Reference no: EM13570774

The Ethnographic Perspective-Guests of the Sheik

This assignment asks you to reflect on the ethnographic perspective through the experiences of Elizabeth Fernea as described in her book,Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village.

Overview:

Describe briefly your impressions of the "fieldwork" described in Fernea's book. What would it be like to be in the field outside of your culture? Illustrate your opinions with examples from the text.

Select and respond to two topics from Area A, and one topic from Area B, below.

Area A: What did you learn about the people of Iraq?

Topic 1: Gender.What did you learn from Fernea's book about gender in Iraq? What did you learn that expanded your overall perspective on gender?

Topic 2: Religion.Iraq is a primarily Islamic society. How does this translate into everyday life? What can we learn from this book about how religion functions in a complex society?

Topic 3: Kinship Systems and Family.The society Fernea described is built around kinship and family relationships. How does kinship structure the everyday lives of the people described in her book? What did those people who were making lives apart from their kin groups suggest about the future of this kind of social organization?

Topic 4: Political Systems.Iraqi society, as Fernea describes it, is an intensely political one, but the outlines of the politics are often vague in this book. Why? What could an ethnographer have done to have made the interactions of kin and interest groups more understandable?

Topic 5: Economics.How are people making a living and supporting their families and kin groups in this setting? What is the relationship of the economics presented to the areas discussed above (gender, religion, kinship, and politics)?

Area B:

Topic 1:Guests of the Sheikis not a new book.The work on which it is based is around 50 years old. So why is it part of this course? What does it tell us that we might not get from a journalist's account of Iraq? or from another ethnography about, say, Egypt? or from the memoir of an Iraqi? What can we learn from this book?

Topic 2: What we do versus what we say.Discuss the idea of real versus ideal behavior, as exemplified by the people studied and by the anthropologist. Are the people actually living out the cultural system as they might describe it? If not, how does the cultural system vary from what they say? Does Fernea behave as you would expect an anthropologist to behave? If not, how does her behavior differ from what you would expect?

Topic 3: Being an ethnographer.What are Fernea's greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses as an ethnographer? Describe the most serious or trying difficulties this anthropologist experienced. Based on her account, what qualities do you think are most important in a successful anthropological fieldworker? Could you conduct this kind of ethnographic fieldwork?