View the eight-minute video from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Anthropology Department titled "Doing Anthropology: Thoughts on Fieldwork from Three Research Sites" (http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/315-doing-anthropology/).
- Introductory textbooks in anthropology use a lot of examples from what are often geographically (and culturally) distant places to give students a sense of the range of human diversity. These ethnographers, however, are doing work here "at home" in the United States. Are you surprised to learn that many anthropologists do not need to travel far to do their research? How does the work that you see in this video influence your understanding of the nature of ethnographic fieldwork and relevancy of cultural anthropology to your life?
- Having seen how these three projects took shape and the kinds of questions that the ethnographers asked to learn about the subjects of interest to them, think about what is happening in your community that interests you. Write a couple of paragraphs about the project that you would do if you were going to do an ethnography nearby. Who would you want to work with? Why? What topics would shape your plan for the project? What kinds of questions would you want or need to ask in order to learn about what is going on in the life and work of those with whom you chose to work?
- How is the way that the ethnographers in this video conduct their research similar to and/or different than the positivist approach described in the textbook?
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