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99-596: FWP employed thousands of people and produced hundreds of publications, including state guides, city guides, local histories, oral histories, ethnographies , and children's books. In addition to writers, the project provided jobs to unemployed librarians, clerks, researchers, editors, and historians. Funded under the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935 , FWP was established July 27, 1935, by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt . Henry Alsberg ,

198-462: A "natural" setting, ethnology yields insights into the practical applications of a product or service. It is one of the best ways to identify areas of friction and improve overall user experience. Companies make increasing use of ethnographic methods to understand consumers and consumption, or for new product development (such as video ethnography ). The Ethnographic Praxis in Industry (EPIC) conference

297-523: A code of ethics, stating: Anthropologists have "moral obligations as members of other groups, such as the family, religion, and community, as well as the profession". The code of ethics notes that anthropologists are part of a wider scholarly and political network, as well as human and natural environment, which needs to be reported on respectfully. The code of ethics recognizes that sometimes very close and personal relationship can sometimes develop from doing ethnographic work. The Association acknowledges that

396-640: A documentary about FWP, Soul of a People: Writing America's Story , premiered on the Smithsonian Channel . It was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities .The film includes interviews with American authors Studs Terkel and Stetson Kennedy , and American historian Douglas Brinkley . A companion book was published by Wiley & Sons as Soul of a People: The WPA Writers' Project Uncovers Depression America . The Slave Narrative Collection

495-503: A given social situation and understanding the group members' own interpretation of such behavior. As a form of inquiry, ethnography relies heavily on participant observation —on the researcher participating in the setting or with the people being studied, at least in some marginal role, and seeking to document, in detail, patterns of social interaction and the perspectives of participants, and to understand these in their local contexts. It had its origin in social and cultural anthropology in

594-608: A huge increase in popularity. The annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association began to host the Multispecies Salon , a collection of discussions, showcases, and other events for anthropologists. The event provided a space for anthropologists and artists to come together and showcase vast knowledge of different organisms and their intertwined systems. May Swenson Anna Thilda May " May " Swenson (May 28, 1913 – December 4, 1989)

693-510: A lawyer, journalist, playwright, theatrical producer, and human-rights activist, directed the program from 1935 to 1939. In 1939, Alsberg was fired, federal funding was cut, and the project fell under state sponsorship led by John D. Newsom. FWP ended completely in 1943 after the US entered World War II and funds were diverted to the war effort. An estimated 10,000 people found employment in the FWP. The project

792-407: A leading social scientist, data collection methods are meant to capture the "social meanings and ordinary activities" of people (informants) in "naturally occurring settings" that are commonly referred to as "the field". The goal is to collect data in such a way that the researcher imposes a minimal amount of personal bias in the data. Multiple methods of data collection may be employed to facilitate

891-510: A lesbian, they remained close throughout her life. Much of her later poetry works were devoted to children (e.g. the collection Iconographs , 1970). She also translated the work of contemporary Swedish poets, including the selected poems of Nobel laureate Tomas Tranströmer . Swenson attended Utah State University in Logan, Utah , graduating in the class of 1934 with a bachelor's degree. She taught poetry as poet-in-residence at Bryn Mawr College ,

990-511: A mainstay of ancient historiography . Tacitus has ethnographies in the Agricola , Histories , and Germania . Tacitus' Germania "stands as the sole surviving full-scale monograph by a classical author on an alien people." Ethnography formed a relatively coherent subgenre in Byzantine literature. While ethnography ("ethnographic writing") was widely practiced in antiquity, ethnography as

1089-501: A particular religious group they are interested in studying; or they may even inhabit a familial role in a community they are staying with. Robert M. Emerson, Rachel Fretz, and Linda Shaw summarize this idea in their book Writing Ethnographic Field Notes using a common metaphor: “the fieldworker cannot and should not attempt to be a fly on the wall.” Ybema et al. (2010) examine the ontological and epistemological presuppositions underlying ethnography. Ethnographic research can range from

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1188-583: A professor of history and geography. Whilst involved in the expedition, he differentiated Völker-Beschreibung as a distinct area of study. This became known as "ethnography", following the introduction of the Greek neologism ethnographia by Johann Friedrich Schöpperlin and the German variant by A. F. Thilo in 1767. August Ludwig von Schlözer and Christoph Wilhelm Jacob Gatterer of the University of Göttingen introduced

1287-399: A realist perspective, in which behavior is observed, to a constructivist perspective where understanding is socially constructed by the researcher and subjects. Research can range from an objectivist account of fixed, observable behaviors to an interpretive narrative describing "the interplay of individual agency and social structure." Critical theory researchers address "issues of power within

1386-544: A refined output for various purposes. A modern example of this technology in application, is the use of captured audio in smart devices, transcribed to issue targeted adverts (often reconciled vs other metadata, or product development data for designers. Digital ethnography comes with its own set of ethical questions, and the Association of Internet Researchers ' ethical guidelines are frequently used. Gabriele de Seta's paper "Three Lies of Digital Ethnography" explores some of

1485-446: A region, winks remained meaningful in the same way. In this way, cultural boundaries of communication could be explored, as opposed to using linguistic boundaries or notions about the residence. Geertz, while still following something of a traditional ethnographic outline, moved outside that outline to talk about "webs" instead of "outlines" of culture. Within cultural anthropology, there are several subgenres of ethnography. Beginning in

1584-475: A relationship that allows for a more personal and in-depth portrait of the informants and their community. These can include participant observation, field notes, interviews and surveys, as well as various visual methods. Interviews are often taped and later transcribed, allowing the interview to proceed unimpaired of note-taking, but with all information available later for full analysis. Secondary research and document analysis are also used to provide insight into

1683-475: A science ( cf. ethnology ) did not exist in the ancient world. There is no ancient term or concept applicable to ethnography, and those writers probably did not consider the study of other cultures as a distinct mode of inquiry from history. Gerhard Friedrich Müller developed the concept of ethnography as a separate discipline whilst participating in the Second Kamchatka Expedition (1733–43) as

1782-487: Is Jaber F. Gubrium's pioneering ethnography on the experiences of a nursing home, Living and Dying at Murray Manor . Major influences on this development were anthropologist Lloyd Warner , on the Chicago sociology faculty, and to Robert Park 's experience as a journalist. Symbolic interactionism developed from the same tradition and yielded such sociological ethnographies as Shared Fantasy by Gary Alan Fine , which documents

1881-513: Is a competitive prize granted annually to an outstanding collection of poetry in English. Open to published and unpublished writers, with no limitation on subject, the competition honors May Swenson as one of America's most vital and provocative poets of the twentieth century. Judges for the competition have included Mary Oliver , Maxine Kumin , John Hollander , Mark Doty , Alice Quinn , Harold Bloom , Garrison Keillor , Edward Field and others from

1980-422: Is a document written about a particular people, almost always based at least in part on emic views of where the culture begins and ends. Using language or community boundaries to bound the ethnography is common. Ethnographies are also sometimes called "case studies". Ethnographers study and interpret culture, its universalities, and its variations through the ethnographic study based on fieldwork . An ethnography

2079-423: Is a fundamental methodology in cultural ecology, development studies, and feminist geography. In addition, it has gained importance in social, political, cultural, and nature-society geography. Ethnography is an effective methodology in qualitative geographic research that focuses on people's perceptions and experiences and their traditionally place-based immersion within a social group. According to John Brewer ,

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2178-519: Is a specific kind of written observational science which provides an account of a particular culture, society, or community. The fieldwork usually involves spending a year or more in another society, living with the local people and learning about their ways of life. Ruth Fulton Benedict uses examples of Enthrotyhy in her serious of field work that began in 1922 of Serrano, of the Zuni in 1924, the Cochiti in 1925 and

2277-501: Is another field which prominently features ethnographies. Urban sociology , Atlanta University (now Clark-Atlanta University), and the Chicago School , in particular, are associated with ethnographic research, with some well-known early examples being The Philadelphia Negro (1899) by W. E. B. Du Bois, Street Corner Society by William Foote Whyte and Black Metropolis by St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton, Jr. Well-known

2376-521: Is both a process and an outcome of the research. Studies such as Gerry Philipsen 's analysis of cultural communication strategies in a blue-collar , working-class neighborhood on the south side of Chicago, Speaking 'Like a Man' in Teamsterville , paved the way for the expansion of ethnographic research in the study of communication. Scholars of communication studies use ethnographic research methods to analyze communicative behaviors and phenomena. This

2475-826: Is buried in the Logan City Cemetery, and her grave is marked by a granite bench on which is etched some of her poetry. For the last twenty years of her life, she lived in Sea Cliff, New York . In 1936, Swenson worked as an editor and ghostwriter for a man called "Plat", who became her "boyfriend." "I think I should like to have a son by Plat", she wrote in her diary, "but I would not like to be married to any man, but only be myself." Her poems were published in Antaeus , The Atlantic Monthly , Carleton Miscellany , The Nation , The New Yorker , The Paris Review , Saturday Review , Parnassus and Poetry . Her poem Question

2574-461: Is evidence of this. Ethnographers' systematic and holistic approach to real-life experience is valued by product developers, who use the method to understand unstated desires or cultural practices that surround products. Where focus groups fail to inform marketers about what people really do, ethnography links what people say to what they do—avoiding the pitfalls that come from relying only on self-reported, focus-group data. The ethnographic methodology

2673-446: Is how an individual views a novel after completing it. The physical entity that is the novel contains a specific image in the perspective of the interpreting individual and can only be expressed by the individual in the terms of "I can tell you what an image is by telling you what it feels like." The idea of an image relies on the imagination and has been seen to be utilized by children in a very spontaneous and natural manner. Effectively,

2772-772: Is not necessarily casting blame at ethnographic researchers but tries to show that researchers often make idealized ethical claims and standards which are inherently based on partial truths and self-deceptions. Fine also acknowledges that many of these partial truths and self-deceptions are unavoidable. He maintains that "illusions" are essential to maintain an occupational reputation and avoid potentially more caustic consequences. He claims, "Ethnographers cannot help but lie, but in lying, we reveal truths that escape those who are not so bold". Based on these assertions, Fine establishes three conceptual clusters in which ethnographic ethical dilemmas can be situated: "Classic Virtues", "Technical Skills", and "Ethnographic Self". Much debate surrounding

2871-416: Is not the sine qua non of the discipline, as it is in cultural anthropology. Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, ethnographic research methods began to be widely used by communication scholars. As the purpose of ethnography is to describe and interpret the shared and learned patterns of values, behaviors, beliefs, and language of a culture-sharing group, Harris, (1968), also Agar (1980) note that ethnography

2970-514: Is not usually evaluated in terms of philosophical standpoint (such as positivism and emotionalism ). Ethnographic studies need to be evaluated in some manner. No consensus has been developed on evaluation standards, but Richardson (2000, p. 254) provides five criteria that ethnographers might find helpful. Jaber F. Gubrium and James A. Holstein's (1997) monograph, The New Language of Qualitative Method, discusses forms of ethnography in terms of their "methods talk". Gary Alan Fine argues that

3069-402: Is often characterized in the writing as attempts to understand taken-for-granted routines by which working definitions are socially produced. Ethnography as a method is a storied, careful, and systematic examination of the reality-generating mechanisms of everyday life (Coulon, 1995). Ethnographic work in communication studies seeks to explain "how" ordinary methods/practices/performances construct

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3168-404: Is one of the keys to this process. Ethnography is very useful in social research. An inevitability during ethnographic participation is that the researcher experiences at least some resocialization. In other words, the ethnographer to some extent “becomes” what they are studying. For instance, an ethnographer may become skilled at a work activity that they are studying; they may become members of

3267-597: Is organized in a geriatric hospital. Another approach to ethnography in sociology comes in the form of institutional ethnography , developed by Dorothy E. Smith for studying the social relations which structure people's everyday lives. Other notable ethnographies include Paul Willis 's Learning to Labour, on working class youth; the work of Elijah Anderson , Mitchell Duneier , and Loïc Wacquant on black America, and Lai Olurode's Glimpses of Madrasa From Africa . But even though many sub-fields and theoretical perspectives within sociology use ethnographic methods, ethnography

3366-656: The Federal Theatre Project , faced tremendous scrutiny from the committee. The Dies HUAC committee, like the McCarthy committee of the 1950s, "used inquisitorial scare tactics, innuendo, and unsupported accusations." Alsberg, Flanagan, and others who were accused of supporting the communist agenda could not "examine evidence against them, could not produce their own witnesses, could not cross-examine accusers." Accusations that communist activities were carried out openly, and that Soviets funded labor unions, which took control of

3465-497: The Montana State University Archives and Special Collections . A large digital archive called What America Ate has been created to house the digitized remains of the project. For most of its lifetime, FWP faced a barrage of criticism from American conservatives . When Massachusetts: A Guide to its Places and People , was published, it was lauded by government officials, including Governor Charles F. Hurley . But

3564-789: The Slave Narrative Collection , a set of interviews that culminated in more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. Many of these narratives are available online from the above-named collection at the Library of Congress website. Folklorist Benjamin A. Botkin was instrumental in insuring the survival of these manuscripts. Among the many researchers and authors who have used this collection are Colson Whitehead , who drew from it for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Underground Railroad . Other programs that emerged from Alsberg's desire to create an inclusive "self-portrait of America" were

3663-568: The University of North Carolina Press , and Southeast Regional Director of the Federal Writers' Project. In These Are Our Lives , the only book published by the Southern Life History project, Couch explained that their goal was to "get life histories which are readable and faithful representations of living persons, and which taken together, will give a fair picture of the structure and working of society." The Illinois Writers' Project,

3762-479: The University of North Carolina at Greensboro , the University of California, Riverside , Purdue University , and Utah State University . From 1959 to 1966 she worked as a manuscript reviewer at New Directions Publishing . Swenson left New Directions Press in 1966 in an effort to focus completely on her own writing. She also served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1980 until her death in 1989. She

3861-598: The "May Swenson Project." Supported by students and teachers, it has publicized Swenson's work at USU, as well as her influence across the nation. In her name, USU has dedicated a May Swenson room in the English Department and another in the USU Merrill-Cazier Library . Funds are being sought to establish an endowed chair in Swenson's name. The May Swenson Poetry Award, sponsored by Utah State University Press,

3960-451: The "ethos" of the culture. In his fieldwork, Geertz used elements of a phenomenological approach, tracing not just the doings of people, but the cultural elements themselves. For example, if within a group of people, winking was a communicative gesture, he sought to first determine what kinds of things a wink might mean (it might mean several things). Then, he sought to determine in what contexts winks were used, and whether, as one moved about

4059-476: The "pelvic heave of mountains." Author Jean Gould describes Swenson's work as "sensual as well as sexual." Washington University in St. Louis houses most of Swenson's documents and original manuscripts. This is the primary location for all scholarly materials on Swenson. Utah State University also has two collections of her work, and an addendum in their Special Collections and Archives. The University has created

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4158-513: The 1950s and early 1960s, anthropologists began writing "bio-confessional" ethnographies that intentionally exposed the nature of ethnographic research. Famous examples include Tristes Tropiques (1955) by Lévi-Strauss, The High Valley by Kenneth Read, and The Savage and the Innocent by David Maybury-Lewis , as well as the mildly fictionalized Return to Laughter by Elenore Smith Bowen ( Laura Bohannan ). Later " reflexive " ethnographies refined

4257-573: The FTP and the FWP. In the wake of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and consequent global economic disruption, several writers and politicians called for a new U.S. Federal Writers' Project. In May 2021, on the anniversary of the original project, Congressman Ted Lieu and Congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernandez introduced legislation to create a new FWP, to be administered by the Department of Labor , that would hire unemployed and underemployed writers. Supporters of

4356-624: The FWP had published 321 works; hundreds more remained in various stages of publication. Some were published in the years leading up to 1943 under the renamed Writers' Program. Others were never completed. Over the lifetime of the FWP and the Writers' Program, 10,000 people were estimated to be employed. In the 1937 musical The Cradle Will Rock , funded by the Federal Theater Project, composer Marc Blitzstein incorporated some of opponents' efforts to prevent this production. In September 2009

4455-587: The FWP, as did such mainstream publishing companies such as Viking Press , Random House , and Alfred A. Knopf , each of which published some of the books. By 1939, HUAC's tactics seemed to work, and the newly elected Congress cut the WPA budget while increasing HUAC's funding. In January 1939, 6,000 people were laid off from Federal One. By July 1939, Congress voted to eliminate the Theatre Project, which had been criticized for communist influence. Federal sponsorship for

4554-673: The Federal Writers' Project (1999). A short-lived FWP project was called America Eats , a proposed book of the regional foodways of the United States. Writers in each state were tasked with gathering information about foods and food-related events unique to their area, and preparing essays about these. The country was divided into five regions: the Northeast, the South, the Middle West, the Far West, and

4653-401: The Federal Writers' Project ended in 1939. The program was permitted to continue under state sponsorship, with some federal employees, until 1943. In the last months of the FWP's operation, Henry Alsberg was fired. He continued to work past his firing date in order to meet contractual arrangements with the publishers of three upcoming American Guide books. By the time of his departure in 1939,

4752-523: The Life History and Folklore projects. These consisted of first-person narratives and interviews (collected and conducted by FWP workers), which represented people of various ethnicities, regions, and occupations. According to the Library of Congress website, American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1940 , the documents "chronicle vivid life stories of Americans who lived at

4851-635: The Pina in 1926. All being people she wished to study for her anthropological data. Benedict's experiences with the Southwest Zuni pueblo is to be considered the basis of her formative fieldwork. The experience set the idea for her to produce her theory of "culture is personality writ large" (modell, 1988). By studying the culture between the different Pueblo and Plain Indians, She discovered the culture isomorphism that would be considered her personalized unique approach to

4950-512: The Southwest. While materials, in various quantities, were gathered from all five regions, the book America Eats! was never completed and published. The United States entry into World War II in 1943 resulted in a loss of funding for the FWP and its projects. Materials from the America Eats project are held in various archives and libraries around the country, including at the Library of Congress and

5049-649: The Western Pacific (1922) by Bronisław Malinowski , Ethnologische Excursion in Johore (1875) by Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay , Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) by Margaret Mead , The Nuer (1940) by E. E. Evans-Pritchard , Naven (1936, 1958) by Gregory Bateson , or " The Lele of the Kasai " (1963) by Mary Douglas . Cultural and social anthropologists today place a high value on doing ethnographic research. The typical ethnography

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5148-511: The arts' projects, were found to be false. Author Richard Wright , a future Guggenheim scholar, was often under attack, with his writings pronounced as "vile". Among the many charges leveled by HUAC against the FWP and its workers, was that Richard Wright was not born in the United States. (He was born in Mississippi.) Alsberg wrote a long court brief and provided supporting documents to refute each charge. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt supported

5247-404: The book of British ethnographer W. H. R. Rivers titled "Kinship and Social Organisation" in 1911. Genealogy or kinship commonly plays a crucial role in the structure of non-industrial societies, determining both social relations and group relationship to the past. Marriage, for example, is frequently pivotal in determining military alliances between villages , clans or ethnic groups . In

5346-499: The code is limited in scope; ethnographic work can sometimes be multidisciplinary, and anthropologists need to be familiar with ethics and perspectives of other disciplines as well. The eight-page code of ethics outlines ethical considerations for those conducting Research, Teaching, Application and Dissemination of Results, which are briefly outlined below. The following are commonly misconceived conceptions of ethnographers: According to Norman K. Denzin, ethnographers should consider

5445-725: The day after its publication, "conservatives attacked the book over its essays on the 1912 Lawrence textile strike and other labor issues. Such critics were even more scathing about the coverage of the Sacco and Vanzetti affair." Scholars called the questionable passages fair accounts; the controversy helped increase book sales. The most poisonous attacks against the FWP came from the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and its chair, Congressman Martin Dies Jr. of Texas. Alsberg and Hallie Flanagan , his counterpart at

5544-424: The development of experimental forms such as 'dialogic anthropology,' 'narrative ethnography,' and 'literary ethnography', Writing Culture helped to encourage the development of 'collaborative ethnography.' This exploration of the relationship between writer, audience, and subject has become a central tenet of contemporary anthropological and ethnographic practice. In certain instances, active collaboration between

5643-620: The discipline, under the general influence of literary theory and post-colonial / post-structuralist thought. "Experimental" ethnographies that reveal the ferment of the discipline include Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man by Michael Taussig , Debating Muslims by Michael F. J. Fischer and Mehdi Abedi, A Space on the Side of the Road by Kathleen Stewart, and Advocacy after Bhopal by Kim Fortun. This critical turn in sociocultural anthropology during

5742-459: The earliest well-known studies was Lewis Henry Morgan 's The American Beaver and His Works (1868). His study closely observed a group of beavers in Northern Michigan. Morgan's main objective was to highlight that the daily individual tasks that the beavers performed were complex communicative acts that had been passed down for generations. In the early 2000s multi-species ethnography took on

5841-569: The early history of fantasy role-playing games . Other important ethnographies in sociology include Pierre Bourdieu 's work in Algeria and France. Jaber F. Gubrium's series of organizational ethnographies focused on the everyday practices of illness, care, and recovery are notable. They include Living and Dying at Murray Manor, which describes the social worlds of a nursing home; Describing Care: Image and Practice in Rehabilitation, which documents

5940-604: 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. The typical ethnography is a holistic study and so includes a brief history, and an analysis of the terrain , the climate , and the habitat . A wide range of groups and organisations have been studied by this method, including traditional communities, youth gangs , religious cults , and organisations of various kinds. While, traditionally, ethnography has relied on

6039-498: The entire process of conducting ethnographies, including the design, implementation, and reporting of an ethnographic study. Essentially, Fine maintains that researchers are typically not as ethical as they claim or assume to be — and that "each job includes ways of doing things that would be inappropriate for others to know". Also see Jaber F. Gubrium concept of "site-specificity" discussed his book co-edited with Amir Marvasti titled CRAFTING ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELDWORK. Routledge, 2023. Fine

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6138-528: The ethnographer cannot escape the personal viewpoint in creating an ethnographic account, thus making any claims of objective neutrality highly problematic, if not altogether impossible. In regards to this last point, Writing Culture became a focal point for looking at how ethnographers could describe different cultures and societies without denying the subjectivity of those individuals and groups being studied while simultaneously doing so without laying claim to absolute knowledge and objective authority. Along with

6237-488: The ethnographer focuses attention on a community, selecting knowledgeable informants who know the activities of the community well. These informants are typically asked to identify other informants who represent the community, often using snowball or chain sampling. This process is often effective in revealing common cultural denominators connected to the topic being studied. Ethnography relies greatly on up-close, personal experience. Participation, rather than just observation,

6336-882: The field of epistemology the term is used to characterize the philosophical method employed by such writers as Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault . Digital ethnography is also seen as virtual ethnography. This type of ethnography is not so typical as ethnography recorded by pen and pencil. Digital ethnography allows for a lot more opportunities to look at different cultures and societies. Traditional ethnography may use videos or images, but digital ethnography goes more in-depth. For example, digital ethnographers would use social media platforms such as Twitter or blogs so that people's interactions and behaviors can be studied. Modern developments in computing power and AI have enabled higher efficiencies in ethnographic data collection via multimedia and computational analysis using machine learning to corroborate many data sources together to produce

6435-471: The following seven principles when observing, recording, and sampling data: Autoethnography is a form of ethnographic research in which a researcher connects personal experiences to wider cultural, political, and social meanings and understandings. According to Adams et al., autoethnography Bochner and Ellis have also defined autoethnography as "an autobiographical genre of writing and research that displays multiple layers of consciousness, connecting

6534-966: The formal sciences. Material culture, technology, and means of subsistence are usually treated next, as they are typically bound up in physical geography and include descriptions of infrastructure. Kinship and social structure (including age grading, peer groups, gender, voluntary associations, clans, moieties, and so forth, if they exist) are typically included. Languages spoken, dialects, and the history of language change are another group of standard topics. Practices of child rearing, acculturation, and emic views on personality and values usually follow after sections on social structure. Rites, rituals, and other evidence of religion have long been an interest and are sometimes central to ethnographies, especially when conducted in public where visiting anthropologists can see them. As ethnography developed, anthropologists grew more interested in less tangible aspects of culture, such as values, worldview and what Clifford Geertz termed

6633-1097: The idea of the image is a primary tool for ethnographers to collect data. The image presents the perspective, experiences, and influences of an individual as a single entity and in consequence, the individual will always contain this image in the group under study. The ethnographic method is used across a range of different disciplines, primarily by anthropologists/ethnologists but also occasionally by sociologists. Cultural studies , occupational therapy , economics , social work , education , design , psychology , computer science , human factors and ergonomics , ethnomusicology , folkloristics , religious studies , geography , history , linguistics , communication studies , performance studies , advertising , accounting research , nursing , urban planning , usability , political science , social movement , and criminology are other fields which have made use of ethnography. Cultural anthropology and social anthropology were developed around ethnographic research and their canonical texts, which are mostly ethnographies: e.g. Argonauts of

6732-585: The issue of ethics arose following revelations about how the ethnographer Napoleon Chagnon conducted his ethnographic fieldwork with the Yanomani people of South America. While there is no international standard on Ethnographic Ethics, many western anthropologists look to the American Anthropological Association for guidance when conducting ethnographic work. In 2009, the Association adopted

6831-478: The late Kennedy's military funeral, with lines arranged in the shape of a folded flag. Swenson is known for her heavy use of natural imagery, mixed with religious and philosophical themes. Her poem "By Morning", which was published in The New Yorker compares a snowfall to the biblical fall of manna . Swenson's sense of imagery also lends itself to erotic poems, as she describes human bodies, breasts and limbs and

6930-404: The legislation included writers James Fallows , Ruth Dickey, and Jonathan Lethem . Ethnography Ethnography is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures . Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining the behavior of the participants in

7029-602: The methodological questions more central to a specifically ethnographical approach to internet studies, drawing upon Fine's classic text. Multispecies ethnography in particular focuses on both nonhuman and human participants within a group or culture, as opposed to just human participants in traditional ethnography. A multispecies ethnography, in comparison to other forms of ethnography, studies species that are connected to people and our social lives. Species affect and are affected by culture, economics, and politics. The study's roots go back to general anthropology of animals. One of

7128-412: The mid-1980s can be traced to the influence of the now classic (and often contested) text, Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography , (1986) edited by James Clifford and George Marcus . Writing Culture helped bring changes to both anthropology and ethnography often described in terms of being 'postmodern,' 'reflexive,' 'literary,' 'deconstructive,' or 'poststructural' in nature, in that

7227-443: The nature of ethnographic inquiry demands that researchers deviate from formal and idealistic rules or ethics that have come to be widely accepted in qualitative and quantitative approaches in research. Many of these ethical assumptions are rooted in positivist and post-positivist epistemologies that have adapted over time but are apparent and must be accounted for in all research paradigms. These ethical dilemmas are evident throughout

7326-519: The ordinary actions used by ordinary people in the accomplishments of their identities. This often gives the perception of trying to answer the "why" and "how come" questions of human communication. Often this type of research results in a case study or field study such as an analysis of speech patterns at a protest rally, or the way firemen communicate during "down time" at a fire station. Like anthropology scholars, communication scholars often immerse themselves, and participate in and/or directly observe

7425-443: The particular social group being studied. The American anthropologist George Spindler was a pioneer in applying the ethnographic methodology to the classroom. Anthropologists such as Daniel Miller and Mary Douglas have used ethnographic data to answer academic questions about consumers and consumption. In this sense, Tony Salvador, Genevieve Bell , and Ken Anderson describe design ethnography as being "a way of understanding

7524-648: The particulars of daily life in such a way as to increase the success probability of a new product or service or, more appropriately, to reduce the probability of failure specifically due to a lack of understanding of the basic behaviors and frameworks of consumers." Sociologist Sam Ladner argues in her book, that understanding consumers and their desires requires a shift in "standpoint", one that only ethnography provides. The results are products and services that respond to consumers' unmet needs. Businesses, too, have found ethnographers helpful for understanding how people use products and services. By assessing user experience in

7623-442: The personal to the cultural." They further indicate that autoethnography is typically written in first-person and can "appear in a variety of forms," such as "short stories, poetry, fiction, novels, photographic essays, personal essays, journals, fragmented and layered writing, and social science prose." The genealogical method investigates links of kinship determined by marriage and descent . The method owes its origin from

7722-537: The physical presence of the researcher in a setting, there is research using the label that has relied on interviews or documents, sometimes to investigate events in the past such as the NASA Challenger disaster . There is also a considerable amount of 'virtual' or online ethnography, sometimes labelled netnography or cyber-ethnography . The term ethnography is from Greek ( ἔθνος éthnos "folk, people, nation" and γράφω gráphō "I write") and encompasses

7821-424: The pseudonym Jeremiah Digges, received critical acclaim. In each state, a Writers' Project non-relief staff of editors was formed, along with a much larger group of field workers drawn from local unemployment rolls. The people hired came from a variety of backgrounds, ranging from former newspaper workers to white-collar and blue-collar workers without writing or editing experience. Notable FWP projects included

7920-622: The publication of The Negro in Virginia (1940). Notably, it included photographs by Robert McNeill , now remembered as a groundbreaking African-American photographer. African-American writer Zora Neale Hurston was employed by the Florida Writers' Project. Years after her death, her unpublished works from this time were compiled in Go Gator and Muddy the Water: Writings by Zora Neale Hurston from

8019-444: The research topic. In the past, kinship charts were commonly used to "discover logical patterns and social structure in non-Western societies". In the 21st century, anthropology focuses more on the study of people in urban settings and the use of kinship charts is seldom employed. In order to make the data collection and interpretation transparent, researchers creating ethnographies often attempt to be "reflexive". Reflexivity refers to

8118-432: The researcher's aim "to explore the ways in which [the] researcher's involvement with a particular study influences, acts upon and informs such research". [Marvasti, Amir & Gubrium, Jaber. 2023. Crafting Ethnographic Fieldwork: Sites, Selves & Social Worlds. Routledge. Despite these attempts of reflexivity, no researcher can be totally unbiased. This factor has provided a basis to criticize ethnography. Traditionally,

8217-455: The researcher(s) and subject(s) has helped blend the practice of collaboration in ethnographic fieldwork with the process of creating the ethnographic product resulting from the research. 1800s: Martineau · Tocqueville  ·  Marx ·  Spencer · Le Bon · Ward · Pareto ·  Tönnies · Veblen ·  Simmel · Durkheim ·  Addams ·  Mead · Weber ·  Du Bois ·  Mannheim · Elias Sociology

8316-402: The researcher-researched relationships and the links between knowledge and power." Another form of data collection is that of the "image". The image is the projection that an individual puts on an object or abstract idea. An image can be contained within the physical world through a particular individual's perspective, primarily based on that individual's past experiences. One example of an image

8415-409: The resultant data to test and explain the empirical assumptions. In ethnography, the researcher gathers what is available, what is normal, what it is that people do, what they say, and how they work. Ethnography can also be used in other methodological frameworks, for instance, an action research program of study where one of the goals is to change and improve the situation. Ethnographic research

8514-495: The series. Some full-length books are available online at the Internet Archive. The FWP also published another series, Life In America , and numerous individual titles. Many FWP books were bestsellers, including New England Hurricane: A Factual, Pictorial Record , a rapidly produced volume about the devastation wreaked by the 1938 New England hurricane . Others, such as Cape Cod Pilot , written by author Josef Berger using

8613-460: The social organization of patient subjectivity in a physical rehabilitation hospital; Caretakers: Treating Emotionally Disturbed Children, which features the social construction of behavioral disorders in children; and Oldtimers and Alzheimer's: The Descriptive Organization of Senility, which describes how the Alzheimer's disease movement constructed a new subjectivity of senile dementia and how that

8712-480: The study of anthropology using ethnographic techniques. A typical ethnography attempts to be holistic and typically follows an outline to include a brief history of the culture in question, an analysis of the physical geography or terrain inhabited by the people under study, including climate , and often including what biological anthropologists call habitat . Folk notions of botany and zoology are presented as ethnobotany and ethnozoology alongside references from

8811-454: The technique to translate cultural differences by representing their effects on the ethnographer. Famous examples include Deep Play: Notes on a Balinese Cockfight by Clifford Geertz , Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco by Paul Rabinow , The Headman and I by Jean-Paul Dumont, and Tuhami by Vincent Crapanzano. In the 1980s, the rhetoric of ethnography was subjected to intense scrutiny within

8910-430: The term into the academic discourse in an attempt to reform the contemporary understanding of world history. According to Dewan (2018), the researcher is not looking for generalizing the findings; rather, they are considering it in reference to the context of the situation. In this regard, the best way to integrate ethnography in a quantitative research would be to use it to discover and uncover relationships and then use

9009-428: The text helped to highlight the various epistemic and political predicaments that many practitioners saw as plaguing ethnographic representations and practices. Where Geertz's and Turner's interpretive anthropology recognized subjects as creative actors who constructed their sociocultural worlds out of symbols, postmodernists attempted to draw attention to the privileged status of the ethnographers themselves. That is,

9108-562: The turn of the century and include tales of meeting Billy the Kid, surviving the 1871 Chicago fire , pioneer journeys out West, grueling factory work, and the immigrant experience. Writers hired by this Depression-era work project included Ralph Ellison , Nelson Algren , May Swenson , and many others." Among several projects within these first-person narratives was the Southern Life History Project created by William Couch , head of

9207-447: The ways in which ancient authors described and analyzed foreign cultures. Anthony Kaldellis loosely suggests the Odyssey as a starting point for ancient ethnography, while noting that Herodotus ' Histories is the usual starting point; while Edith Hall has argued that Homeric poetry lacks "the coherence and vigour of ethnological science". From Herodotus forward, ethnography was

9306-466: Was also published in Stephenie Meyer 's book The Host . She received much recognition for her work. Some of which include: Swenson created poems in " iconograph " style, first published in her 1970 book Iconographs , in which Swenson shaped lines of her poetry to create images relating to the poem's content. Her work "The Lowering", for instance, a memorial poem for Robert F. Kennedy , explored

9405-399: Was an American poet and playwright. Harold Bloom considered her one of the most important and original poets of the 20th century. The first child of Margaret and Dan Arthur Swenson, she grew up as the eldest of 10 children in a Mormon household where Swedish was spoken regularly and English was a second language. Although her conservative family struggled to accept the fact that she was

9504-598: Was featured in the HBO documentary, Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives . The film includes actors Angela Bassett and Samuel L. Jackson performing dramatic readings of selected transcripts. The 1999 film Cradle Will Rock , by Tim Robbins , while depicting the events of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), dramatizes the attacks against Federal One by HUAC. Its efforts resulted in closing both

9603-458: Was generally uniform: each guide included detailed histories of the state or territory, with descriptions of every city and town, automobile travel routes, photographs, maps, and chapters on natural resources, culture, and geography. The inclusion of essays about the various cultures of people living in the states, including immigrants and African Americans, was unprecedented. City books, such as The New York City Guide , were also published as part of

9702-708: Was intended not only to provide work relief for unemployed writers, but also to create a unique "self-portrait of America" through publication of histories and guidebooks. From 1935 to 1943, the project cost about $ 27,000,000 – 0.002% of all WPA appropriations. The American Guide Series , the most well-known of FWP's publications, consisted of guides to the then 48 states, the Alaska Territory, Puerto Rico , and Washington, D.C. The books were written and compiled by writers from individual states and territories, and edited by Alsberg and his staff in Washington, D.C. The format

9801-496: Was one of the few racially integrated project sites. Among its directors was Jacob Scher . The Chicago project employed Arna Bontemps , an established voice of the Harlem Renaissance , and helped to launch the literary careers of African-American writers such as Richard Wright , Margaret Walker , Katherine Dunham , and Frank Yerby . The Virginia Negro Studies Project employed 16 African-American writers and culminated in

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