Developing a New Major

take academic journals down on monday to look at how they look -

geertz - According to Clifford GEERTZ (1973) the concept of cultural anthropology in the late 50ies and early 60ies has been very straightforward: “They have a culture out there and your job is to come back and tell us what it is”., According to GEERTZ (1973, p.5), the process of understanding happens in the field—rather than later on at the office desk when the data is being analysed. This process of understanding refers to the hidden aspects of the examined culture; he is after “construing social expressions on their surface enigmatical”. This approach is about symbols and about culture being a “web of meaning”, it is a semiotic approach.

MALINOWSKI revolutionised anthropology by not merely studying decontextualised objects—this is what the armchair anthropologists did—but rather by studying people in their natural environment. the key to gaining an understanding of communities/tribes and their cultures, rituals and patterns of interaction was a long-term immersion in another way of life.

A famous character constructed in traditional ethnographies is that of the gate keeper. Usually there was always one person who opens the field for the researcher, introduces her to the tribe/community, serves as mediator between tribe/community and ethnographer, and who carefully and step by step makes the researcher familiar with the hitherto strange environment.

The first problem virtual ethnography has to face is the validity of data on the Internet users. The accuracy of information about age, gender, nationality etc. can hardly be checked. Instead of relying on hard facts, the ethnographer relies on the user’s trustworthiness and on her own judgement.

2ndproblem - one cannot observe “real people” and this is what participant observation is about.

Hine article on virtual ethnography - -things to get out of it - definitions of ethnography, first taste of how academic articles organized - intro, lit review, methods, analysis, conclusion, bibliography format - the stpes of the research project - come up with question, figure out who you’re going to study and whether you can get access to them, set some size limit - group can be small, should be representative of the community as a whole interested in the typical group member so look at things they have in common,then figure out what data you can collect - what will you have access to, might change as the project goes along and you learn more about the topic, collect and analyze data, write up results

I don’t want footnotes in our papers - you can use endnotes if ya absolutely need to put something in a note

Some features of ethnography - key bits of the definition

• “One common feature, however, appears to be that the
  ethnographer becomes embroiled in the setting, and comes face-to-face with the
  natives such that a deep understanding of the practices of that setting is gained. “
• “overtly or covertly, in people’s daily lives for an extended period of time, watching
  what happens, listening to what is said, asking questions; in fact collecting
  whatever data are available to throw light on the issues with which he or she is
  concerned.”
• “gives centre stage to the human actors, to the sense which
  people make of the world”
• “The role of the ethnographer is to observe, document,
  and analyze these practices, to present them in a new light. “
• a basic tenet of ethics in
  ethnographic research seems to be that the ethnography should not harm those in
  the setting

first part of the article is a short lit review - - what we know about the field, common definitions, concepts

on p. 6 - her research question - define your research question it should be interesting enough to keep you going thru the project - remember the story in the comic book about how she picked her topic- she noticed that hte profs were there working late nad night and she wondered why and what htey were doing - an question that you’ve wondered yourself is usually a good way to start a project (i this case I’m going to give you some big topics to start with) -  “The main research question with which I had entered was the extent to which  laboratory technologies, particularly information technologies, are integrated into
the fact construction process. One aspect of this, important in the light of recent
debates on the notion of non-human agency, was the extent to which attributes of
humanness and non-humanness were distributed, and the ways in which
traditionally human characteristics such as creativity were allocated amongst
humans and non-humans. ”

talks a little about the method - I joined them as a participant observer”

data - email list messages, doing work like a member of the dept, going to meetings and hearing about what other people in the dept were ding, interviews conducted online

on p. 10 - “I ran through my knowledge (I had
done my homework) of the basic ways to interact in this environment14: typing
“Hello would allow others in the same room to see the message “ChrisH says
“Hello”; typing :waves would produce the message “ChrisH waves” to all those in
the room.”

remember researcher bias - things that might affect how data is analyzed - “While I was typing in my contributions to the
conversation, other messages appeared on the screen, interrupting my own flow of
characters and making it hard to keep track of what I was saying. I made frequent
typing mistakes, some of which were made fun of, and I found that I was often
unable to say what I wanted to say in time for it to be relevant. And, given the
number of conversations going on in the room at the same time, I had a difficulty
which the others did not seem to share in working out which comment was
addressed to whom. In short, I must have appeared as a novice to the adepts, and I
felt at a disadvantage: the skills in keeping track of a conversation in a crowded
room which I take for granted in face-to-face interaction had deserted me.”

conclusion talks about virtual ethnography - Virtual ethnography entails taking seriously the accounts
of the world produced by technological subjects. But in this, it is important not to lose sight of the very strangeness of this technological world…I have chosen to
disrupt the conventional sense of doing ethnography as being in “the field”,
meaning physically coexistence with the community which I study.

lit review - can’t read everything, going for quality, not quantity, and don’t just read - be critical and ask yourself questions about how it fits in with your study, should be from good current peer reviewed journals, not writing annotated bib but rather organize around themes you see in the reading and categories in your frameowrk (from your theory), stuff you read should help you flesh out your research question — theory helps give ya framework, gives ya vocabulary and key term definitions

What is a Literature Review?

A literature review is a summary of previous research on a topic.  Literature reviews can be either a part of a larger report of a research project,  a thesis or a bibliographic essay that is published separately in a scholarly journal. Some questions to think about as you develop your literature review:

• What is known about the subject?

• Are there any gaps in the knowledge of the subject?

• Have areas of further study been identified by other researchers that you may want to consider?

• Who are the significant research personalities in this area?

• Is there consensus about the topic?

• What aspects have generated significant debate on the topic?

• What methods or problems were identified by others studying in the field and how might they impact your research?

• What is the most productive methodology for your research based on the literature you have reviewed?

• What is the current status of research in this area?

• What sources of information or data were identified that might be useful to you?

strange - some people didn’t understand cyberspace, the internet as a place, as the field so they weren’t sure ethnography culd be used to study it

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