1. What is Ethnography? April 11, 2005

2. mating ritual: play fight, hugged armadillo people standing around ethnically segregated groups: Alphas (closer to door at Lenoir); did a call- and-respond (19-06) acapella group (Tar Heel Voices) playing music sports groups – crew team, hockey team, football players (same t-shirts) old people: out-of-state parents; had bags coming in and out of Student Stores; some with young kids Students milling around; had cell phones Asian people near Daily Grind Bryan & professors & a class perhaps at the Daily Grind Two Asian woman: one Korean, one Indian who are both anthropologists People lined up at ATM Behind construction: stone or plant work? People going from Lenoir to class (through pit, from Lenoir in different directions) 4 or 5 empty chairs in the Pit Oak trees, 2 dogwood, 1 cherry tree, 1 crepe myrtle tree in each corner People weren’t walking in large groups: more singles, doubles, triples Clothing: sandals, rain gear, umbrellas, t-shirts, boots Around 100 people, and then 2 minutes later only ½ of them were left People playing in puddles Not raining but some had umbrellas up 20 or 30 standing around watching Girls greet each other with “heeey!” and hug Girls were being fake?, happy to see each other, overdramatic? Guys nod or do a one-armed hug or hand-shake Guys wore hats backwards

3. The Pit: What Happened? It’s a place where everybody lives their own lives, but they cross and they come into contact. Times Square: New York :: Pit:UNC Flow of information

4. Functionalism Malinowski: Kula Ring Ritualized reciprocity Change; Disruption; Agency

5. Structuralism Claude Levi-Strauss Basic Mental Structures: Binary Oppositions –Genealogy; Marriage; Kinship –Myth; Music; Art Time; Agency

6. Poststructuralism No pretense of holism or objectivity Deconstruction, textual analysis Impossible to step outside culture to view it objectively

7. How do we study culture: Ethics Institutional Review Protect consultants Informed Consent Preservation Publish Advocacy

8. How do we write about culture? Ethnographic Realism “to grasp the native’s point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of his world”

9. How do we write about culture? Interpretive Anthropology: Cultures are meaningful “texts” that natives constantly “read” Ethnographers must decipher the text Wink or Blink?

10. How do we write about culture? Experimental Ethnography All peoples and cultures have already been discovered We must write about them in historical contexts (Mama Lola in Brooklyn) Work of art and science Dialogic, creative exercise

11. How do we write about culture? Ethnographic Realism –Impossible to achieve Interpretive Anthropology –Valuable, but limited Experimental Ethnography –Fact or fiction? Neither? Both?

12. How do we write about culture? Time and tense: –Ethnographic Present Romanticized Frozen in time –Past tense