SOC302H1 Lecture : Lecture 1 Jan 16th 2012 SOC302 Professor Lee
Document Summary
There is a problem with writing field notes because you bring into it your own views, the researcher bias will definitely be there. Robert emerson: wrote mostly how to write field notes, manuals of ethnography. It wasn t always about participant observation, ethnography has evolved in time. It was delegated by colonial powers to collect information about a group of people. There are certain things you can only really understand if you are present. Our subjective view of the world is inevitable, our experiences change our view. This was taken for granted; we need to be aware of this fact. Everything that we learn is a mere partial representation. Who we are will change what happens, our existence changes things. One of the goals of fieldwork is to suspend your preconceptions of the world and see things the way that the culture does. Clifford geertz: pioneers and defender of ethnography, anthropologist.
