Things They Carried Ethnography

Ethnography tells about a culture and the members that comprise this culture. A definition is the scientific description of the customs and individual people of a culture. The process of doing this assignment allowed me to explore another aspect of a cultural group. I was able to learn extensively about interactions between individuals and how see them as a culture. The group that comprises my ethnography is a cultural group very common to Utah. The culture I focused on was the LDS culture, to be more specific I studied a sub-culture of this group. My subculture was a group of 12 year old adolescents that are a Sunday school class in this culture.

The first three words of the chapter “How to Tell a True War Story” are, “This is true” (67). Although Tim O’Brien begins this chapter with such a bold and clear statement, throughout the chapter he has the reader thinking and confused when he contradicts himself by stating things such as, “In many cases a true war story cannot

     In “How to Tell a True War Story” O’Brien explores the relationship between the events during a war and the art of telling those events. O’Brien doesn’t come to a conclusion on what is a true war story. He writes that one can’t generalize the story as well. According to O’Brien, war can be anything from love and beauty to the most horrid

1. “In any war story, especially a true one, it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told the way. “ (71)

James P. Spradley (1979) described the insider approach to understanding culture as "a quiet revolution" among the social sciences (p. iii). Cultural anthropologists, however, have long emphasized the importance of the ethnographic method, an approach to understanding a different culture through participation, observation, the use of key informants, and interviews. Cultural anthropologists have employed the ethnographic method in an attempt to surmount several formidable cultural questions: How can one understand another's culture? How can culture be qualitatively and quantitatively assessed? What aspects of a culture make it unique and which connect it to other cultures? If

However, as the reader is to realize soon, by having his fictional characters tell stories and then recant the truth of those stories, O’Brien certainly calls into question the possibility of ever telling a true war story. The result of

A war story is one of the things you never know is true some are gruesome and chilling other are just plan but witch is true. Tim O’Brian in The Things They Carried tell stories that combine reality with fiction because it is the one way you can be put in the mind of a solider. A true war story connects the reader to the war as if you were in a mind of a solider. A true war story doesn’t try to teach a lesson; it demonstrates the genuine evil that is part of war.

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

Many people, especially old veterans, are very excited of reminiscing their war experiences. They are also keen to pass down their experience by telling to other people. Sometimes they share the stories of each other. Many war stories are told. However, a true war story isn’t only about being a hero in the battlefield or generalizing that war is hell. There are some situations should be shared to get the “moral” of a true war story. In his story, “How to Tell a True War Story,” O’ Brien reveals all of the lies and secrets of other war stories that people have been told. Therefore, the author mentions in his story that “True war stories do not generalize” (page 1) and “War is hell, but that’s not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love” (page 2).

My dissertation will be looking at the censorship of the media during war predominantly in active conflict zones. I will look at the military’s policy on embedding and how it came to be implemented. In covering this topic, I will produce examples of embedding, specifically images produced by photojournalists in these environments. Alongside this, I will investigate how the embedding process occurred and the varying results it has produced. Two types of reporting will be explored the first being the alliance between soldier and photojournalist and how this can alter the photographic work a photographer produces. For this very example, I will look at examples from

Unlike most quantitative studies that can be done even with an impersonal relationship, ethnography requires researchers to be in close contact with his subjects and have a good one-on-one relationship with them. Building this relationship can be easy, but there are cases when the ethnographer would have a difficult time creating rapport with his subjects. This is particularly true for tribes that have not been in frequent contact with outsiders as well as groups of people don’t take kindly to foreigners living in their lands.

What does it mean to be ethnocentric? How is ethnocentrism dangerous in conducting social research? How is ethnocentrism problematic among nonresearchers in their everyday lives? These are the questions I will be answering in this essay. Hopefully this will prove to be useful in the future.

Ethnography within its wider field of research is described as the study of people’s behaviour in terms of social contexts, with emphasis on interaction in everyday situations (Lindsay, 1997). It is further defined as research that constitutes the art and science of describing a group or culture (Fetterman, 1989). However, the specific definition that will be used throughout this work, is that of its role within qualitative research, which is summarised by Wainwright (1997) in his paper in The Qualitative Report, stating that ethnography can be distinguished as:

This paper will critically discuss and compare three ethnographies that were published in different times. Ethnography has became the essential field research strategy in humanities. Ethnography has turned into a made segment of the collection of examination systems. It was produced in humanities, however in late decades its utilization has spread broadly in the social sciences and the humanities. The discriminating assessment of ethnographic information is not yet overall created. Fitting utilization of this kind of material accordingly obliges an understanding of its unique qualities and shortcomings. These infer not just from the destinations that underlie ethnographic work, both cognizant and oblivious, additionally from the social foundation of the specialists, the

Having only studied the culture of British life for the one term that I have been living in London I have been able to capture a vivid depiction of what it means to be British over a short period of time. Furthermore, as a junior level ethnographer, I understand that in a universal realm the study of accounts for general human life can be applied worldwide. Though being able to scope out the lifestyles, cultural differences, and fundamental basis for living has allowed for me to understand the multitude of accounts of British life and what it may truly mean to be British. With the blueprint of what I have learned so far as an ethnographer, and secondly as a temporary British citizen, I believe that ethnography absolutely produces adequate accounts of British Life.