Transcript “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight” by Clifford Geertz

<Week 11>
Approaches to
Area Studies 2:
Conducting Field Work
Presented by Hyoung, Yeo Lynn
Yoon, Hyung Won
Kwon, Hye Na
Natacha
Mirko Tasic
Field Projects in Anthropology
HYOUNG, YEO LYNN
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Introduction
1. Anthropology is the science that studies
peoples past and present, their cultures,
and their life histories as groups. It is
comparative, drawing material for analysis
from a wide variety of societies around the
world.
2. The foundation of cultural anthropology is
ethnography. Literally, the world
ethnography means to write about peoples.
The lengthy stay necessary for a wellrounded study of the lifeways of a people
implies continual interaction with the group
and better identification with them.
Getting to Know a Very Important Person
1. While these examples may seem a bit extreme, the fact is that
an important part of getting ready to do field work lies in
coming to have a better understanding of yourself as a
potential research "instrument"
2. It is not too soon to start thinking about the factors that you
would find important in choosing a future research locale.
3. Your interests are important too, and must play a role in your
choices of research projects and subjects-perhaps as you
carry out your research for projects in this course, but surely
in any extensive research you plan for the future.
4. In general, getting to know yourself also includes developing a
heightened consciousness of how best to draw upon your
personal strengths-social, physical, mental- and how best to
compensate for areas of less ability.
As an ethnographer, the most important single aspect of knowing
yourself lies in the ability to divorce yourself from the value
judgments that grow out of the fact that you have been raised
in a society that has a particular set of standards-moral,
ethical, social, sanitary, and so on
Some Ethical Considerations.
1. Ever since the founding of the first anthropological organizations, there has been
much attention to ethics.
The fieldworker must present honest statements about the research he or she is doing
and how it will be used.
2. The nature and extent of the explanations one gives depend partly on the
sophistication of group and upon the nature and extent of the contact its members
have had with outsiders.
3. A second major kind of ethical consideration for the fieldworker is the responsibility
for making clear as soon as definitely as possible what he or she can and cannot
do for the members of the group.
4. A third kind of ethical consideration lies in the area which recent US publications
call " Protection of individual as a research subject.
"Protection of the individual as a research subject" includes many things is an ongoing
concern which should guide everything one does in the field.
5. The final major ethical matter that we feel should be mentioned is the need to be
sure of what sponsoring agency from you when you accept its support.
Before Going to the Field
1. An anthropologist goes to another society,
or even to different portion of his or her own
national society, with a definite theoretical
frame of reference, often one to which he or
she has devoted years of formal study.
2. It would be wise if you began as soon as
possible of the area where you want to work,
and to meet some of the people whom you
will want as future research subjects.
Getting to Know and Work with Others
1. As one anthropologist has put it, The only
information of value is that which people
give freely. People do not speak freely
unless they feel at home with the
interviewer.
"Feeling at home with the interviewer
obviously related to his or her feeling at
home with the people in question.
• Three basic principles to follow
1. Label your work carefully
2. Make extensive
3. Check up on yourself
Beginning Field work
1. A first consideration upon arrival in the field is to
establish a base of operations. There are a great many
aspects of establishing oneself in the field situation
about which one can look to the local people for
guidance. We suggested above that the ethnographer
must, at least to some extent, accept and work within
the social position the local people are willing to assign
2. An interest in language, technical processes, music, art,
crafts, or photography is not likely to be regarded with
suspicion, and may often prove to be a better beginning
for anthropological work than direct questioning.
3. the ethnographer should frame and make use of
questionnaires only ethnographer should frame and
make use of questionnaires only after learning
something about the culture and after a pretest.
Proxemics
1. Proxemics is the term Hall uses in connection with man's perception
and use of space, that is he studies the relative proximity of people
to one another in various situations and in various societies.
2. Since each society of the world has different patterns of space use,
we can distort intercultural communication easily and, by our use, we
can distort intercultural communication easily and, by our use of
space, give message we do not intended.
3. Patterns of space use vary from nation to nation, and the same
pattern can give very different messages in different parts of the
world. People in every society grow up learning to move through
space and interact with others in the patterned ways that their
respective societies consider appropriate and that are related to the
society's own life style, patterns of architectural design, furniture
placement, and so on.
4. One thing that has been found to be generally true is that the vast
majority of people in every society are not aware of how they are
using space. Obviously, We do not have to adjust our lives
completely to conform to the space-use patterns of those with whom
we are interacting.
The Project
1. The first assignment is to design and carry
out an experiment in some aspect of how
our society or some subsociety uses space.
2. One thing you might find useful to explore
is the extent to which the spaces you study
and the furniture within them tend to keep
people apart or to draw them together.
Making Maps
1. Mapping is essentially a way of organizing
and setting down observations. The
information recorded will be of importance
throughout the research, and later can be
used in connection with a variety of matters
such as genealogical and census data. It
can provide a readily understandable
reason for establishing contacts with people.
2. people everywhere choose units of
measurement that have meaning in their
daily lives, and all of these may provide
clues for the researcher.
“Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese
Cockfight” by Clifford Geertz
I 23018 YOON, HYUNG WON
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
“Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese
Cockfight” by Clifford Geertz
Clifford Geertz
(Aug 23, 1926 ~ Oct 30, 2006)
American anthropologist
A champion of symbolic anthropology: the role of thought (symbols) in
in anthropological analysis of culture.
The role of anthropologist: trying to interpret the guiding symbols of each
culture.(thick description)
“Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese
Cockfight” by Clifford Geertz
Guungan
(baskets)
Taji (blades)
Membengs
(preliminaries)
Tajen
(cockfighting)
“Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese
Cockfight” by Clifford Geertz
• The Balinese Cockfighting
- Tajen; Tetadjen; Sabungan
Social Context
Religious Context
Economic Context
Only men can
participate in
cockfights. (except
ladies selling
snacks)
Sports or pastime
.
.
A blood sacrifice
made to the lower
spirits(butakala) to
win their
cooperation &
support.
.
.
Cockfighting
supports a
handicraft industry.
Central bet & side
bet
.
.
“Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese
Cockfight” by Clifford Geertz
• Thick Description
- in anthropology and other fields, a thick
description of a human behavior is one that
explains not the behavior, but its context as well.
(opp. Thin Description)
• Gilbert Ryle (philosopher)
- if someone winks at us,
a thin description will describe only the wink
itself such as a twitch,
a thick description will explain the context of
the practices and discourse within a society.
• According to Geertz, the task of the
anthropologist is to give thick descriptions.
“Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese
Cockfight” by Clifford Geertz
• “,,,In the cockfight, man and beast, good and evil,
ego and id, the creative power of aroused
masculinity and the destructive power of
loosened animality fuse in a bloody drama of
hatred, cruelty, violence, and death.,,,” (p.420-421)
 What about indigenous perspective and
interpretation of symbols?
 How do we know we are right in our
interpretation of symbols?
“Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese
Cockfight” by Clifford Geertz
• Criticism on interpretive anthropology of Clifford
Geertz
- Symbolic meanings have weight only within the
society it is from, and the interpretation of
semiotics varies between generations, individuals
and different classes within social culture.
- Symbolic meanings don’t have a universal
representation of class, society and culture all the
time.
- Thick description is the interpretation interpreted
by an anthropologist who is an outsider who
cannot think like a native.
Conducting the Fieldwork:
Ethnography
I 21016 KWON, HYE NA
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
The Definition of Ethnography
• Ethnography(민족학) is the systematic
description of human societies.
• A genre of writing that uses fieldwork
to provide a descriptive study of
human societies
• Travel Writing and
Colonial Office Reports.
The Scope of Ethnography
• Civilizations, Cultures, Classes, Races,
and Genders
• Ethnography decodes and recodes,
telling the grounds of collective order and
diversity, inclusion and exclusion.
• It describes process of innovation and
structuration, and is itself part of these
processes.
• Ethnography is an emergent
interdisciplinary phenomenon.
• Its authority and rhetoric have spread to
many fields where culture is a newly
problematic object of description and
critique.
The Relevance to Literature
• Clifford Geertz, Victor Turner, Mary
Douglas, Claude Levi-Strauss
• Literary processes(metaphor,
figuration, narrative)affect the ways
cultural phenomena are registered.
• Metaphoric and Allegorical, composed
of Inventions rather than Observed
Facts.
The Relevance to Literature
• Literary texts allow a wide of latitude
to the emotions, speculations, and
subjective genius of their authors.
• The discourse of literature and fiction
is inherently unstable.
• It plays on the stratification of
meaning.
The Attribute of Literature
• By the nineteenth century, literature
had emerged as a bourgeois
institution closely allied with culture
and art.
• Literature and art were circumscribed
zones in which non-utilitarian, higher
values were maintained.
• The making of ethnography is
artisanal, tied to the worldly work of
writing.
The Partiality of Ethnography
• It suggests the partiality of cultural and
historical truths.
• Ethnographic writings can properly be called
fictions in the sense of something made or
fashioned.
• All constructed truths are made possible by
powerful lies of exclusion and rhetoric.
• Knowledge is power, and that one must
never reveal all of what one knows.
The Partiality of Ethnography
• It is useful to recall that the witness
was speaking artfully, in determining
context of power.
• Ethnographic work has indeed been
enmeshed in a world of enduring and
changing power inequalities, and it
continues to be implemented.
• It enacts power relations. But its
function within these relations is
complex, often ambivalent, potentially
counter-hegemonic.
The Partiality of Ethnography
•
•
•
•
Simplication
Exclusion
Selection of a Temporal Focus
The Construction of a Particular SelfOther Relationship
• The Imposition or Negotiation of a
Power Relationship
Orientalism
According to Said, European ideas about
the Orient are hegemonic. Orientalism
is governed by a battery of desires,
repressions, investments and
projections.
Orientalism
• Orientalism is the discipline by which
the Orient was approached
systematically as a topic of learning,
discovery and practice. The essence of
Orientalism is the ineradicable
distinction between Western
superiority and Oriental inferiority.
Discourse regarding Gender
• Gender perspective can impinge on
the reading of ethnographic texts and
explore how the exclusion of feminist
perspectives limits and focuses its
discursive standpoint.
Gender Perspective
• Divinity and Experience: The Religion of the
Dinka(written by Godfrey Lienhardt)
• When speaking of the Dinka, he didn’t
mention about women. The examples he
chooses are overwhelmingly centered on
males, saying nothing of how women
experience.
Gender Perspective
• It has appeared to reflect the male
domains of experience. (There are, of
course, inverse cases: for example,
Margaret Mead’s work, which focused
on female domains and generalized on
this basis about the culture as a
whole.)
Feminist theorizing
• Feminist theorizing is obviously of
great potential significance for
rethinking ethnographic writing.
• Feminism clearly has contributed to
anthropological theory.
• Various female ethnographers are
actively rewriting the masculinist
canon.
Cultures
• Cultural analysis is enmeshed in
global movements of difference and
power.
• Cultures are not scientific objects.
Culture are produced historically, and
are actively contested.
• Human ways of life increasingly
influence, dominate, parody,
translate, and subvert one
another.
Conclusion
• The writing and reading of ethnography are
overdetermined by forces ultimately beyond
of either an author or an interpretive
community.
• These contingencies- of language, rhetoric,
power, and history- must now be openly
confronted in the process of writing.
• It needs to widen the perspectives
-From non-Western countries
-From feminist theory and politics
• In cultural studies at least, we can no longer
know the whole truth.
Question
• Aside from writing style of nonWestern countries and Feminist, are
there any kinds of writing styles which
need to be developed?