Fieldwork techniques

• Fieldwork Techniques


  • Questioner Survey
  • Key informants
  • Interview
  • Focus group discussion
  • Participant Observation
  • Life history
  • Case study
  • Primary and secondary documents
  • Historical sources/ poems/personal notes
  • Photography
• Sampling is a key part of Questioner Survey
• Approaches


  • Emic approach: Studying cultures from insiders' point of view
  • Etic approach: Studying cultures from outsiders' point of view
• Eight central principles of research ethics

  • Respect human dignity
  • Respect for free and informed consent
  • Respect for vulnerable persons
  • Respect for privacy and confidentiality (anonymity)
  • Respect for justice and inclusiveness
  • Balancing harms and benefits
  • Minimizing harm
  • Maximizing benefit
• Positivist approach


  Practiced in the late 19th and 20th centuries, influenced by positivist philosophy (Auguste Comte), used set of rules and processes like physical sciences, believes there is a reality that can be investigated and detected by scientific approach, goal is objective knowledge, separates values from facts, perceived field as a "living laboratory"
• Problems of positivist research: Example Malinowski and Annette Winter in Trobiand Island
• Reflexive Approach


  Research contexts shape data, more power sharing process, information can be shared with research participants, researcher can actively involve them, "situated knowledge-who you are as a researcher? Gender, nationality, class, ethnic and educational background shapes research choices
• Multi-sited fieldwork


  Anthropologists focus one topic by engaging multiple locations and spaces, culture is not located in a particular geographical area anymore, cultures and the location of cultures have been disjointed in response to new global political economic system, cultures and people are mobile and connected to various flows like colonialism, industrial revolution, emergence of capital, globalization, transnational migration
• Data types


  • Qualitative data: nonnumeric information
  • Quantitative data: numeric information
• Mixed methods


  Data collection and analysis that integrates quantitative and qualitative approaches for a more comprehensive understanding of culture
• Data analysis


  Transcription and writing ethnography, "Remembered village" R.K. Mukherjee
• Deductive Approach


  A research method that involves positing a research question or hypothesis, then involves collecting relevant data through observation, interviews and other methods
• Inductive Approach


  A research approach that avoids hypothesis formation in advance of the research and instead takes its lead from the culture being studied
• Collaborative Research


  Sharing power, considering research population as partners not just subjects, ensuring active participation
• "Dialectic of fieldwork"


  Interpreting culture and finding a meaning of culture through discussions between a fieldworker and a research respondent, understanding gaps like different language and worldview, translating culture in ethnography