Objectivity and Fieldwork Essay

Elizabeth Fernea entered El Nahra, Iraq as an innocent bystander. However, through her stay in the small Muslim village, she gained cultural insight to be passed on about not only El Nahra, but all foreign culture. As Fernea entered the village, she was viewed with a critical eye, ?It seemed to me that many times the women were talking about me, and not in a particularly friendly manner'; (70). The women of El Nahra could not understand why she was not with her entire family, and just her husband Bob. The women did not recognize her American lifestyle as proper. Conversely, BJ, as named by the village, and Bob did not view the El Nahra lifestyle as particularly proper either. They were viewing

Calcagno (2003) emphasizes the importance of encouraging biocultural approaches to research. In order to be holistic it is necessary that the research used is widespread across the anthropological sub disciplines (Riley. E, 2006). Calcagno identifies how this approach is easily discussed in practice, but this can be significantly harder to produce successfully in practical settings. The tension surrounding this is due to preceding conflicts in procedures and philosophies disrupting their ability to coexist in the research subfields. Calcagno uses the data collected by Borofsky that indicated the holistic

Lila Abu-Lughod is an American anthropologist whose work is focused around descriptive ethnography and mostly based in Egypt. Her work aims to tackled three main issues: the relationship between cultural forms and power; the politics of knowledge and representation; and the dynamics of gender and the question of women’s rights in the Middle East (Columbia). Lughod in her book Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? sets out to get rid of stereotypes that muslim women because of frequent ‘honor killings’ and the practice of veiling need to be rescued. She coins the term for the exploration of saving muslim women ‘Islamland.’ There is the perpetuating stereotype and dominant narrative that muslim women need saving and islam is a threatening

“Life is full of unhappiness and most of it caused by women (Harik and Marston 11)”. For women in the Middle East life is faced with great and unequal odds, as their human rights are limited, due to Islamic beliefs and that of patriarchy. From their daily actions at home to their physical appearance, Middle Eastern women are portrayed as quiet, faceless women veiled from head to toe. While this image is just another stereotype, women in the middle do face many obstacles and challenges of creating their own identity as they are frequently denied a voice in their rights. Living in a society dominated by men life is not, but regardless women in the Middle East, predominantly Muslims, continue to fight for

Through its ethnocentric tales and family based beliefs, Elizabeth Warnock Fernea’s Guests of the Sheik suggests that to find the true representation of Islamic culture, one must leave ethnocentrism behind. Not only will we discuss ethnocentrism and the cultural differences between Western and Middle Eastern societies, we will also take a look at the women of El Nahra and family within the differing societies.

The description of women provided in Olaudah Equiano's and Venture Smith's narratives compared to the European's descriptions of indigenous and African women provided in Jennifer Morgan's paper are distinctive. Equiano and Smith write highly of their mothers while Europeans talk repulsively about African and indigenous women. As a reader, one can infer many opinions about each of the writer's attitudes about the expected gender norms for women at that time such as caretaking, breastfeeding or working. The European perspective utilizes their claim to authority on women through dehumanizing different races and converting them into Christians.

It is first important to define what ethnography is because it is a prominent method that social scientists use in their research (Roy, lecture 4). Professor Roy defines ethnography as looking at culture – a methodological skill of observation in a natural setting. Chambliss was able to do this with his qualitative research at Hanibal. Qualitative research, compared to quantitative, is often characterized by a depth of information from a limited number of cases (Ragin & Amoroso 28). This type of study relies on the human component of interaction in the real world. Chambliss actively engaged with

First and foremost, an understanding must be had of what ethnography is. To define ‘ethnography,’ I will defer to Ellen Isaacs, a corporate ethnographer for Xerox PARC, who gave a presentation on ethnography at

The Romance of resistance is an article which is written by Lila Abu-Lughod in regard with the different forms of resistance among the Bedouin women and the traditional structure of power among the Bedouin Community in the Egypt's Western Desert. She arrived in late 1970 to begin a fieldwork, and she discovered different forms of resistance among the Bedouin women. In this Article she emphasis on how the Bedouin women resisted the decision of their fathers, uncles, and older brother, how the resisted the sexually segregation, and sexually irreverent discourse. Furthermore, it also talk about how local communities are being incorporated into modern states and integrated into a wider economy.

Assistant Professor Katherine Ann Wiley shared her research about “Anthropological Research And Methods In the Islamic Republic of Mauritania.” Katherine had been teaching english at the high schools at Kankossa, Mauritania. She was involved with the peace courts which lead her to Mauritania. Katherine had gotten so familiar with the community and spoke the language. She wanted to do a type of research that had a meaning to the woman that live there. Many of the woman said how important woman's work is, and the economic activities they had to do. Katherine thought Kankossa was a good place to do her study because it had a mixture of many women. It was definitely a risk Katherine had to do, because she could have putten herself in danger, and

Traditionally and culturally, Bedouin values and perceptions of the girl`s family honor and traditional feminine norms such as veiling and exposure to men will not fade away, however modern settlements can elevate the Bedouin Women`s situation through educating women in a coeducational school where tradition can be embedded in modernism without breaking cultural norms. An educational approach which can integrate cultural codes, norms, values and social attitudes can ease the restrictions on women and eliminate the male role as :guards of honor” who shield their women from modernism(Fenster,1999).

The most positive and satifying experience that I’ve had at Clara Maass Medical Center is the one to one patient interactions. I am glad that I had the opportunity to work with patients on a personal level, by assisting them with their needs and requirements. It has truly been a fulfilling experience to work along side the nurses and get to understand everything that they do to care for patients in their most vulnerable time.

Malinowski’s most prominent contribution to ethnography and fieldwork was his method of research - participant observation, his own form of conducting fieldwork. Participant observation is the method giving researchers the ability to gain understanding of the activities of the people under study in the natural setting through observing and participating in those activities. It gives access to the context for development of sampling guidelines and interview guides (DeWalt & DeWalt, 2002). However, fieldwork involves "active looking, improving memory, informal interviewing,

Culture is an amalgamation of shared beliefs, values, and norms within a society. Thus, culture has the ability to influence the way in which one learns, lives, and behaves. When the cultural values and practices are negative, the fate of a person growing up in this situation can be critically affected. In The Sand Child, Tahar Ben Jelloun exhibits how the cultural values of the Moroccan society such as the inheritance law and the social practices such as the blatant rejection and demeaning treatment of women in society have affected Ahmed, the protagonist, and provide an insight into Jelloun’s critique of those practices.

Objectivity in Social Research is the hunt for an objective i.e. truth. The opinion that the philosophy of science, comprising economics is under accumulative pressure curtailing from the post-positivist assessment of science; conversely the revolution in research behaviour as a result of its marketization calls for an amplification of the content and positioning of this philosophy.