having
perceptively and carefully gleaned insights into their cultural
perspectives.
The following fourteen projects represent areas of inquiry that
have been traditional foci of anthropological research. For each topic
we suggest a “method” or “data-collecting tool” by which the topic
may profitably be investigated. This is to imply neither that the topic
cannot be investigated by other means nor that the method cannot
be used to investigate other topics. Moreover, it is obvious that no
one research tool is self-sufficient. A good ethnography makes use
of as many such tools as possible to gather a more nearly complete
set of data about the culture being studied.
We believe that in the descriptions of the methods and in the
selected bibliographies for each chapter we have left sufficient
leeway for the student, working under the knowledgeable guidance
of his or her instructor, to experiment, modify, or amplify the method
to suit his or her own research needs. The selected bibliographies
are composed of items that we have found useful in describing the
topic area and in planning the project, but they are not in any way
exhaustive compilations of all extant literature in any of the selected
areas of study. The entries are mainly to be used as initial points
of reference, and they are, for the most part, those works that are
most readily available and most directly relevant to the suggested
projects. The student, on his or her own initiative or under the
direction of the instructor, is encouraged to go beyond these basic
references insofar as time, energy, and research potential permit.
Although we present the projects in what seems to us to be a
logical progression, we realize that the individual instructor must
adapt the format of the book to his or her own particular course
Preface vii
outline. In general, though, the following comments may be of use
in planning course work.
The first four projects are designed so that even a beginning
student in anthropology could reasonably carry them out. Each of
them represents a basic area of field research and would be useful
also as an early project in a more advanced field methods course.
The beginning student can also get a feel for the “how-to” aspects
of anthropology by trying his or her hand at these basic tasks.
Projects 5 through 9 are somewhat more complex in nature. They
require periodic observations or other data-gathering sessions on
the part of the student. Ideally, they should be started fairly early
in the semester to give the student sufficient time to do full justice
to the research.
Projects 10 through 14 can be made as complex or as basic as
the instructor feels appropriate. Each can constitute a short-term
effort, although more advanced students can make them the bases
of more detailed, time-consuming studies. Project 14, in particular,
may be used as a general summation of many methods and
concepts in anthropology in the field.
It should be noted that some of the projects may profitably be done
in tandem; for example, combining the photographic series (Project
13) with the observation of ritual (Project 5). We suggest that the
instructor and student look over the project descriptions at the
beginning of the course in order to be sure of ways in which efforts
may be combined. Where it proves feasible, you may wish to carry
out all or most of the projects with members of a single group.
Although anthropology is a serious scholarly discipline, we feel
that it is also highly enjoyable. We hope that this book will help the
student channel his or her natural curiosity about the customs and
lifestyles of other peoples into anthropology’s scientific framework.
Acknowledgments
hroughout the course of our writing, we have constantly
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solicited the comments and criticisms of our undergraduate
and graduate students and of our colleagues. We acknowledge their
help with deep appreciation, while claiming as our own the
responsibility for any shortcomings in the book. Our research
assistants for the first edition were Barbara Downey, Beverley
Hurlbert, Linda Oldham Lester, and Isabel Terry. We again relied
on Barbara Downey and Isabel Terry for the second and third
editions, and also enjoyed the help of Dorie Kind, Donna Romeo, and
Larry Metsch. Our patient friend Suphronia Jones-Cheek typed the
third edition.
We are deeply indebted to those upon whose work we have drawn,
some of whom not only gave permission for us to use their ideas
but assisted us in doing so. They include Professors Donald L.
Brockington of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, J.
Jerome Smith of the University of South Florida, and David M.
Johnson and Gloria Wentowski of North Carolina Agricultural and
Technical University.
For the third edition, three people each kindly read and
commented upon one chapter in the area of their expertise:
Professors Stephen Birdsall of the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill, Malcolm Collier of San Francisco State University, and
Richard Chaifen of Temple University.
We were fortunate indeed to work with Charles Mohler and Bonnie
Monfort Bopp on the first edition and with Neil Rowe and Thomas
Curtin of Waveland Press on the second and third editions. Their
expertise and sensitivity in the realm of books were of great
assistance.
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