Sunday, September 25, 2011

Gmelch And Gmelch (Pg 82-96)

Field school students, have been hands-on experiencing the rural and city settings. Their field schools were  based on the rural areas in Ireland, and then throughout the 1960's and 90's in Barbados.Unfortunately; the hands on program has moved to urban Australia from the rural Barbados. It has shifted from village setting to city. Reasons to their moving was because residents Barbados villagers weren't around as much due to them commuting to jobs in the Capital city.(Pg 83) With fewer residents, the students can not interview them to extract information. From studying village ethnography, today they practice Urban Anthropology, doing fieldwork on variety of topics in the city. Moving to the students has made clear the differences between rural and urban fieldwork. The differences between Barbados: a village, and Tasmania; a suburb neighborhood. Students have experienced similarities and differences in village fieldwork vs city fieldwork. They find city fieldwork much more difficult than village. The people in villages were friendly, welcoming, and united; while as the people in the city seemed like strangers. The students couldn't approach them without explaining to them who are they and why are they doing this. The Rural vs. Urban: students who have researched in the villages did more "participent observation" than in the city. In the city the way students conducted the interviewers were to use formal interview. With such overwhelm of the different cultures and ways of approaching people they also challenged in adapting themselves to the environment they were researching. When coming to a new environment, people, and setting they felt intimidated. I feel as if being a Anthropologist is beneficial and helpful but at times difficult and challenging.

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