COVER LETTER?
Ethical Dilemmas, Collaborative Work, and Multi-sited Ethnography: A reflection on anthropological research in museums
I had the opportunity to conduct a collaborative research project designed formulate a better understanding of diverse research methods within Anthropology. My group was made up of four members. We agreed from day one that we would focus our research around museums. We all had our own research we wanted to conduct within museums. We had come up with the question which would overarch all our research focuses, “do museums make people or do the people make museums?” Originally we had come up with four or five areas to focus on and decided on three areas of research; one member focused on how the curators create the space within their area of a museum and how it fits in with the entirety of the museum. Another two members had similar interests and focused on the politics of space with in the museum. My interest was in visitors. I was focused on the reasons and motivations for accessing the space and if the fact the museum was free played into their reason for visiting. I also wanted to find out what their interpretation of the space was and how invited and interested the visitor felt. I did several days of research, however I will focus on three of the most important days. The first day of research was with all four of us and was completed at the British Museum. Second I will focus on the day spent at the National Gallery in London. At the
Museums are information organizations, that is, they are about giving the most up-to-date information to their patrons. No matter how well their organization, commercially, is wrap it up that part of them remains the same. From the two museums that I visited, the Henry Ford Museum and the Museum of Natural History, are clearly about passing information to the patron. There are differences between them, however, it is the equivalences that I want to focus on as they are what bind them. The three areas of focus are community, academic outreach, and the stories they share.
Our memories often time embellish the memories we once had of such great people, places, times, and etc. We live these times up to standard that makes us reminisce, hurt, contemplate and so much more. The power of a photograph has been described to have worth a thousand words, metaphorically meaning of course, that what an image can capture in one instance, something that may not ever be captured through words. For too many centuries we have been without, what many of us now take for granted, the photograph. What we capture in a picture, has much more value than we often time see in our commercials, people, places, they tell a story to the ignorant, paint a picture for blind, give the deaf something to listen to, and so much more.
Beginning with the early stages of savagery to the complex civilizations in the 21st century, the need to compete remains an important aspect in the continual evolution of mankind. Competition took various forms throughout history from the bloody attempts to kill a mammoth in order to provide nourishment, to the violent battles between two opposing sides taking place on college football fields every Saturday afternoon. Another form of competition involving severe contact on a scale par with football is the sport of rugby. My personal history with the sport began in a medium sized island in Polynesia. I lived and worked in New Zealand during the summer of 1999, between my sophomore and junior year. This little
Once the song was fully memorized I practiced it with the recording accompaniment. I learned when to come in from the piano intro and how long to wait after the different phrases and sections. There were no dynamics for the voice part, so I added them in where I saw fit based on the phrases and lyrics, and was highly influenced by a recording sung by Cecilia Bartoli at the Berliner Philharmoniker with Daniel Barenboim.
Participants for this study will be adolescents and young adults ages 13-19. Participants will be chosen using the multistage sampling method. Participants ranging in age 13-17 will be selected on a volunteer basis from local middle and high schools whose parents/caregivers have given consent to participate. Participants ages 18-19 will be randomly selected from volunteers at local colleges and universities. Ideal population would be diverse with participants from all ethnicities and social economic groups. Flyers will be handed out in all classrooms of students in the target population and placed on college and university community bulletin boards. Population sample will be twenty participants in each age group (Borden
There are many different aspects of social life. One topic that would interest me most is the question to what societal situations lead to people to abuse drugs and alcohol. There are several research methods to take on about this topic but the one that would be more effective would be through an ethnography. An ethnography, a qualitative research method, is a descriptive analysis of a group or organization. Before choosing a research method, one must look deep into the background or conduct a literature review of the method or theory.
During my residency experience, I had the opportunity to consult on various projects and observe the administrative structure at the museum. I was impressed with the museum’s culture of cultivating risk-taking projects through team building partnerships that allow the public to engage with history, culture and science in various ways.
Tracy, an assistant sociology professor at the Virginia University of Commonwealth and a writer for The Atlantic, while makes a valid point, may not seem as credible of a source as College Board themselves who will lay out facts instead of opinion. Unlike tracy, the College Board report says that college applicant numbers are at their highest currently. This doesn’t mean that Tracy is wrong. Infact, in the paper, he never mentions anything about college not getting applicants. However, he writes in a way that makes it seem like less students are going to school when infact it is the opposite. Unlike the College Board however, Tracy’s point is that college is expensive and that price isn’t the only factor in students not attending college. This is different than the College Board who are only looking at numbers given to them by other colleges. The one up that Tracy has on the College Board is that Tracy’s opinion is more than valid because he is an assistant sociology professor at the Virginia University of Commonwealth. The main perspective that Tracy looks at in this paper in social and cultural reasons for not attending college. The College Board on the other hand is looking at a very narrow perspective of facts.
In conducting ethnographical fieldwork, anthropologists have selected few key consultants to gather exclusive details and information about a society’s custom ideas, values, and practices through participation in research of the Ju/ ‘haonsi people of Namibia. Through qualitative data and much fieldwork in Namibia, key consultants will have to lay out a formal outline in their research to be successful. By conducting ethnographical fieldwork, preparation, observances and many challenges will have to be faced during the duration of Namibia. As a key consultant I must endure all factors of this study including: funding, ethics, an ethnographical approach, and all barriers that might stand in my way while conducting field work.
The exhibition brings a personal vision of Jim Dimmock, Jim Goldberg, Enguene Richard and Tony Foushe photographer who for many years has been as a photojournalist. According to Graham (2012), the most compelling images are clear and deliberately, visual expressions of a photographer, how he or she think and feel about a particular subject. They are emotional experiences that are both intensely personal and at the same time universal in their appeal. It is identified that there is a great picture that result passionate intention of the photographer, commitment to the world and, more importantly, his vision. Technical and production play crucial roles, but it begins and ends with the vision. In the context of photography, photographers’ shares
In the world, most societies, fermented food, beverages and condiments have a unique place because of their economic and cultural value and for the development of fermentation technologies that deeply rooted in their history. Indeed, gathering Africa's wild-cereal grains were probably the oldest tradition for the organized food production and had found anywhere in the world (Ruskin, 1993). The archaeological (McGovern, 1997), Ethnographic studies and historical documents (Haaland, 2007) evidenced for the beginnings of fermentation in Africa had consanguineous to ceramics, cattle and cereal domestication. In addition, the African pottery appeared around 2000 years earlier than cultivated cereals (Haaland, 2007).
• There is an interest of peoples sensory experience. Such experiences include social interaction, the persons physical environment and memory. Researchers have to know what is involved with sensory and embodied experience in order to study the experiences of others. Different methods such as film making have been put forward as ways of putting forward representations of the experiences of groups of people as well as the ethnographer, to an audience.
The ideas of anthropologist Nelson Graburn (1977) were embraced by the Commission on Museums for a New Cent,. He identifies three human needs that a museum can fill, one of which he terms as "associations]." The museum is a place where we can associate with each other, have a social experience and that shared experience becomes the visitor experience. Graburn is not alone with this idea. Sheldon Mnis (1986), a geographer who refers to the visitor experience as "symbolic engagements," describes a pragmatic space. The visitor and his/her companions become the primary symbol and the museum has little influence on the meanings that are created. "Being there in some particular social union is both purpose and product" (Annis, 1986, p. 170). Paulette
The first article by Nancy Parezo analyzed the importance anthropologists have had in museums and their influence in the exhibits (2015). Anthropologists have assisted by helping various and distinctive groups and societies express their stories in the form of
This is especially true for university museums where the university has its own archaeology department. In general, the types of archaeology programs found in museums feature tours of archaeological collections, hands-on art-making activities, and mock digs. The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology hosts a ten-week “Anthropologists in the Making” Summer Camp. Each week of this camp has a different theme, one of which is solely dedicated to the subject of archaeology and featuring a mock dig. During the summer of 2016 this week focused on the archaeology of Greece and Rome. The author first encountered this program from a colleague who had previously worked as a camp counselor. The Penn Museum summer camp became a major component of this thesis. Conversations with the director of the program, Jennifer Reifsteck, led to the development of surveys that were implemented during the week in July focused on archaeology and the mock