Readings that will be used

Scupin, R. 2000. Introduction to Social Anthropology. Cultural Anthropology: A Global Perspective 4th Edition N.J.: Prentice Hall pp. 1-9.
Commonsense knowledge is rooted in experience and folk traditions maintained by members of a society
“everyone is suppose to know”
we are not born with commonsense knowledge
scientific method, is a, logical system used to evaluate data derived from systematic observation
Inductive method, the scientist first makes the observations and collects data
Durrenberger, P.& S.Erem. 2010. Chapter One: Science Basics. In their Anthropology Unbound: A field guide to the 21st Century (2nd edition). London: Paradigm Publishers. pp. 5-9.

Holism means seeing things as connected. Instead of looking at religion, literature, economics, or history as separate spheres of life, anthropologists see them as connected.
Comparative means noticing and explaining similarities and differences among many different systems
Ethnographic means that we base our ideas of how any given system works on detailed local description.
Descriptive relatism means suspending your natural ethnocentrism so that you can describe another culture from the point of view of the people in it.
Ethicla relativism is the idea that there are no absolute values of good and bad.
Epistemology means how we know things. Different cultures define different ways of knowing things.
Relaibility means that everybody else who checks the same thing will get the same result.

Gay y Blasco, P. and H. Wardle 2007. Introduction: The concerns and distinctiveness of ethnography. How to Read Ethnography. OX.: Routledge pp. 1-12.
The writers of ethnography must compare.

Wolcott, H.F. 1995. Fieldwork: The basic arts. The Art Of Fieldwork. CA.: AltaMira Press pp. 86-121.

“participant observation,” the very kind of distraction that dedicated participant observers try desperately to avoid

tolerance for ambuiguity
Which is “more important” and which logically should preceed the other when initiating a new inquiry. Again, the best answer seems to be “It depends”

One needs to develop a “six sense” about which data may ultimately prove most useful.

Aspect of interviewing:
- Casual or conversational interviewing
- Life history
- Semistruactured interview
- Structured interview
- Projective technique
- Standardize test

Hage, G. 2003. Border Dis/order: The Imagining of Paranoid Nationalism. Against Paranoid Nationalism: Searching for Hope in a Shrinking Society. NSW: Pluto Press pp. 31-43.

A nation is formed by a group of people who have a collective uncommon knowledge.