Social Anthropology: A Case of Ethnography

"Anthropology??" "Archaeology??"
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"Are you going to study about bones?"

If you mean fossils, that's paleontology.
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"Are you going to study about rocks?"

Hmm, that's actually geology.
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And the most unexpected one...
"Are you going to study insects??"

What? Noooo that's arthropod! Anthro with an 'r' instead of 'n'! (this one made my day tho
hahaha)

"Heh...So what is it about then???"

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Those are among the compulsory follow-up enquiries every single time the question of "What are you going to do for your undergraduate?" or "What are you going to study after A-levels?" or "What course are you applying for?" was thrown to me when I was doing my foundation studies. To be honest the questions motivate me to keep exploring about the subject since there will always be an ongoing demand of explanation on what on earth is this girl doing for her degree XD

Hence, after 15 weeks of enrolling in this course, I would like to share about what am I actually listening to in my academic lectures and weekly tutorials of my undergraduate years. Archaeology and anthropology are both interested in finding out how people live their life. But archaeology focuses on the way humans have lived in the past while anthropology looks into human behaviour regardless of context and time. In this post, however, I just wanted to share about something related to the most famous branch of anthropology, which is social anthropology. I'll be answering a question that you might have wanted to ask any anthropology student; "what does anthropologists do?"

Warning: This entry is a bit lengthy, if watching videos is more convenient for you rather than reading a long post, here's a good introductory video :) (but do read the last part of this entry for the sake of the Malaysian bit XD)

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5aglbgTEig anthropology

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In an introductory book of social and cultural anthropology, Peter Just and John Monaghan described ethnography to anthropologists as a ‘lab research’ to biologists (Just and Monaghan 2000:13). A lab experiment, however, is carried out in a condition where the researcher has control over the variables, either manipulated or responding variables or both. Some variables are also fixed by the experimenter, in order to increase reliability of the research. Therefore, to some extent, ethnography cannot be considered similar to a lab research, as in most cases ethnographers do not have even a slight control over the environment of their field study. In addition, they are not even aware of what the ethnographic site and its community have in store for them. Nevertheless, what Just and Monaghan are trying to imply here is the role of ethnography, which acts as a tool used by anthropologists in a setting to study ‘anthro’ – which, in this case, means human.

Origins of Ethnography

Historically, ethnography did not begin as a formal style of research to understand the meanings of people’s social life. Instead, the emergence of ‘travellers’ tales’ were regarded as an early form of ethnographic research. The travellers implied some feature of social reality based on their close acquaintance with people that they met while travelling and their observation of it, even though it was frequently being reflected from an ethnocentric perspective (Brewer 2000:11). In the middle on 19th century, figures such as Pitt Rivers (1827-1900) were prominent as ‘armchair ethnographer[s]’. Pitt Rivers was labelled as this as he gathered information rather than carrying out the fieldwork independently. Using an adaptation of Darwin’s ideas of evolution presented in his famous scientific work ‘On The Origin of Species’, Pitt Rivers started to collect archaeological and ethnographic material to see how early societies begin to produce simple technologies (Gosden 1999:26). Through the circle of social Darwinists, particularly through the Royal Geographical Society, he was able to meet many travellers, which aided him in collecting ethnographic information (Gosden 1999:28).

The development of ethnography then moved on to the beginning of ethnographic surveys in the late 19th century. An important figure in the evolution of anthropology in this period is Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881), who had developed a historical scheme for social change that ran on a one-way direction line from savagery to civilisation. He came up with this idea by combining historical sources as well as ethnographic information from his expeditions to two Plain tribes of Kansas and Nebraska and Missouri River past Yellowstone. One of his important contributions is the division between kinship, which is predominated by personal blood ties and marriage and civil society. which was founded on territory and property (Gosden 1999:63). It was only in the twentieth century that ethnography became properly established as a method in research, in the midst of the British Empire’s urgent necessity to understand culture and groups of the non-British in order to rule them after the completion of colonial conquest (Brewer 2000:11). It was in this period that fieldwork begin to be sustained and focused in a single place, mostly in a colonial periphery or in the least developed region. Franz Boas (1858-1942), often seen as the founder of anthropology in North America, was influenced by the method of observation and recording in order to produce detailed documentation of life in local areas, which, in his case, was the Inuit groups of Baffin Island. From this fieldwork, he discovered the history of culture that framed how people perceive the world they lived in from their own cultural perspectives, as well as the importance of those perceptions (Gosden 1999:45-46). Nowadays, fieldwork is a research method that is more contemporary and has set their focus beyond the circle of only ‘primitive’ or so-called ‘native’ societies.

Methods in Ethnographic Research

Ethnography adopted the mechanism of participant observation in studying human culture. The main objective of this mechanism is to ensure that the researcher is engaging strongly or ‘immersed’ amongst the community to get the same view on their perception of the outside world. This is important to avoid participant bias. If people that are being studied become aware of the purpose of the research, it would be harder for the ethnographer to obtain a data with high validity as they might act in a way that they thought they are expected to. In studying culture, it is crucial to be able to observe the behaviour of people in as natural a way as possible. The presence of the experimenter as an authoritative figure hugely influences behaviour portrayed by the participant. For example, in a psychological context, this might be one of the factor that explain why 26 out of 40 participants on a study of obedience continue to administer shock up until 400V even though they were aware that it is morally wrong to torture others (Milgram, 1963).

From an anthropological perspective, in a study on Balinese cockfights by Clifford Geertz, the ethnographers were given the chance to witness an illegal cockfight in real life (Geertz, 1973). If the Balinese villagers look up to the ethnographers as authoritative figures, they might consider preventing Geertz and his colleague from witnessing or involving themselves in this event in any way. This emphasises the reason why the way researchers interact with the community as well as the way they fit themselves within the locals is very important in helping them gain access to the real-life social environment of the locals. Apart from that, by having the researcher to assume a role of a participant, in other words, being part of the community and undergoing the same social life and practices, the reduction or elimination of the experimenter bias thus becomes more likely. This bias derives from the tendency of the experimenters to interpret things based on their own hypothesis, thus making them more inclined to support the expected result. In an ethnographic study, the role of an ethnographer is usually made known to the locals for the sake of gaining access to the community. Hence, an intimate connection with the locals is a vital step to reduce influence of the ethnographer’s presence on behavioural outcome of the community in the locals’ condition that is beyond the ethnographer’s control.

Justifications of Conducting Ethnographic Research

As methods and organisation of ethnography change over time, its purpose and objectives change too. This may be one of the reasons why ethnography is still widely used in studying communities today, in line with the ethical guidelines. Even though development of ethnography has opened up the space to opportunities to study modern societies, in some parts of the world it is still important to study the indigenous community. This is not mainly due to the reason that their identities and customs might slowly disappear and vanish from the world as the result of being affected by modernisation or globalisation, but also to understand and help this community to progress themselves, in terms of improving their socio-economic status or establishing the group to be at par with other communities. For example, an ethnographic study conducted on the social tradition of Jah Het community, one of the indigenous groups (Orang Asli) in Malaysia, emphasises the need to increase the public’s knowledge about this community as well as looking into how interaction between the indigenous group and public can bridge the gap between the two stakeholders (Kasbi).

On the other hand, a case study on Semai community in Pos Woh, Malaysia, examined the problems faced by the community and suggested resolutions to alleviate the problems. For instance, Orang Asli is famously known for having very close family ties among themselves. This had caused the children to stop attending school as they cannot be away from their parents for a long time. The only way to solve this problem is to build a school that is located close to their settlement or villages to ensure that their children are willing and able to get proper education (Mohamad et al, 1987). From a conversation with a museum officer, I found out that there is a special hospital built for Orang Asli in Gombak, Malaysia. This is the case because they need to provide a hospital with a transit facility for the patient’s whole family, as all relatives will come down and stay in the hospital even though there is only one person who is sick (Aug 2016). These situations prove that the proposition of solutions could only be made possible by understanding the social life of the community.

To sum up, ethnography has been a very useful tool in understanding culture, tradition, and development of society as a whole. From time to time, ethnography as a fieldwork method had changed variably or transformed along with its own importance, fitting in the contemporary demands of the study. The ethnographer’s need to establish a real connection with the community being studied to gain access to natural life situation does not involve placing a group of community on a glass slide and observe them under a microscope through the eyes of an authoritative researcher, instead it attempts to empower these groups in the making of a society that can stand together in a line without any social distinction or disparity.

Thanks for reading!