In my cultural anthropology class, we often talk about field work and the importance of it. Important things to keep in mind as a anthropologist doing fieldwork is to remain ethnocentric which means to not analyze another culture under your own culture, you must step into their shoes. This project was an example of field work. We had to set up a formal interview with someone close by and ask multiple questions and write down the answers. And while writing these answers, we also had to note down feelings and characteristics and other elements of the interview because you're not interviewing just for questions, you're interviewing to learn about this person. For the final portion, we had to create an essay on how the interview went. In the 3 page essay, we were not to discuss questions and answers unless allowed to by yourself and the interviewee, but the essay was mainly about reflecting on the field work. A few questions that our professor asked us to address are How and why did you choose the person you interviewed?
How did the person react when you asked? Describe the person being interviewed. Describe the setting and whether there were interruptions. How did the process work? Did you have trouble taking notes while the person was talking? Were there long pauses in the conversation? Did the person answer the questions willingly or were they hesitant? Were any of the questions troublesome? Why do you think that was so? How did YOU feel while doing the questioning? What values did this person think were important in life? What did YOU learn from the person that you had not known before? What did YOU learn from the experience? |
From this task, one challenge I ran into was when I started I did not have clear enough questions. My questions were very broad and did not aim for a certain answer. One question I asked was “Do you remember your first romance?”, and he responded by questioning the question like, did the question mean like your first real dating experience or like a first kiss? This honestly caught me off guard, it took a second to reconcile and answer. In the end I said “Go with your earliest experience”.
Next time I would have written more detailed questions. I had 2 or 3 broad questions that took up a lot of time. I tried to keep the questioning formal, but at times I would dig too deep into a question based on my own curiosity. Next time I would set a timer for each question to ensure to move on, unless the question is broad and covers many things. Also if I were to start over, I would have stayed more on top of deadlines, since I let this project sneak up on me. This experience is definitely related to what we have been focusing on this whole semester. In this class, we have been watching documentaries on the first anthropologists like Margret Mead and also been learning the proper way to conduct field work. Most of our assignments have been focused on analyzing cultures. And this project intertwined since we had to analyze a person just like analyzing a culture, without being ethnocentric.
The best 21st century skills that portray this assignment is communications and global awareness. Even though global awareness is mainly about thinking, motivations, and actions of different cultures, I believe it covers it, since a main motive of this assignment was to conduct field work as a anthropologist analyzing other cultures. Communication definitely played a very important role since in this 45 minute interview, you had to remain formal and indicate to the interviewee that you were attentive and compelling into their conversation. It was also very important to stay within the character of being unbiased and act as if you did not know the person. |