Ethnology Books - Page 12

Understanding Ethnographic Texts (Qualitative Research Methods)

Paul A. Atkinson

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Editorial Review:

Back to the basics. This is precisely what Paul Atkinson does for his readers in Understanding Ethnographic Texts, the first "how to" book of its kind. He provides basic, yet significant, lessons for ethnographers going about the business of writing up their findings. He uses the postmodernist premise that ethnography is not an unbiased, scientific view of "the field setting," but rather a construction of the ethnographer. From this, Atkinson offers useful advice on how to read, and then how to write ethnography. He explains the importance of self-consciousness in understanding how to present the material, how to develop story lines and use metaphor, how to organize material and create a voice, how to balance analysis with description, and how to use one's own work in conjunction with others. He also outlines various literary conventions through recent experiments that have departed from traditional ethnographic style. He links these studies to an analysis of the contributions of postmodernist theory to ethnographic work, and then argues for the "authority" of the researcher, which contrasts the viewpoint of many postmodernist ethnographers. This highly accessible, "how to" book is readable, thoughtful, and instructive, and will prove invaluable to qualitative researchers, writing scholars, and text analysts, and to ethnographers in sociology and anthropology.

Ring of Fire

Lawrence Blair, Lorne Blair

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A dazzling journey sparks the imagination. 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Few travel books have drawn me in like this one. Insightful prose coupled to splendid photos spark the imagination. The Blair brothers are unique for the sensitivity and spirit with which they immerse themselves in their surroundings. A must-read for Indonesiaphiles. A great read for anyone.

Fluid Signs: Being a Person the Tamil Way

E. Valentine Daniel

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 2.0 of 5

A waste of time 2 out of 5 stars.
4 of 12 people found this review helpful.

I was disappointed by this book. The author focusses almost exclusively on matters that probably never concerned more than a few Tamils and certainly aren't taken seriously today. Reading this book to learn about "Being a Person the Tamil Way" would be like studying the fine details of feng shui to learn about being a person the Chinese way. Putting it another way, imagine reading a whole chapter in a book about what we mean when we speak of "home". Do we mean our present house? Our parents' house? Our town, our region, our country? How would we define the boundaries of our "home"? Maybe this book makes sense to a particular type of academic or intellectual, but for anyone who merely wishes to read an ethnography about Tamil culture, this book would be a waste of time.

Editorial Review:

Fluid Signs is the product of anthropological fieldwork carried out among Tamil-speaking villagers in a Hindu village in Southern India. Combining a richness of ethnographic detail with a challenging and innovative theoretical analysis, Daniel argues that symbolic anthropologists have yet to appreciate the multifaceted function of the sign and its role in the creation of culture. This provocative study underscores the need for Western intellectual traditions in general and anthropology in particular to deepen its discourse with South Asian cultural and religious thought.

Road Through the Rain Forest: Living Anthropology in Highland Papua New Guinea

David M. Hayano

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Editorial Review:

On the remote, steep slopes of the grassland and rain forests of Highland Papua New Guinea, live the Awa, subsisting on root crops and raising domestic pigs. Like many cultures, the Awa must deal with and find solutions to the problems of human social existence: inevitable and rapid culture change, interpersonal squabbles, lying and deceit, adultery, sorcery, and unexpected death. They wait ambivalently for the building of a road that would put them in direct contact with the encroaching world of trade stores, outdoor markets, schools, and the government station. In the middle of this walks an anthropologist who learns that fieldwork is first and foremost about understanding lives, both his and theirs. This is a personal narrative that provides an intimate glimpse of the actual conduct of fieldwork among diverse individuals with remarkably distinct views of their own culture. It is an account of intertwined lives--of living anthropology--and a road of hope and promise, despair and tragedy.

Hawaiian antiquities (Moolelo Hawaii) (Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, Honolulu. Special publication)

David Malo

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

An essential work in Hawaiian studies 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 10 people found this review helpful.

This is a classic work in Hawaiian literature. Written approx in 1840, the author bridges an ancient,pagan, pre-Cook Hawaiian world; and a new world of foreigners, private property, diseases, Christianity, and a struggle to maintain a Hawaiian identity.

Malo describes many aspects of ancient Hawaiian life and culture, including tools and technology, land tenure, religious practices, politics, agriculture, medicine, games and amusements, marriage and family life, etc. This text is still considered a primary source for knowledge of Hawaiian culture in the era before Captain Cook sailed into Kealakekua Bay.

Malo never quite mastered the English language, so Hawaiian Antiquities was written in Hawaiian. It is one of the few books in the canon of texts written in Hawaiian. It is especially valuable to linguists to have been written by a native speaker, and is essential to the modern study of Hawaiian grammar, syntax, and vocabulary.

Of particular interest are the many "mele" (songs) quoted. Malo believed, as many people still do, that the "mele" was the highest Hawaiian art form, integrating music, poetry, and hula, often in a religious context.

Malo himself seems a somewhat dispeptic sort. A Christian minister in the rigid mold of the Protestant missionaries, he disdained many of the customs and practices he describes. He occasionally disparages the primitive technology and culture of his people. Yet for all his prejudice, Malo's tone is usually dispassionate and objective.

He gets a few facts wrong. (Hawaiian surfboards may have been long, but they were never 30-40 feet long.) Modern cultural anthropologists must surely cringe at his omissions and technique. And modern Hawaiian language teachers are still sorting out his spelling and grammatical errors (hey, do you speak perfect English?)But nobody disagrees that we are very lucky to have this book.

Diagnosing America: Anthropology and Public Engagement (Linking Levels of Analysis)

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Editorial Review:

For years, anthropology has brought the lives and beliefs of "exotic" peoples to audiences in the West. Diagnosing America: Anthropology and Public Engagement reveals the power of anthropological description and analysis when applied to social, economic, and political problems in the contemporary United States and demonstrates the urgent need for this work.

Debunking the notion of anthropology as a "value-free" science, the authors argue forcefully for an anthropology expressly committed to cultural pluralism and democratic participation.

At the same time, individual essays demonstrate the applicability of standard anthropological methods to the study of contemporary U.S. society and culture as they investigate contested values, community politics, middle-class economics, and workplace culture or describe the psychophysiological stress effects of exclusion on African- Americans and the coping mechanisms of Mexican-Americans along the border.

Diagnosing America and the challenging "Statement to the Profession" that concludes it call for anthropologists to reach beyond the parochialism of their own discipline and to engage history, economics, sociology, and the policy sciences. It will be of interest to scholars in each of these fields who are concerned with the study and resolution of contemporary social problems in the United States and to students of American culture in this country and abroad.

Shepard Forman is Director of the International Affairs Program of the Ford Foundation and a former Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan.

Society and Cosmos: Chewong of Peninsular Malaysia

Signe Howell

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The Mardu Aborigines: Living the Dream in Australia's Desert (Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology)

Robert Tonkinson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

This is a highly informative and fascinating book. 5 out of 5 stars.
11 of 11 people found this review helpful.

One of the most comprehensive and descriptive treatises on a complex hunter and gatherer society, which until recently was still pursuing a traditional lifestyle, largely unaffected by European influences. Although scholarly in intent, this work is eminently readable as it takes one deeply into the world of an ancient culture, and most particularly into the fascinating religious life of the Mardu Aborigines of Australia's Western Desert, one of the world's very last frontiers. A truly exquisite ethnography, a must read for those interested in human ingenuity in surviving and thriving in one of the world's most difficult environments. I highly recommend this extraordinary account, for its empathy and deep appreciation of the human condition.

excellent to learn about the aboriginal culture 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 6 people found this review helpful.

I used the book for an tourism Assignment. I must say it supplied sufficient information form me and it was a choice book to read. Thanks very much it was choice.

Innovation in Ethnographic Film: From Innocence to Self-Consciousness, 1955-1985

Peter Loizos

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Editorial Review:

In the first coprehensive introduction to the nature and development of ethnographic film, Peter Loizos reviews fifty of the most important films made between 1955 and 1985. Going beyond programmatic statements, he analyzes the films themselves, identifying and discussing their contributions to ethnographic documentation.

Loizos begins by reviewing works of John Marshall and Timothy Asch in the 1950s and moves through those of Jean Rouch, Robert Gardner, and many more recent filmmakers. He reveals a steady course of innovations along four dimensions: production technology, subject matter, strategies of argument, and ethnographic authentication. His analyses of individual films address questions of realism, authenticity, genre, authorial and subjective voice, and representation of the films' creators as well as their subjects.

Innovation in Ethnographic Film, as a systematic and iluminating review of developments in ethnographic film, will be an important resource for the growing number of anthropologists and other scholars who use such films as tools for research and teaching.

The Two - Party Line : Conversations in the Field

Jane Goodale, Ann Chowning

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