Assignment #5: Ethnographies

The first article primarily covered some different definitions of ethnography. These definitions gave me a more generalized view of what ethnography actually is. There is much more to an ethnography than I initially realized. I did not understand the depth of submersion in the group that is required.

The second article was an indepth description of what is included in an ethonography and many examples of them. One thing that I noticed and thought was appropriate was the three categories of "conceptual clusters" which are actually ethical delimas. Many of the descriptions of these delimas are cases which I had not considered. One in particular stands out: "the candid ethnographer." This situation stands out because I had never considered that the ethnographer could report on a situation which did not actually occur. Another key concept is the American Anthropological Association's eight page code of ethics; it is important, but not covered in enough detail for my personal thoughts. "Richardson provides 5 criteria that ethnographers might find helpful" are listed and explained in this article. These questions help the reader to accurately evaluate an ethnography in a manner that can be consistant even though there is no known consensus on the evaluation performed. There are other new ideas (to me) presented in this article, but they did not seem as important to me as the ones listed here.

The final article was the most interesting to me. It covered a book written by Margaret Mead entitled "Coming of Age in Samoa." This book discussed the nature vs. nurture debate and a variety of topics related to the transition from child to adolescent to adult. The major conclusion found in Mead's book was that the transition from childhood to adulthood in Samoa is much smoother and easier to handle than that in America. The second major part of this article is the controversy between Margaret Mead and Darek Freemen's ideas of who is correct. Freemen states that Mead was completely wrong in her conclusions because the girls she interviewed lied to her. Critics have stated that Freemen "systematically misrepresented Mead's views on the relationship between nature and nurture, as well as the data on Samoan culture." In the long run, it was essentially found that Freemen was incorrect and Mead's "hypotheses and conclusions are essentially unfalsifiable, and therefore 'not even wrong.'" Though this controversy appears to be settled in my mind, there is no clear result in this article. This seems to be a topic that there is no real solution to and there will never be a solution to. Must we continue to argue over whether Mead or Freemen is correct? Is it possible that both of them are correct?