Doing Social Research

Doing Social Research AIM: HOW DO SOCIAL SCIENTISTS STUDY THE SOCIAL WORLD?

What is Anthropology? • The discipline of anthropology studies humankind in its entirety and aims to produce useful generalizations about the behavior of people around the world and throughout time.

Quantitative v. Qualitative • Social Research Methods May Be Divided into two broad schools: • Quantitative research approaches social phenomena through numerical tabulations and statistical comparisons made possible by systematic surveys, observations, or analysis of records. Data is used to test hypotheses and create valid and reliable, general claims. • Qualitative research uses rich descriptions of cultural situations obtained from interviewing, participant observation, and collection of oral and textual materials. • Ethnographies are reports from qualitative research.

Scientific Explanation • Empirical Evidence (data)  information we can verify with our common sense • Science  a logical system that bases knowledge on direct, systematic observations concerning human behavior • The goal of scientific explanation is to permit the scientist to move beyond simple descriptions to make reliable statements concerning the nature of relationships existing in observed phenomena. Reliable statements posses a high degree of certainty that what is predicted will be the successful combination of theory and relevant research.

Systematic plan for conducting research • Experiment  a research method for investigating cause and effect under highly controlled conditions • Hypothesis  an unverified statement of a relationship between variables • A hunch or guess that is generally stated as a proposition of the “if…then…” variety • Hawthorne Effect  a change in the subject’s behavior caused by the awareness of being studied

ScienceThe Basic Elements and Limitations • Positivismonly authentic knowledge is that which is based on sense, experience and positive verification • Concept refers to either relations or descriptions. Concepts are not statements and are neither true nor false • When concepts are interrelated in a scheme, a theory begins to emerge • Variable  a trait or characteristic that can vary in value from case to case • Characteristics that are variables can be made constant through experimental design, as when a researcher focuses on people of the same age, sex, social class, etc., in order to study variation in other traits • Measurement  a set of rules for the assignment of numbers to the different outcomes a variable can exhibit • Concepts such as an inch, meter, etc., do not exist in nature but are arbitrary measures of length, with agreed upon meanings, invented by scientists • Examples: Strongly Agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree, Strongly Disagree

Reliability  consistency in measure • In order to have reliability, the test must be able to be replicated and receive the same results • Validity precision in measuring exactly what one intends to measure. A test must measure exactly what it says it will measure • In order for research to be true, it must have both reliability and validity • Correlation  measured strength between two variables • Control  holding constant all variables except one in order to see clearly the effect of that variable

Ethnography • Ethnos (Greek) = to describe a people Grapho = to write • Ethnography aims to describe the nature of those who are studied through writing. • Might be called a ‘field study’ or ‘case report.’ • Description of a culture, usually based on the method of participant observation and field work. • Field Work: living among a group of people for the purpose of learning about their culture. • Employed for gathering empirical data on human societies and cultures.

Ethnography • Anthropological texts are usually written in the present. • Many societies have changed since original fieldwork was done. • Importance of studies of these peoples does not lie primarily in their historical or genealogical explanatory power, but rather in their contribution to our understanding of similarities and differences of social life in general.

Cultural & Social Anthropology • Developed around ethnographic research and their canonical texts which are mostly ethnographies • Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1928) by Bronislaw Malinowski • Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) by Margaret Mead • The Nuer (1940) by E.E. Evans-Pritchard

The Range of Ethnographies We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us (1979) – June Nash’s description of Bolivian tin miners and the ways in which transnational economic processes affect their lives. Tuhami: Portrait of a Moroccan (1980) – Vincent Crapanzano’s ethnographic biography describes his encounter with ‘an illiterate Moroccan tile maker who believes himself married to a camel-footed she-demon.’ The Channeling Zone: American Spirituality in an Anxious Age (1997) – Michael Brown presents a fascinating look at the lives and experiences of New Age ‘channellers’ and their place in contemporary American spiritual life. Medusa’s Hair (1981) – Gananath Obeyesekere brings insight from psychoanalysis to bear on ‘personal symbols and religious experience’ among ecstatic priests and priestesses in Sri Lanka. Geisha (1983) – Liza Dalby trained as a geisha in Kyoto and provides a fascinating look at the ‘willow world.’ Javanese Shadow Plays, Javanese Selves (1987) – Ward Keeler lived with a Javanese puppeteer for several years and wrote this fascinating account of an ancient art form, is practitioners, and its place in modern culture

Typical Ethnography • Attempts to be holistic • Typically follows an outline: • Brief history of culture being studied • Analysis of physical geography / terrain inhabited by the people, including climate and habitat • Material Culture, technology and means of subsistence (associated with physical geography and include descriptions of infrastructure) • Kinship & Social Structure (age grading, peer groups, gender, voluntarily association, clans, etc. ) • Languages spoken, dialects and history of language change • Practices of childrearing, acculturation and ‘native’ (emic) views and values (1955)

Data Collection • Participant Observation • Interviews • Questionnaires • Surveys…just to list a few

Participant Observation • Direct, first-hand observation of daily participation. • Living among the people being studied – observing, questioning, and taking part in the important events of the group while also keeping a detailed record of your observations and interviews. • Obtrusive Effect – you thrust yourself into the culture, changing what is taking place.

Participant Observation • Generally agreed that the anthropologist ought to stay in the field long enough for his or her presence to be considered more or less ‘natural’ by the permanent residence. • Anthropologist should also learn the local language as not have mistakes in translation or meaning.

Participant Observation • The anthropologist is the most important ‘scientific instrument’ used, investing a great deal of his or her own personality in the process. • Anthropological writings are shaped by each author’s biography, literary style, and rhetoric, as wells as the historical period in which they are writing (such as colonialism). • The gender, age, ‘race’ and class of the anthropologist inadvertently influences the field work.

Doing Anthropology • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhCruPBvSjQ

Emic v. Etic Perspective • Emic: life as experienced and described by the members of a society themselves. • “Native’s point of view’ • Etic: Analytical description or explanation of the researcher. • Cultural Relativism: understanding the ways of other cultures and not judging these practices according to one's own cultural ways.

Emic v. Etic Perspective • Reasons why anthropologists view may never be an emic description: • Usually have to translate between two different languages • Use a written medium to reproduce oral statements • Meaning of utterances changes when they are transformed into writing • Anthropologist can never become identical with the people he or she writes about. • Only true emic descriptions possible in anthropology are therefore accounts written by natives in their vernacular

Types of Data Collected during Observation • Census Taking • Population, age, sex, marital status, household composition, age/sex relationship • Mapping • Locate people, material culture (villages, fields, pasture, livestock), environmental features (rivers, lakes, mountains) • Document Analysis • Public records, news papers, diaries, scientific publications • Geneologies • Writing down relatives of informants, kinship relationships, how they are referred to, addressed, treated • Event Analysis • Documenting an event as it takes place (fight, puberty rite, cooking, marriage)

Problems with Participant Observation • Precludes a large sample size • Problems in recording • Limited knowledge of language • One’s informants may fail to represent society as a whole

The Problem of Translation • How can we translate an alien way of experiencing the world into our own mode of thought? • How can we be certain that we do not misinterpret or distort the society when we try to describe it in our own terms? • How can we be entirely certain that we understand the alien society and culture at all?

The Problem of Translation • It is necessary to use abstract terms: kinship, social organization, social control, religion, etc. • Terms are necessary for the discipline to be comparative in scope • Abstract, technical terms used by anthropologists rarely exist in societies studied. • Descriptive: usually close to native conceptualization of the world, and a major challenge lies in translating native concepts into the anthropologist’s working language. • Analysis: trying to connect the society to other societies by describing it in the comparative terms of anthropology. • Will describe the society with concepts which do not exist in the society itself

Dichotomies • Dichotomy – separation of different or contradictory things. • Small-scale / Large-scale • Oral / Written • Traditional / Modern • The world as it is studied by anthropologists is not characterized by clear, binary boundaries, but rather by grey areas and differences in degree. • Models are not identical with the social world but aid in organizing facts from the social world. • Dichotomies may be used as scales marked by differences in degree rather than absolute contrasts.

Interviewing • May include conversation with different levels of form and can involve small talk to long interviews

Questionnaires • Can be used to aid in the discovery of local beliefs and perceptions

Asking Questions: Survey Questions • Survey research method in which subjects respond to a series of statements or questions in a questionnaire or an interview • Population  the larger the population the better • Sample  part of the population that represents the whole. The participants in a survey are the sample population of that survey • Using Available Data • Secondary Analysis  a researcher uses the data available • Inductive Logic  from inside out. The researcher works from the specific to the general. (Individual problem to larger social issue) • Deductive Logic  from outside in. The researcher works from the general to the specific. The theory is stated first then a hypothesis is formed and a method is found to test it

Anthropology vs. Sociology • Anthropology has traditionally distinguished itself from sociology through: • Emphasis placed on participant observation and fieldwork • Mainly study non-industrial societies • Sociology has concentrated on understanding, criticizing, and managing modern societies • Anthropologists try to account for variations and similarities in human existence and to record disappearing peoples ways of life in writing.

Ethical Guidelines for Internal Assessment • Do no harm to the people who participate in the fieldwork. • Respect the well-being of humans and the environment. • Obtain informed consent from the people who are the subjects of the fieldwork in a form appropriate to the context before you begin, providing sufficient information about the aims and procedures of the fieldwork. • Fieldwork involving children needs the written consent of parent(s) or guardian(s). • Maintain the anonymity of the people participating in the fieldwork, unless participants have given explicit permission to the contrary. • Store all data collected securely in order to maintain confidentiality. • Be honest about the limits of your training. • Do not falsify or make up fieldwork data. Report on research findings accurately and completely. • Do not use data for any purpose other than the fieldwork for which it was collected. • Develop and maintain a working relationship with the people that you study so that other researchers can continue to work with them. • Check with your teacher when the right way to behave is not clear. • Participate in reviews of the ethical considerations in the fieldwork proposals of your peers. • Fieldwork conducted online is subject to the same guide lines.

Covered Girls (2003) • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkfXHB48rrs

Behind the Veil Jeopardy • https://jeopardylabs.com/play/symbolizing-roles-behind-the-veil

Doing Social Research