Since American Indians were erroneously thought to be going extinct, white American anthropologists did not trust them to preserve their own traditions within their communities and began an effort in the late nineteenth century to dispossess communities of spiritual and other items, which would be transplanted into …

Table of Contents

When was ethnography invented?

Ethnography, the writing of culture, traces its origins to ancient Greece. Herodotus, who is also known as the father of history, traveled from one culture to another to document the traditions and sociopolitical practices among people of the ancient world during the third century B.

What is salvage ethnography and what motivated Boas towards this?

Salvage ethnography is the recording of the practices and folklore of cultures threatened with extinction, including as a result of modernization. It is generally associated with the American anthropologist Franz Boas; he and his students aimed to record vanishing Native American cultures.

What is the primary goal of salvage ethnography?

Like most anthropologists of his time, Malinowski did salvage ethnography, in the belief that the ethnographer’s job is to study and record cultural diversity threatened by Westernization.

Who practices the salvage paradigm?

Well into the 1920s, anthropologists pursued an approach known as the salvage paradigm, which held that it was important to observe indigenous ways of life before knowledge of traditional languages and customs disappeared.

Who was the founder of the ethnographic method?

Modern anthropologists usually identify the establishment of ethnography as a professional field with the pioneering work of both the Polish-born British anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski in the Trobriand Islands of Melanesia (c.

What kind of anthropologist was Malinowski?

Bronisław Malinowski, in full Bronisław Kasper Malinowski, (born April 7, 1884, Kraków, Pol., Austria-Hungary—died May 16, 1942, New Haven, Conn., U.S.), one of the most important anthropologists of the 20th century who is widely recognized as a founder of social anthropology and principally associated with field …

What was the first ethnography?

It’s orgins are traced to Malinowski’s fieldwork among Trobriand Islanders in 1914 (P15). “He was the first to use participant observation to generate specific anthropological knowledge.” Anthropology was established “as a reconized field of study” in the 1840’s in American and Europe.

Why was ethnography created?

Introduction: ethnography and anthropology Ethnography is the practice developed in order to bring about that knowledge according to certain methodological principles, the most important of which is participant-observation ethnographic fieldwork.

What is the anthropologist's primary ethical concern?

Anthropologists share a primary ethical obligation to avoid doing harm to the lives, communities or environments they study or that may be impacted by their work. … Avoidance of harm is a primary ethical obligation, but determining harms and their avoidance in any given situation may be complex.

Article first time published on

What research method did early armchair anthropologists such as EB Tylor use?

When early anthropologists studied people from other civilizations, they relied on the written accounts and opinions of others. These scholars did not have any direct contact with the people they were studying. This approach has come to be known as armchair anthropology.

What is Franz Boas theory?

Boas is well known for his theory of cultural relativism, which held that all cultures were essentially equal but simply had to be understood in their own terms.

Who sought to preserve a vanishing America through his paintings focusing on Native American peoples?

Like many indigenous communities, Osage people have a long history of their images being leveraged against them, RedCorn says. George Catlin’s 19th-century paintings of Native Americans, including Osage people, were meant to preserve a record of a “vanishing race” erased by colonization and assimilation.

How is the film Nanook of the North an example of salvage ethnography?

Nanook is classified by the scientific community as “salvage ethnography,” which just means that Flaherty was trying to capture a vanishing way of life that had already partially died out by that time in the interest of preserving its memory before it completely disappeared.

When did anthropology emerge as an academic discipline?

Anthropology emerged as a serious professional and scientific discipline beginning in the 1920s. The focus and practice of anthropological research developed in different ways in the United States and Europe.

Do anthropologists believe that the native point of view is better than their own?

Anthropologists believe that the “native point of view” is better than their own. … Cultural relativism is important because it helps anthropologists understand and defend all the things that people in other cultures do.

What is ethnographic authority?

Ethnographic authority, Vincent Crapanzano (1986) points out, is often. constituted through the claim that the researcher was either invisible or. disinterested. The idea is that invisibility insures that what ‘really’ happens is. not disturbed or altered by the ethnographer’s presence.

Is ethnographic research?

Ethnographic research is a qualitative method where researchers observe and/or interact with a study’s participants in their real-life environment. Ethnography was popularised by anthropology, but is used across a wide range of social sciences.

What did Clifford Geertz study?

Interpretive social science is an attempt to engage those meanings. Unlike other anthropological scholars, Geertz did not focus on so-called primitive groups. Rather, he studied complex, syncretic societies in Indonesia (Java, Bali, Celebes, Sumatra) and in Morocco.

How long did Malinowski spend in the Trobriand Islands?

He spent almost two years in the Trobriand Islands off the east coast of New Guinea, doing the long-term fieldwork that was to revolutionise anthropological research methods.

Where did Edward Burnett Tylor an early anthropologist conduct his research?

Early life and travels He made his way in 1856 to Cuba, where, in Havana, he entered into conversation with a fellow Quaker who turned out to be the archaeologist and ethnologist Henry Christy. Christy was on his way to Mexico to study remnants of the ancient Toltec culture in the Valley of Mexico.

Who is best known as an ethnographer?

Anthropologists who focus on one culture are often called ethnographers while those who focus on several cultures are often called ethnologists. The term ethnology is credited to Adam Franz Kollár who used and defined it in his Historiae ivrisqve pvblici Regni Vngariae amoenitates published in Vienna in 1783.

What discipline did ethnography originate?

Ethnography largely originated in the disciplines of anthropology and sociology; both anthropologists and sociologists have consistently based their research on intensive and extensive fieldwork. Ethnography, however, has evolved into different intellectual traditions for anthropologists and sociologists.

Who introduced participant observation method in ethnographic?

This technique was used by Malinowski in his studies of the Trobriand Islands (Malinowski 1922, 1935, 1948) “to grasp the native’s point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of his world” (Malinowski 1922, p. 25, emphasis in original).

What is the history of ethnography?

It had its origin in social and cultural anthropology in the early twentieth century, but spread to other social science disciplines, notably sociology, during the course of that century. Ethnographers mainly use qualitative methods, though they may also employ quantitative data.

Who did Malinowski study?

He also spent three semesters at the University of Leipzig (ca. 1909-1910), where he studied under economist Karl Bücher and psychologist Wilhelm Wundt. After reading James Frazer’s The Golden Bough, he decided to become an anthropologist.

How was ethnography created?

Ethnography is a well-established anthropological method of writing a holistic description and analysis of a culture. Usually, ethnographies are created through participant-observation and are a key part of anthropological research.

What's the difference between anthropology and ethnography?

Ethnography aims to describe life as it is lived and experienced, by a people, somewhere, sometime. Anthropology, by contrast, is an inquiry into the conditions and possibilities of human life in the world.

Why is ethnography an important primary source of history?

In both modern and historical situations, ethnographic sources can aid you many things. They allow us to teach crafts, understand cultures, and learn about daily life in a historical context.

What is the difference between ethnography and ethnology?

Ethnography is the in depth study of a particular cultural group, while ethnology is the comparative study of ethnographic data, society and culture. Many of the readings for this course and your own research project have been ethnographic in nature.

What are the three ethical obligations that anthropologists follow?

Anthropologists must do everything in their power to protect the physical, social, and psychological welfare and to honor the dignity and privacy of those studied. a.