18 Matching Annotations
  1. Jan 2017
  2. Nov 2016
  3. Sep 2016
    1. People did not act toward the things themselves, but to their meanings

      people have more a connection, whether positive or negative, with their own abstract meanings of things than the physical thing itself.

    2. human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings that the things have for them.”

      Because in different cultures, things mean different things to people,their actions will also differ.

    3. Although cultural knowledge is hidden from view, it is of fundamental impor-tance because we all use it constantly to generate behavior and interpret our expe-rience

      Dramatic and unexpected changes in cultural knowledge: culture shock

    4. If an ethnographer wanted to understand the full cultural meaning in our society, it would involve a careful study of these and many other cultural artifacts.

      Studying one part of culture means also studying every other part of culture that makes up the first part.

    5. Ethnog-raphy starts with a conscious attitude of almost complete ignorance

      By being able to put aside feelings of knowledge towards a culture it is easier to gain perspective it is easier to start from square one to get better insight

    6. The goal of ethnography, as Malinowski put it, is “to grasp the native’s point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of his world.”

      Not to just study the culture, to study from within the culture. (English lit, one story) Ethnographers look past culture's "one story" to live in people's individual stories

    7. sten to students discuss the classes they hoped to get, and visit departments to watch faculty advising students on course selection. She would want to observe secretaries typing, janitors sweeping, and maintenance personnel plowing snow from walks.

      If she observed from the points of view of so many people on the campus, she would not gain the full perspective of a single group of people: she could become biased or have knowledge that not everyone she's observing has access to. Researching the school from so many points of view could backfire and create a different kind of outside opinion.

    8. ethnocentrism

      Ethnocentrism: "the belief and feeling that one's own culture is best." This can also stand in the way of an ethnographer and their work by creating a bias against the society's principles or beliefs.