Ethnology Books

The Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea (Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology)

Annette B. Weiner

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A Whole New World 4 out of 5 stars.
17 of 24 people found this review helpful.

Annette Weiner has really captured the essence of the people of the Trobriand Islands in this ethnography. She was following in the footsteps of Malinowski a well known person in her field. She was not afraid to question his findings or contradict his beliefs. In the course of this ethnography, readers will come to know the culture of the Trobriand Islands. You will understand the importance of yams in their every day life. The rituals that you know see has odd will be proven to be spiritual and have more purpose that you could have ever imagined. You will learn in detail what the death of a Trobriander means to the entire community. Reading this book will leave you in awe of these people. You will learn of a culutre that is of matrilineal descent and what that means to them. This novel will open your eyes to a whole new world. A world of traditions and spiritual beliefs. The people of the Trobriand Islands will amaze you and you will walk away from this book with more knowledge and more respect for this people than you could have ever imagined.

Editorial Review:

This re-examination of the Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea, the people described in Malinowski’s classic ethnographic work of the early 20th century, provides a balanced view of the society from a male and female perspective, including coverage of new discoveries about the importance of woman’s work and wealth in the society.

The Hold Life Has: Coca and Cultural Identity in an Andean Community

Allen Cj

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A rather intricate look at rustic Andean life and rituals 4 out of 5 stars.
4 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Allen's work was rather fascinating. She provided an in depth look at the Runa, a small group of townspeople who adhere to customs of ancient Incan and colonial Spanish civilization. She does an especially good job at exploring the role that Coca chewing plays in their society and in determing their identity. Their rituals and customs will fascinate you. Beware, this book is not for the unsophisticated reader. It's a good read, but requires some thought and exploration to truly appreciate it.

The best available book on Q'ero 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

This is a wonderful book written by an anthropologist who spent several years in an isolated Andean ayllu (community) located a good number of miles from the provincial center of Colquepata. The attraction of this book is that, unlike most authors responsible for the ever proliferating literature on Andean peoples and their practices, Allen actually lived with the Indians, participated in their ceremonies, potato planting, festivals and travels. The book provides priceless descriptions of the labor divisions between men, women and children and of the interactions between the runa (i.e., Qechua for "people") themselves, between the runa and the city-dwelling mestizos and, perhaps most poignantly, between the people and the land. The land for the Andean peasant is a living breathing organism that needs to be loved, feared and placated with gifts. Each and every horizon marker has a personality, every hill possesses power and there are spirit beings inhabiting different "power spots" from the time immemorial. The interactions between the people, the ancestors, the spirits and the land are part of the reality that needs to be reinforced every single day through little rituals, such as greeting the sun as one steps out of the door early in the morning.

Coca represented here part of the glue that held everything together. The rituals that underlie coca chewing bind people in a neverending cycle of mutual obligation; in addition, coca is used as a main ingredient of despachos (ritual offerings) and a source of quiet energy during exhaustive labor on potato fields. Unfortunately, as a result of the demand for processed coca, cocaine, in the US, and the resulting pressure on the Andean countries by coca dealers and foreign goverements alike, the Peruvian peasants have found their access to raw coca leaves (non-addictive) severely limited, which affects a crucial aspect of their culture and cultural identity.

Allen depicts all these elements (and much much more) in a simple yet poignant narrative. Everything is exactly where it should be - she brings us close to the individual members of her extended ayllu so that the reader herself can participate. I found the frequent inserts of Quechua phrases especially useful, providing a direct link into the mode of the Andean thought.

I highy recommend this book. probably the best one available, if you want to visit Qero regions in peru.

Editorial Review:

This second edition of Catherine J. Allen's distinctive ethnography of the Quechua-speaking people of the Andes brings their story into the present. She has added an extensive afterword based on her visits to Sonqo in 1995 and 2000, and has updated and revised parts of the original text. The book focuses on the very real problem of cultural continuity in a changing world, and Allen finds that the hold life has in 2002 is not the same as it was in 1985.

The Harmless People

Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A study of primitive people which, for beauty of...style and concept, would be hard to match." -- The New York Times Book Review

In the 1950s Elizabeth Marshall Thomas became one of the first Westerners to live with the Bushmen of the Kalahari desert in Botswana and South-West Africa. Her account of these nomadic hunter-gatherers, whose way of life had remained unchanged for thousands of years, is a ground-breaking work of anthropology, remarkable not only for its scholarship but for its novelistic grasp of character. On the basis of field trips in the 1980s, Thomas has now updated her book to show what happened to the Bushmen as the tide of industrial civilization -- with its flotsam of property rights, wage labor, and alcohol -- swept over them. The result is a powerful, elegiac look at an endangered culture as well as a provocative critique of our own.

"The charm of this book is that the author can so truly convey the strangeness of the desert life in which we perceive human traits as familiar as our own....The Harmless People is a model of exposition: the style very simple and precise, perfectly suited to the neat, even fastidious activities of a people who must make their world out of next to nothing."

-- The Atlantic

Designing and Conducting Ethnographic Research (Ethnographer's Toolkit , Vol 1)

LeCompte Margaret Diane

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

To The Point Skills Teaching 4 out of 5 stars.
23 of 23 people found this review helpful.

This text provides an excellent overview of the processes and considerations in good ethnographic research. Chapter 1 provides a discussion that introduces the reader to the term ethnography. Those who assume that they already know about ethnography may also want to peruse this chapter for a refreshing and concise review of rationale and terminology. The next chapter describes processes for determining when ethnography should be used. This discussion is especially useful for those in various fields and professions that have recently come to recognize the value of ethnographic methods in their endeavors. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 aid the ethnographer in the pre-fieldwork stage. In chapter 3, clear descriptions of different theoretical paradigms for research (such as "Critical Theory" (pp. 45-48)) are offered so that the reader may have the creative benefit of exploring questions raised by different paradigms. Chapter 4 guides the reader through the conceptual process of creating a research design, and chapter 5 explains how to apply research designs to specific projects in order to generate good ethnographic data. Methods of ethnographic data collection are described in chapter 6, and chapter 7 explores the analysis of this data. Chapter 8 provides a discussion of the types of personalities and relationships that encourage better fieldwork experiences and potential data collection. And chapter 9 describes ethical considerations that are important to note - including Institutional Review Board guidelines. These individuals should be congratulated for bringing such a valuable resource to those interested in using ethnography. Designing and Conducting Ethnographic Research is just the first in a seven volume series that guides the reader through the various stages of ethnographic research - from the conceptual beginnings to the actual implementation of ethnographic findings. Each of these texts is a valuable source - focusing on specific processes and techniques in ethnographic research. For the convenience of those using the whole series, the editors have cross-referenced several issues, topics, and examples in each book with similar discussions appearing in the other books. The editors have also developed a helpful system of symbols, appearing in the margins throughout each book, to flag the reader to key points, cross references, definitions, and case studies. These help to make the facts and examples offered more readily accessible to the reader. The entire series is well written, in clear and concise language, without the presence of heavy anthropological jargon. And when jargon is presented, it is helpfully defined in the margin. Thus, this series is very useful to anyone interested in ethnography, and for individuals at all levels of ethnographic expertise.

Editorial Review:

The Ethnographer's Toolkit series begins with this overview volume, which defines the qualitative research enterprise, links research strategies to theoretical paradigms, and outlines the ways in which an ethnographic study can be designed. Using practical, straightforward language, the authors of this volume introduce readers to the research process, identifying issues, choices, and techniques covered in greater depth in other kit volumes, including chapters on the personal qualities of a good researcher and on research ethics. As a guide to the contents of the Toolkit series, or as a stand-alone introduction to the qualitative enterprise, this volume will be extremely valuable to novice researchers.

The Bakairi Indians of Brazil: Politics, Ecology, and Change

Debra Picchi

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

For over twenty-five years, Debra Picchi has documented how the Bakairí Indians have addressed and endured change. This up-close portrayal of how a remarkable indigenous people of Brazil has managed to hold on to many of their traditions after years of contact with mainstream Brazilian culture is written in a down-to-earth, conversational style, yet does not avoid complex issues. The original edition represented one of the first ethnographies on South American Indians to espouse political ecology explicitly as a theoretical orientation. Expanded coverage in the second edition includes material on the theory of political ecology, different methodological approaches used to collect data on populations, the latest archaeological findings taking place in Brazil, how Bakairí gender constructs have changed over the last 100 years, and the effects of population increases, mechanized production, and wealth accumulation. Both accessible and rigorous, Picchi packs much information into a slim volume, which serves as a reminder of the value of long-term fieldwork and demonstrates that research is as much about process as it is about product. Text includes reader's study guide.

Asking and Listening: Ethnography As Personal Adaptation

Paul Bohannan, Dirk Van Der Elst, Dirk Van Der Elst

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Editorial Review:

Giving readers the capacity to include ethnography in their own experience! Asking and Listening is the first book to trace the changing ways in which human beings have learned to look at "the Others Beyond the Gate" with their strange languages and stranger customs. Not a history of ethnography so much as a chronicle of its uses and potentials, Asking and Listening examines the premises of ethnography and concerns itself with a wide range of issues such as ethnocentrism and the morass of cultural relativism, the cultures of corporations, and the meaning of ethnography for government policy. It ends with an examination of the problems in charting our tomorrows: ethnography in the information age, and for the future. Through its pragmatic analysis of cultures as storehouses of alternatives in the way universal problems can and have been approached, Asking and Listening offers readers not merely the opportunity to make sense of descriptions of other peoples' lifeways, but makes such ethnographic knowledge immediately useful in their own lives and choices and career plans.

Essential Ethnographic Methods: Observations, Interviews, and Questionnaires: Observations, Interviews, and Questionnaires (Ethnographer's Toolkit , Vol 2)

Stephen L. Schensul

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Ethnographer in training Review 4 out of 5 stars.
10 of 10 people found this review helpful.

Over all, the book is well laid out, and the information is quite accessible. Example numbers and graphics set off the numerous case studies. Key points are given in italics and indicated with a graphic in the margin, where the reader will also find critical definitions and cross-references to chapters in other volumes in the series.

This volume provides good introductory material on ethnographic fieldwork techniques. The methods are not given in isolation, but in relationship to theoretical models, and in terms of how operationalization may be done. Methodology is presented as coming directly from a theory, and feeding directly back into a modification of that theory, whatever that theory happens to be. The authors also clearly present the need for making observations operationalizable, allowing for observations to fit into a quantitative analysis that reflects the reality observed in a manner that is valid and reliable.

Before moving to a direct discussion of the techniques, the authors give some needed practical information on getting to the field to do the research (chapter 4). This teaches the student how to avoid another common pitfall: having the technical tools to do the fieldwork, but not being able to get to the field or to survive there long enough to do the research.

The next 140 pages of the book (chapters 5 to 9) give the basics of several types of ethnographic methodology: exploratory or open-ended observation; in-depth, open-ended interviewing; semistructured interviewing; structured ethnographic data collection (ethnographic surveys); and using archival and secondary data.

The book finishes with two chapters (10 and 11), one on sampling, and the final one on validity and reliability. The volume ends with five full pages of references, and an eight-page index, which is subcategorized for easy reference.

Editorial Review:

Book Two of the Ethnographer's Toolkit series provides the reader with an introduction to participant and non-participant observation, interviewing, and ethnographically informed survey research, including systematically administered structured interviews and questionnaires. These essential methods are the basic building blocks of data collection, providing researchers with tools to answer key questions: What's happening in this setting?; Who is engaging in what kind of activities?; and Why are they doing what they're doing? The authors describe when and how to use these basic techniques and offer numerous examples of how these methods have worked in community-based research, action research, participant action research and mixed method projects.

The Tiwi of North Australia (Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology)

Charles William Merton Hart, Arnold R. Pilling, Jane C. Goodale

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EthnoQuest(R): An Interactive Multimedia Simulation for Cultural Anthropology Fieldwork, Version 3.0(BK & CD-Rom)

Frances F. Berdan, Edward A. Stark, Carey Van Loon

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Useful But Still Needs Work 3 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

One area that introductory cultural anthropology courses lack is the opportunity to conduct a field study. This is impractical for reasons that need no elaboration--there is no onvenient Yanomamo shabono, Guatemalan community (such as the "Ixil village" Benjamin Colby proposed at UC Irvine), or !Kung band nearby to train students in the complexities of ethnographic inquiry.

The next best thing is a simulated program, and here EthnoQuest is the first attempt that I know of to fill this need. I have used this program, this version and a previous one, in an introductory cultural anthropology course, for five years now. Though flawed, it is a useful teaching device.

The program is a portrayal of Amopan ("Nowhere"), a fictional Nahuatl village located east of Mexico City. The program consists of a series of still photographs simulating dialogue between ethnographer and informant, supplemented by "films" of the British ethnographer Bronislaw Edmund Radcliffe-Pritchard (a composite name of four British social anthropologists) who has conducted a study of Amopan back in 1965. The sidebar includes a "knapsack" containing Nahuatl-English glossaries, helpful hints, and other items; a "Wise Man" in Aztec noble dress serving as the guide; and an exit function in the form of footprints.

This second edition of EthnoQuest contains 10 units: preparation for the field study, entry into Amopan, taking a genealogical census, working in the fields, participating in an open-air market, making queries about the Day of the Dead, interviewing a midwife (the most valuable for reasons I detail below), observing a local electon, witnessing conflict between the village and nearby ranchers, and exchanging folk tales before departure.

There are improvements over the first edition. The most valuable is Unit 7, "Day in the Life of a Midwife." The unit includes a list of questions the authors identify as questionable (such as leading questions or those with cultural bias), informant responses to questions asked by a male versus female ethnographer, and probing techniques in follow-up questions. Other units have their strengths--how does the ethnographer maintain his/her objectivity in the election and in the farmer-rancher conflict? How about buying tomatoes from an outsider in a market where Amopantecos also sell tomatoes? Many, though not all, ticklish fieldwork situationa are covered.

Unfortunately, there is much about EthnoQuest that is cheesy. The graphics are half photograph, half cartoon. The persons portrayed look very mestizo and not at all indigenous Nahua. (The two boys Juan and Eduardo are brothers surnamed Ross in real life.) The names of some informants are corny (Juan Jefe, or "John the Chief," as town mayor? Juan Milpero, or "Juan the Farmer," as a typical campesino? Give me a break!). The manila "letters" sent by the funding agency and that contain the questions at the end of each unit are amatuerish drawings any ten-year-old could sketch.

Despite its shortcomings, EthnoQuest is a useful supplement for an introductory course. The student does get some exposure to questions that the ethnographer might actually ask, encounter ticklish situations that all fieldworkers inadvertently walk into, and make choices between appropriate and inappropriate interview questions (although some are all too obvious). The student gets diverse perspectives on topics from different informants, from mayor to priest to ordinary campesino. He or she is encouraged to observe things and events of the village. Finally, the ethnography is clearly based on a composite of actual field studies of Nahuatl-speaking peoples, and so is useful in that regard.

Therefore, I use the program because it gives students some experience in fieldwork, especially interviewing, in the absence of actual work in a band or village. I hope the authors--or another group of authors--come out with a more convincing program.

Editorial Review:

This interactive multimedia simulation is comprised of a series of ethnographic encounters set in a computer-based learning environment. It provides users with a realistic problem-solving learning experience in a novel cultural setting. It is designed to propel learners closer to the fieldwork experience by sending them on a simulated fieldwork adventure to the fictional Mexican village of Amopan. Each game includes sophisticated graphics and original video that allow players to experience realistic outcomes based on their responses and reactions to questions. The path individuals take depends on how they decide to proceed through each game. For armchair anthropologists.

Challenging Gender Norms: Five Genders Among Bugis in Indonesia (Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology)

Sharyn Graham Davies

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Editorial Review:

See how gender identities are constructed in a rapidly changing cultural milieu with CHALLENGING GENDER NORMS: THE FIVE GENDERS OF INDONESIA! This case study in cultural anthropology explores the Bugis ethnic group, native to the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, which recognizes five gender categories rather than the two acknowledged in most societies. This ethnography presents individuals' stories, opinions, and deliberations and proposes a new theory of gender which incorporates appreciation of variously gendered subjectivities.