participant observation – ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY

“The Field”: Doing “Anthropology” (1.2)

“How was the field?” “Are you going to the field?” “I just got back from the field.” “I’ll be away, in the field.” One of the striking features of MIT’s Doing Anthropology video (see the video sidebar), an attempt to market and pitch anthropology, is that it actually looks and sounds an awful lot like […]

“Deep Hanging Out”? Yeah right.

Vignette #1: As the professor in charge of teaching introductory anthropology at the University of Adelaide, she enthusiastically told students in the lecture hall that participant observation basically involves some “deep hanging out” with people. Many chuckled, as if they were amused to hear that, after all, one of the main ways of doing research […]