Introduction to Cultural Anthropology

Fall 2007

Paper Assignment #1

An Ethnographic Interview on Kinship

This project employs the ethnographic interview for a specific purpose: exploring a kinship system from an informant and comparing it to your own as well as to the prevailing norms of this society. Kinship is a topic that cultural anthropologists have studied more than any other. Investigating kinship is part of the search for relationships among peoples, a particularly significant endeavor for understanding social life and culture in small-scale societies.

You will write a paper based upon ethnographic research. Ethnographic research is a highly personalistic approach to uncover social issues; by speaking with a person (and persons), you can gain a sense of what people are actually doing and what they are thinking about a particular social issue. This assignment has three components: an ethnographic interview with a person different from yourself, an analysis and interpretation of the ethnographic data collected, and a write-up of the data, analysis, and interpretation in a well-written 5 -10 typewritten double-spaced page paper.

Your research for this paper will consist of locating a person different from you (we will discuss this point in class), interview them about their sense of family and about family relationships, draw a kinship diagram for that person, gain information on their family members (by focusing on whom they consider family/kin and how they understand the social relationship), and then describe the information within an interpretive framework.

The goal of the exercise is ethnographic - discussing an issue with an informant. This technique is one of the ways anthropologists have for learning about another culture. The write-up of the ethnographic information needs to demonstrate your skills in gaining and understanding cross-cultural notions of family.

Ethnographic research is non-directive and open to surprises. The goal of this ethnographic exercise is not to fit your informant's kin into a standard kinship chart. Rather you need to listen to their sense of kin (who is considered "family"), what terms are used for various people, and what are the bonds that link the person to those people.

Before you speak to another person, you will need to contemplate how you reckon kin. We will discuss the ideal type in North American society, which can be a source for comparisons. Or you can use your kinship system as a comparison by asking a series of questions regarding your family: Whom do you consider family? What factors influence the construction of your kinship chart? How much weight do you put upon biological relationships versus social ones? Why is that? Fictive kin is a term used in North America to include non-biological or marriage relationships into kin networks; explore the relationships that are considered significant - do you have non-related relatives? Once you have the information on your system of kinship and have thought about the prevailing norms in this society, you can compare your subject to yourself.

The only means to use ethnography to understand kinship is to talk with an informant. With the ethnographic research in hand, you can reflect on how kin is constructed for the person. You will need to focus your paper on a significant issue that comes out of the ethnographic research. There is no way to know what those significant issues will be before engaging in the exercise but you should have several ideas about family in mind to guide your questions and questioning. For example, since one of the most significant issues in North American kinship revolves around biological versus social constructs of family, you might explore closeness in relation to social relatives versus biological relatives; I will provide examples in class. I expect you to discuss this assignment with the other class members and to discuss your research with me.

The time consuming component of the assignment revolves around the person interviewed. Once the subject agrees to be interviewed, you must treat them with utmost respect. One interview will probably not be enough for gaining the ethnographic details so plan on a series of discussions. Length of time needed for the interview is impossible to predict. The person may expect you to listen for hours and to wait until they have gathered all the information they feel is significant. The ethics of field work require that you accommodate the person. And even after you have discussed kinship with your informant, analyzing and interpreting the information will take for time and thought. Do not put this project off for the last minute!

The key to ethnographic interviews is the willingness to listen. You need to gather information, locate significance, and analyze the ethnographic data. You should start by explaining the project, showing your kinship chart, and then constructing one for the person. The kinship chart should raise questions for discussion with the subject. Share your insights and interpretations with the person. Their viewpoints can be incorporated into the paper, but should not be the only voice. Your anthropological interpretation is critical. Anthropology explains that kinship is significance to social structure; you probably have a good sense that family is important in society and culture. Demonstrate those facets in your write-up.

It is best to choose someone who is willing to discuss a large number of relatives and is from another country (particularly a non-English speaking country) that can talk about their relatives in another language. Ask for the full names of relatives and the term of reference (the term your informant would use in referring to the relative, i.e., "mom" or "cousin").

1. figure out your kinship chart

2. choose a person different from yourself

3. explain the project to them and ensure respect for them and their information

4. gain the information for a kinship chart for their family

5. ask questions about components of the chart (both what is present and what is missing)

6. ask about social relationships among members of their family (social relationships include resident patterns, economics, alliances, emotions, and feelings about each other)

7. take notes on the information

8. choose one interesting facet of that discussion and follow up on the details regarding that facet of their kinship (the readings from the unit on Kinship might be helpful here).

9. organize a thesis regarding kinship based on the information and write an essay using the ethnographic information as the data to support your thesis.

10. ask your informant's opinion about your insights and write a final draft.

As will be clear before the due-date for the assignment, there are multiple means of conveying ethnographic information. Your paper needs to be in essay form and it needs to clearly convey your understanding of course concepts. The rest is open. Nota Bene: the essay should not be about you. You might discuss the interview itself but that should not be the center of the essay.

¸ = female

Ŗ = male

‘ = gender is not known

 = ego is a female

• = ego is male

═ = marriage/pair bonding

… = divorce/end of pair bonding

│ , [ , and so on = consanguineal tie

The paper is due on October 4th.

Late papers are not acceptable.

Your paper will be evaluated on the clarity of writing, the strength of its thesis regarding kinship, your ability to convey ethnographic information, and conclusions that contextualize the data within a larger cultural context.

Want more background on Kinship?

Start with the course readings:

Napoleon Chagnon "Doing Fieldwork Among the Yanomamö."

Nancy Scheper-Hughes "Mother's Love: Death Without Weeping."

Available on reserve:

Colleen Johnson "In-Law Relationships in the American Kinship System: The Impact of Divorce and Remarriage."

Michael Anderson "Children In-Between: Constructing Identities in the Bicultural Family."

Carol Stack "Sex Roles and Survival Strategies in an Urban Black Community." Woman, Culture, and Society, pp. 113-128. (the book is available at the Cook Library)

Classics on Kinship include:

Paul Bohannan and John Middleton (editors) 1968 Kinship and Social Organization

Robin Fox 1969 Kinship and Marriage

Nelson Graburn (editor) 1971 Readings in Kinship and Social Structure

Edward Stewart 1972 American Cultural Patterns: A Cross-Cultural Perspective

Julia Crane and Michael Angosina 1974 Field Projects in Anthropology

Burton Pasternak 1976 Introduction to Kinship and Social Organization

David Schneider 1980 American Kinship: A Cultural Account

For Life Histories:

Laurence Watson 1976 "Understanding a Life History as a Subjective Document: Hermeneneutic and Phenomenological Perspectives" Ethos 4:95-131.

Vincent Crapanzo 1977 "The Life History in Anthropological Field Work" Anthropology and Humanism Quaterly 2:3-7.

Useful overviews:

Michael Agar 1997 The Professional Stranger, chapters 4 and 5

Michael Peletz 1995 "Kinship Studies in Late Twentieth Century Anthropology" Annual Review of Anthropology 24:343-372.