Participant Observation In Anthropology

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In anthropology, we have a qualitative research method that we call participant observation in which you actively participate in what the others are doing, and from the moment I chose to do my observations at the university gym, I knew that was what I had to do. It was going to be too suspicious if I just sat in a corner watching people breaking a sweat for an hour. This method can also get you a better perspective of what is happening around you. So, I picked a pair of leggings, asked my roommate to lend me a pair of tennis shoes — his size is 10 and I’m a size 7, so you can guess I’m not someone who likes doing exercise, only yoga, but you don’t need shoes for that, and I did Zumba once and never looked back— and went to the Fit Centre around …show more content…
The quantity of testosterone in the air was overwhelming: there were approximately ten men and only a woman in that room. Then I went back to the cardio room, where there are stationary bicycles, treadmills, ellipticals, among other cardio machines, and I decided to settle down in a stationary bicycle, an activity I hoped that wouldn’t be too extenuating and the possibility of tripping over the huge shoes I was wearing was low. Also, the one I chose gave me a fairly good view of the centre.
While bicycling, I noticed another pattern: mostly young women occupied that room. There were men, too, but most of them were in their forties or older. This also made me think about the yoga classes I take in the same place; in the mixed classes, there are usually around two or three men among twenty or so women.
I think these gender — and age— divisions might be due to two reasons: First, weight lifting is an activity that’s typically considered as masculine, while dancing and yoga is more feminine. Also, men are more interested in building muscles while women usually want to maintain or lose weight and to stay fit.
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Guided Reading Form

research methods in his ethnography, predominantly employing long-term participant observation and supports this participant observation method with the inclusion of historical and literary research, and cross-cultural comparison. Anthropological methods such as interviewing along with the use of ethnographic realism which aims to define accurate and objective methods that accounts the different ways of life from first hand observations and experience. Other ethnographic techniques such as in depth interviewing…

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Essay on Study Guide for Ant 102

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Ingold begins his article That’s enough about ethnography with his objections and criticisms of what constitutes “ethnography”. He notes that the word “ethnographic”, as well as its lexical counterparts, have become so overused in the discipline of anthropology itself, as well as other disciplines within the social sciences, that it has gotten to the point of “doing great harm” (2014, 383). The overuse of the word “ethnographic” has gotten to the point that it has become synonymous with distinctly disciplinary…

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Bronislaw Melinowski played a vital role in helping modern anthropology become what it is today. After watching the documentary I noted the following points; How Melinowski differed To make a name for himself, and stand out from his peers, Melinowski immersed himself into the culture he was studying, instead of following the “armchair” method his predecessors did. He believed, after beginning his observations of the Trobriand Tribe, that you really had to observe a culture to understand it.…

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Essay on A quick look at Harvard Referencing

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Katherine Dunham was not just dancing but remembering, an approach she took to performing in her professional life as an anthropologist and dancer. What interests me in Island Possessed is Dunham’s creative feminist ethnography. Dunham trained in anthropology at the University of Chicago, one of the first African Americans to do so. She is the author of several books, including Journey to Accompong (1946), Kasamance (1974) and Las Danzas de Haiti (The Dance of Haiti) (1983). At the University of Chicago…

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Participant observation is defined as first hand experience. Participant observation is a method developed by Anthropologists in the early 20th century. When Anthropologists noticed that in order to fully understand the question, “Why” in culture. Why do a certain people do this, why is that important, or why do they all do it, are just some of the questions anthropologists use participant observation. The key to participant observation is fieldwork, where the anthropologist actively lives with the…

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