“cultures within cultures”|My essay solution

Posted: March 6th, 2023

OVERVIEW

In this chapter, we provide an informal introduction to ethnography, a complex and multifaceted

methodology, largely but not exclusively qualitative in nature, with a long and rich history in the

social and behavioral sciences. Ethnography is a scientific and artistic approach to studying

human societies, and it resembles the ordinary person’s self-reflexive and systematic

approaches to learning about the world around them, particularly when confronted with a new

cultural experience.

Following the informal introduction, we present some of the core elements of the

“ethnographic imagination” (Willis 2000), the specific tenets that distinguish this logic of inquiry

from others discussed in this book.

AN EXAMPLE-IN SEARCH OF RESPECT:

SELLING CRACK IN EL BARRIO

Philippe Bourgeois lived for three and a half years in East Harlem in order to document and

understand the local microcosm of crack users and dealers who live in a poor and marginalized

community. In his book In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio, Bourgeois boils down

hours of interviews and observations into a multidimensional and complex portrait of men and

women coping with desperate conditions. Violence, incarceration, misogyny, heartbreak, hopes,

and betrayals are elements of the story, not only in the narratives about individuals but also in

the depiction of a culture as a whole.

Bourgeois didn’t just drop into the neighborhood for a few days to interview passersby or take a

peek into bars and crack houses, and then return quickly to a safe, orderly middle-class world.

He immersed himself (and his wife and child) for a long time in the “other country” at the end of

a short subway ride. His conclusions are based on months of fieldwork, reported in extensive

quotes from interviews and conversations with people he came to know well, and documented

by descriptions of recurrent actions and situations that he saw and recorded. The story he tells

does not have a Hollywood ending nor does it offer simple conclusions and optimistic

“problem-solving” interventions. He probes “the human condition” in one specie context, writing

a dialogue between the voices of the people he met and his own understanding

of their conditions.

Another edgy, high-risk ethnography is Greg Scott’s “It’s a Sucker’s Outfit: How Urban Gangs

Enable and Impede the Reintegration of Ex-Convicts” (2004). Scott not only describes the

setting, actions, and words of the participants in a vivid and carefully documented way; he also

systematically relates his data to an analysis of incarceration and the gang as an organization.

Few social scientists are as prepared to take risks as Bourgeois and Scott, but ethnography is

always a powerful, intense, and time-consuming design. Understanding the culture of others

requires preparation, systematic ways of recording and producing data, reflexive choices in the

writing. and a sociological imagination to create a coherent, insightful account.

AN EXAMPLE-LIQUIDATED: AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF WALL STREET

Only a few miles away from the fieldwork site where Bourgeois lived a short ride on the New

York subway-Karen Ho found a job in investment banking and entered the world of Wall Street

as an ethnographer to capture its corporate culture, a system of values and behaviors based on

a sustaining belief in smartness, exploitive hours of detail-oriented work for the young analysts,

absolute job insecurity, and the worldview that risk, impermanence, and the single-minded

pursuit of money should become the sole principles of global society. Like Bourgeois, Ho

immersed herself with no holds barred in an extreme setting (Ho 2009).

ETHNOGRAPHY IN EVERYDAY LIFE

In some sense, everyone is an ethnographer. Even the most ordinary life ushers in a parade of

ethnographic projects. As we encounter new and sometimes strange situations, we adopt an

ethnographer mind-set and course of action, although we rarely think of ourselves as

ethno-graphers. Our most ethnographic endeavors stem from major transitions or dislocations,

such as changing residence, traveling, starting a new job, being hospitalized for a long period,

beginning a residential drug or alcohol treatment, moving in with a lover or spouse or stranger,

or getting folded into a new circle of friends. At these junctures, we adopt the ways and means

of the

“professional stranger”; we approach life as an ethnographer approaches a research setting.

But what does this mean?

Literally, “ethnography” means “writing people” (graph = to write/depict; ethno = people).

This definition is dense with meaning and implications. Ethnography is the art and craft of

writing people. Performing ethnography successfully at the professional level demands a

combination of science, artistic sensibility, and vocational skill and training. It is part science,

part aesthetic creation, and part craft. In this chapter and in Part III “Focus on Ethnography,’ we

offer insight into a complex methodology with a long and storied history in the social and

behavioral sciences.

Professional Strangeness

Ethnographers set out to study culture. More specifically, they seek to systematically investigate

and then accurately represent (through their prose and/or pictures and/or films, etc.) the culture

with an emic, or “inside-out perspective. This contrasts with other forms of doing sociological

research on groups or communities or organizations, where the researcher obviously assumes

an

“outside-in” (etic) vista and represents the issue or group from an outsider’s perspective.

Chapter 7 • Ethnography: A Synopsis

Ethnographers strive to understand a given culture on its own terms, and on the terms of the

people who occupy it, dwell within it, and produce and reproduce it on a daily basis. They “write

people” from a perspective as observers who participate to some extent in the lives of the

people about whom they write.

The discipline of anthropology gave rise to ethnographic research but does not enjoy a

monopoly of this versatile methodology. In classic anthropological studies, the ethnographer

examined a primitive tribe in a foreign country, a tribe marked by sociocultural and geographic

isolation (an erstwhile “fact” debated hotly in retrospect). Such “pristine” and self-contained

cultures hardly exist these days, if they ever really did, and ethnographic studies in sociology

are increasingly domestic. Contemporary ethnographers are just as likely to be studying

“cultures within cultures” as they are to be studying indigenous cultures in some other land.

Today, ethno

quiz 3 Study online at https://quizlet.com/_cu6df8

1. When we approach to as on ethnogra- pher approaches a research setting we are considered

2. Eric Wolf in Peasant Wars of the Twenti- eth Contury asserts:

Wolf answers his research ques- tion by looking at what happened to peasant communities as capi- talism penetrated the countryside. argues that this economic, so- cial, and cultural transformation created the conditions on a vast scale for the uprooting of tradi- tional peasants, their molding into a proletarianized labor force, and the consequent onset of social in- stability in the countryside.

3. Historical-comparative researchers would agree that all except one of the following describes a challenge they face in their research. Which one is NOT an issue for them.

Some historians believe that histo- ry consists of unique events and can only be represented by narra- tives about these specific events.

4. According to the authors, who could be considered an ethnographer?

sociologists anthropologists histo- rians cinematographers

5. Ethnography is a way of combining and using various methods, both quan- titative and qualitative, and so in a strict sense, it is neither a quantitative method.

False

6. Karen Ho revoalod that bankers often rationalized their own job uncertainty because of market fluctuations.

true

7. Goodwin and Skocpol argue that third world revolutions in the 20th century took place primarity in:

1 / 5

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8. The Challenger Launch decision was used as an example of historical com- parative analysis play a small role in contributing. to job instability for in- vestment bankers.

true or false

9. Understanding the culture of others re- quires:

The revolution against the Shah of Iran.

10. Culture is a shared way of understand- ing the world and taking action within it.

False

11. Which of the following was NOT one of Wolf’s case studies?

The revolution against the Shah of Iran.

12. Producing a good ethnography means:

13. For Wolf’s Peasant Wars of the Twen- tieth Century, the dependent variable was capitalist penetration of the coun- tryside

14. Ethnographers research from the per- spective of:

15. Mores are formal unconventional prac- tices

16. According to the work of Karl Popper (1963), “falsification” is the basis of all scientific inquiry.

17. Edward Tufte’s main conclusion from the study of the Challenger launch de- cision is:

18. Secondary sources are rarely used for historical-comparative analysis.

2 / 5

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19. Environmental justice is an applied form of social autopsy.

20. The authors suggest that the theoreti- cal foundation of the heat wave study included:

21. Social autopsy is synonymous with conspiracy theory.

22. Spatial analvsis may be one compo- nent of a social autopsy.

23. Which of the following is usually NOT a unit of analysis in historical-compara- tive research?

24. Historical-comparative analysis gener- ally employs large sample sizes.

25. Contemporary ethnographers are most likely to study:

26. Anderson’s “dependent variable” In Imagined Communities is:

27. Eric Wolf in Peasant Wars of the twen- tieth Century uses a key concept to link apparently very different events. The concept is

28. A content analysis is one form of analy- sis that may be used in social autopsy types of studies

29. performing ethnography successfully at the professional level demands a combination of

30.

3 / 5

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In the 1900s, journalism spawned sub- fields bearing a striking resemblance to ethnography, particularly a branch that came to be known as “Old journalism”

31. greg scott’s (2009) ethnographic the family at 1312 focuses on a real kinship system developed and perpetuated by crack smokers, prostitutes, and drug dealers

32. Today, ethnographers come from the background of

33. Literally, “ethnography” means:

34. Charles Perrow’s main conclusion from the study of the Challenger launch de- cision is:

35. In addition to analyzing who died dur- ing the heat wave, Klinenberg exam- ined:

36. The components of a social autopsy can include:

37. Interviews are rarely used in social au- topsy.

38. The Buffalo Creek flood:

39. Ethnographers mainly study:

40. “Routinization of deviance” means:

41. The survivors of the Buffalo Creek flood:

42.

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Vaughan’s main conclusion from the study of the Challenger launch deci- sion is:

43. What is Klinenberg’s attitude towards the “smart consumer model” of social service delivery?

44. For Wolf’s Peasant Wars of the Twenti- eth Century, the independent variable was capitalist penetration of the coun- tryside

45. In the heat wave that Klinenberg stud- ied:

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SOLUTION

Cultures within cultures” refers to the existence of subcultures or distinct groups within a larger culture. These subcultures may have their own beliefs, values, customs, traditions, language, and other cultural markers that set them apart from the larger society. Examples of cultures within cultures can include: Ethnic or racial groups within a country or region that have their own cultural practices, languages, and traditions. Religious groups within a larger society that have their own beliefs, rituals, and customs.