The goal of the project is for the student to experience the value and
challenge of conducting ethnographic fieldwork. If you were doing your PhD
in cultural anthropology I would be sending you out to interview/observe
perhaps dozens of people over the course of perhaps a year or more!! We
will scale this down to a project you can accomplish with a single key
informant and a couple of hours of interview time.
Each student will find one willing key informant. This person can be a
family member, friend, casual acquaintance, or complete stranger. Just make
sure that they are a willing participant, and that they can set aside at
least a couple of hours to be interviewed. There are a few basic
requirements that I expect each student to accomplish in the project:
1. Construct a kinship diagram for your key informant, showing all of ego’s
(your informant!) relatives. This includes relatives whose names are known
and unknown. From this kinship diagram, try to draw some conclusions about
the relative importance of kin ties for ego. Use the guidelines in your
textbook for help in making your diagram. Note that ego may have fictional
kin (people who are not “blood relatives” but are nonetheless considered
kin). It is up to you and your informant to decide if peoples’ names are to
be included on the chart, but at a minimum identify each person on the chart
with the etic symbols as used in the text book (i.e. F, B, S, Z, FB, MB,
FZD, FFB, etc.)
2. Identify the culture, sub-cultures, ethnic groups, or other social groups
to which the informant belongs. Try to evaluate how strongly your informant
is connected to each group.
3.Explicitly identify the methods that you are using in the project. This
should include your goal, how you met and interviewed your informant, how
you took notes or otherwise recorded information, your overall perspective
(emic or etic). Note any problems or areas of improvement for future work.
How might your own biases or perspectives have affected your questions
and/or interpretations?
4.Your project should be described in a 6 page report, typed, double-spaced
(12 pt Times New Roman font), and with standard 1 inch margins. Feel free
to include photos, sketches, maps, notes, or any other information with the
text (these do not count towards the text requirements, of course).
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