participant observation

anthropologist

anthropology

is a continuous tacking between the 'inside' and 'outside' of events:.

Participant observation' serves as shorthand for a continuous tacking between the 'inside' and 'outside' of events: on the one hand grasping the sense of specific occurrences and gestures empatheitcally, on the other stepping back to situuate these meanings in wider contexts. Particular events thus acquire deeper or more general significance, structural rules, and so forth. Understood literally, participant observation is a paradoxical, misleading formula, but it may be taken seriously f reformulated in hermeneutic terms as a dialectic of experience and interpretation.'

is a research strategy that is able to collect information on unpredictable outcomes.

What research strategy could possibly collect information on unpredictable outcomes' Social anthropology has one trick up its sleeve: the deliberate attempt to generate more data than the investigator is aware of at the tune of collection.

is a scientific approach of active engagement whereby the anthropologist, as scientist, collects data for concrete statistics, makes minute, detailed observations of daily life, and collects ethnographic statements, narratives, utterances as documents of native mentality.

For Malinowski, participant observation did not mean merely hanging around or even just beingthere. It was more active than that. An ethnographer needs to have real scientific aims, and tocollect data on as many facets of life as possible. This involved using statistical documentation andbuilding statistical summaries and analyses from concrete evidence. It meant systematicallydocumenting details from daily life. It meant documenting speech, habits, customs, as well as magicformulae, and myths... making list, drawing maps, constructing genealogies and taking photographs.Above all one needs to take field notes, recording not only those occurrences and details that areprescribed by tradition, but also the actual actions that are observed as they occur, by theparticipants as well as the spectators. This insistence on the collection of facts and evidence reflectsMalinowski's positivistic approach, but I will discuss this more later. '

is an open-ended, non-linear methods of data collection whereby, rather than devising research protocols that will purify the data in advance of analysis, the anthropologist embarks on a participatory exercise which yields materials for which analytical protocols are often devised after the fact.

Anthropologist deploy open-ended, non-linear methods of data collection which they call ethnography... I refer particularly to the nature of ethnography entailed in anthropology's version of fieldwork. Rather than devising research protocols that will purify the data in advance of analysis, the anthropologist embarks on a participatory exercise which yields materials for which analytical protocols are often devised after the fact. (5-6)

is an oxymoronic term that defines the space of anthropology. Inescapably, 'observation' is the governing term.

Once one accepts a definition of anthropology as consisting of participant observation, as I had, then one's course of action is really governed by the oxymoronic terms... the tension between them defines the space of anthropology. Observation, however, is the governing term in the pair, since it situates the anthropologist' activities. However much one moves in the direction of participation, it is always the case that one is still both an outsider and an observer (Rabinow 79.)

is endowed with the unique potential for addressing 'anticipation': A 'routine crisis in the pursuit of knowledge, which is how to deal with the unforeseen.

The unique power of participant observation lies in its potential for addressing what Marilyn Strathern terms anticipation: a 'routine crisis in the pursuit of knowledge, which is how to deal with the unforeseen' (2004:5). Questions of anticipation and the unforeseen are questions of temporality that is, of coincidence. As Strathern writes:

is the method of finding culture through nonelicited everyday interactions.

the discovery of 'culture through nonelicited, everyday interactions' (p.72)

participant observation, n.All

participant observation