WHAT IS ETHNOGRAPHY?
Ethnography
is a Greek word that has two main components namely;
·
Ethnos; meaning people, folks, and
nations. while
·
Grapho; means a systematic study of
people and culture. It is systematic because it follows processes and
procedure, in other word "grapho" means field of study.
Ethnography
seeks to understand people's culture from their own point of view; their own
prospective. It is a descriptive account of human society usually simple scale
society. It provides a first-hand account on culture and social life of human
community from their own point of view (firsthand account means to collect
information from the subject of the study directly). Some are of the view that
as a field of study it studies two "2" major things, namely;
a.
Seeks to provide the knowledge of a
particular people.
b.
It gives knowledge of the system of
meaning which people attached to certain...........?
EMERGENCE OF
ETHNOGRAPHY
Ethnography
as a field of study started from the voyages of discovery.
Voyages of
Discovery: This
means a long journey involving travelling by sea or in a space.
Ø Herodotus:
He started
the field of ethnography because he was a traveler; he visited different parts
of the world and he was documenting the various culture and people he meet on
the road; he study their culture, customs, belief system and their languages
and then he compares with his own culture.
Ø Marcopolo:
Also like
Herodotus, he was a traveler and write about different culture, people he meet
on the road but he was interested in knowing especially the western culture. He
wrote a detailed
account of people him meet and also analysis the culture of those
people unlike Herodotus who only document the people apart from the detailed
account he gave.
Around 15th and
17th century, Europeans became very interested in other parts of the world
because;
a.
They were interested in expanding their
own colony: They wanted market where they can sell their finished products
because they produce more than they can consume due to the rise of industries
in the western world.
b.
They were interested in conquering
other parts of the world.
Ethnography
studies the variation of the physical appearance of people and also their
culture.
CONCEPTS
ASSOCIATED WITH STUDY OF ETHNOGRAPHY
·
Culture: Culture is one of
the very important concepts in the study of ethnography. Culture is central to
the understanding of ethnography. Culture is something we learn as a member of
an ethnic or as a member of a particular society.
Culture can be
defined as the configuration of land and shared pattern of behaviour and
understanding arising out of communication among social groups and helps
individual to adopt his environment and his biological nature. The culture of
the people is defined by their environment.
·
Cultural Areas: Most cultural
groups tend to defined geographical areas, such people share the same thing
i.e. ideas, belief system etc. the basis for demarcating is on religion,
languages, and also the basis on similarity with other culture.
·
Cultural Relativism: That is you
should not judge other people's culture on the basis of our own culture. We
should judge them from their own culture; we should judge them from their own
point of view or from their own prospective. When we judges people culture on
the basis of our own culture is what is referred to as culture relativism.
·
Cultural Pluralism: This is the social
arrangement whereby different ethnic groups, different culture will live with
others in harmony and stills maintains their own culture and tolerate them. Most
of different groups always recognized that they are culturally or religion different
but they tolerate each other.
·
Ethnic Group: This refers to a
group of people sharing the same historical experience, having the same
cultural experience, speaking the same language and the same belief about the
future members must also share a conviction that they have a common ideology
and a common fate (of destiny).
·
Tribe: This is a human
social organization that is based on small groupings defined by tradition of
common descents; the group must have temporary or permanent political integration
above family level and share language.
Tribe traces their
origins from descents, but they are larger than the family; Tribes and ethnic
groups are used inter-changeable; tribes are largely a colonial creation, it is
created by the colonialist.
·
Ethnocentricism: People always belief that their
culture is always better than the other people's culture. Ethnocentricism is
the belief or feeling that one's own culture is better than the others. Also
when a person judges other people's culture based on his/her own culture is
what is referred to as Ethnocentricism or such a person is called ethnocentric
in nature.
Advantages
i.
It promotes social solidarity among
people from the same culture.
ii.
It re-enforces the tendency to
conform.
iii.
It ensures unity among members.
Disadvantages
i.
It can bring about hostility among
members of different cultures.
ii.
It brings disunity among people of
different cultures or beliefs.
·
Language: Conventionally (generally
accepted), languages refers to human and non-instinctive method of
communication, ideas feelings and desires by means of a symbol of sound and
sounds.
Literally, it
refers to spoken and writing in method of communication between people and such
spoken and written symbols needs to be distinct or different from peoples
spoken and written symbols in other to become a language.
·
Kinship: This term refers
to large network of people who are related by common ancestors. The essence of
kinship is to allow the identification within a group.
Classification of
Kinship
i.
Classificatory. and
ii.
Descriptive kinship.
Classificatory
kinship refers to links of lineal relative; the term can also be used for
collateral relative i.e. "dan riko a gida" in hausa.
Descriptive is
used to describe the relationship within the kinship group.
·
Society: Refers to a group
of people who live together over an extended period of time, occupied a known
territory and organized themselves in social groups and also are distinct from
other people. In some cases, they evolve some culture within time.
·
Family: This is a social
unit which consists of the father, mother, children and other relatives. Family
is divided into;
i.
Conjugal Family: this is also
referred to as extended family of procreation i.e. you, your wife and just your
children.
ii. Natal Family: this is also
referred to as extended family whereby when you, your brothers and sisters
return to your father’s house.
PROCEDURES FOR CONDUCTING
ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDIES
1.
Determine whether ethnography is
appropriate for your study or not.
2.
Ethnography is about studying culture;
locate a group that shares the same culture (not unstable culture) we don't
conduct a study in a multi cultural society. Members of the same culture must
have live for a long period of time.
3.
Pick a team or identify an issue and
even develop theory i.e. do you want to study their customs or traditions, do
you want to study their economy or their belief, etc.
4.
Once the team has been developed, an
ethnographer must go to the settings (people) he wants to study, he must go to
that economy and stay with them (field work) and study their culture in
detailed in order to have a firsthand account of that particular issue you want
to study, from the date generated from the research, he sat down and analyze
and then interpret the data collected.
5.
From the report written, you will be
able to come out with findings and then generalized the issues.
Ethnography
can be a subject and also at the same time it can be a method. As a method, it
allows you to engage in face-to-face interaction. It is also multi-factoral
because you can use more than method of collecting your data. it is dialogic,
it involves dialog; you have to dialogue with the community. it is also holistic in nature.
IMPORTANCE OF
ETHNOGRAPHY
1.
Understanding cultural differences (cultural
relativism).
2.
It provide student with the skills and
knowledge on how ethnographic study can be conducted.
3.
It dispels all the rumors that people
have on a particular ethnic group.
4.
It allows emotional behaviour of a
community to be captured; because it goes beyond just statistics it tells you
the feelings of a particular community.
5.
It is a kind of visual data that gives
you the exact picture of what is happening; you see images live.
6.
A detailed understanding of any
culture helps you to succeed in any industry you find yourself in.
RECENT AFRICAN ORIGIN OF MODERN HUMAN
The Origin of Man
In
recent years, scientist made the use of molecular biology [study of DNA, RNA,
proteins and lipids]. The DNA, RNA, proteins and lipids carries the
characteristics of human across generations. Scientist uses the above in
discussing or explaining human origins. They came to conclude that the origin
of early man started from Africa for more than 200,000years ago. Based on number
of researches that was carried out, they came to conclude that all humans came
from a single person from east Africa and that the origin is an African woman
who gave birth to so many children; some went to Middle East about 100,000years
ago. Others went to Asia and Europe about 60,000years ago. As they were moving,
anywhere they stay, they wipe out aboriginals. As they were moving, they found Neanderthal man
(Germany) and also parking
man (china).
They move along the Arabian coast to
India and also from India they move to other parts of Europe. They use raft to
cross the sea.
The Critique to
the African Origin of Man
The Chinese seems
not to be happy and do not agree man came from Africa, because a number of
fossils are found in china. in 1965 for instance YUANMON MAN was discovered in
Yoanmon province and from their estimation, he live for over 1.7 million years
ago, and at the same layer where the man was dig out, a stone tools were also
found in the layer carbon was found (charcoal) indicated that they know how to
use fire then.
After Yoanmon-man (1.7million years), a PEKING MAN
was also discovered (200,000 – 700,000 years) ago whose skull sizes 1,059ML of
an average man. This shows that the Peking man's skull was smaller than an
average man. He can think and he can speak and also they can walk straight and
engaged in productive labour (work that we do to drive some benefits). 40 other
peoples found both; men and females of different ages were also found as a
result of digging the Peking man. The tools found were not smooth, they were
rough; they use for the smashing, cutting and so on. 6M thick of accumulated
ash was also found confirmed that they also know how to use fire, also, it is
said that born of some animals were also found there.
At the same place where the perking
man was found, new caveman was also discovered about 100,000years ago. Much later
at the same place upper-cave man was found 18,000years and Jalai Nurman (10,000)
was found much in Zhokoudian. They were all found in china and the discovery of
the above men give raise to the argument whether, really a man started from
Africa. The flat ridge nose and spade-shape teeth make the conclusion that
those men above mentioned really have the feature of a modern Chinese man.
Regional
Evolution of Man
Shu-ape (primate, baboon kingdom) was also discovered they believe that
man evolve from different primates found in different regions. Shu-ape was
discovered in Middle
Eocene Epoch in about 4.5 million to 4million years ago. he is
discovered by Qi
Tao and Wang Tingwen in Jiangsu kingdom and they give him
a name "shu-ape" shu means new light (because he show the light to
further discovery of man). According to them also, they said that he was found
in china and others primate and apes where from that shu-ape.
THE CONTRIBUTION
OF CHARLES DARWIN {1809-1882}
He is
an English man born on 1809 and died on 1882. He was a naturalist/geology. (Naturalist;
studying things exactly what nature produce without man altering it). That man
evolves from a simple organic. He wrote a book titled "the origin of species (1859)".
Natural Selection's Principle
1.
He established that all species of
life have descended overtime from a common ancestor.
2.
For him, evolution is a process by
which organism changes overtime as a result of changes in heritable physical or
behavioral traits.
3.
Changes that allow an organism to better
adopt its environment will help it survive and have more offspring.
Essentially, the theory has major points namely:
1.
All life on earth is connected and
related to each others.
2.
The adversity of life is as a result
of modification of population by natural selection.
The
theory is also called survival of the fittest (the ability to reproduce and
survive).
Natural selection can changes a specie
in some small ways i.e. it makes them change in terms of colors and sizes over
several million years, the process is refers to micro-evolution. Macro-evolution
in other way is if the change is dramatic in nature
Knowledge about genetics which Darwin
is not familiar with in his time was added to his theory and now became modern evolutionary
synthesis. The number of certain characteristics that an organism
exhibit is as a result of genetics; the process through which genetics changes
the size, colour, behaviour of a person is referred to as "MUTATION". Basically, the
raw material which evolution takes place is mutation. Genes and DNA are the two dominant of natural
selection according to the modern evolutionary synthesis.
In most occasions, mutations are
either harmful or neutral and in rear cases, it can be beneficiary to the organisms.
In this way natural selection guides the........?
Gene Flow: one gene that
can be transferred from a given place to another, and when it happens, it
produces specie.
Mendel's Principles of Genetics
Selection
For
thousands of years farmers and herders have been selectively breeding their plants
and animals to produce more useful hybrids. It
was somewhat of a hit or miss process since the actual mechanisms governing inheritance
were unknown. Knowledge of these genetic mechanisms finally came as a result of
careful laboratory breeding experiments carried out over the last century and a
half.
By the 1890's, the invention of better microscopes allowed
biologists to discover the basic facts of cell division and sexual
reproduction. The focus of genetics research then shifted to understanding
what really happens in the transmission of hereditary traits from parents to
children. A number of hypotheses were suggested to explain heredity, but Gregor
Mendel, a little known Central European monk, was the only one who got it more
or less right. His ideas had been published in 1866 but largely went
unrecognized until 1900, which was long after his death. His early adult life
was spent in relative obscurity doing basic genetics research and teaching high
school mathematics, physics, and Greek in Brno (now in the Czech Republic). In
his later years, he became the abbot of his monastery and put aside his
scientific work.
While
Mendel's research was with plants, the basic underlying principles of heredity
that he discovered also apply to people and other animals because the mechanisms
of heredity are essentially the same for all complex life forms. Through the
selective cross-breeding of common pea plants (Pisum sativum) over many
generations, Mendel discovered that certain traits show up in offspring without
any blending of parent characteristics. For instance, the pea flowers are either
purple or white--intermediate colors do not appear in the offspring of cross-pollinated
pea
plants. Mendel observed seven traits that are easily recognized and apparently
only occur in one of two forms:
1. flower color is purple or white
2. flower position is axil or
terminal
3. stem length is long or short
green
4. Seed shape is round or wrinkled
5. seed color is yellow or green
6. pod shape is inflated or constricted
This
observation that these traits do not show up in offspring plants with
intermediate forms was critically important because the leading theory in
biology at the time was that inherited traits blend from generation to
generation. Most of the leading scientists in the 19th century accepted this "blending
theory." Charles Darwin proposed another equally wrong theory known as
"pangenesis". This held that hereditary "particles" in our
bodies are affected by the things we do during our lifetime. These modified
particles were thought to migrate via blood to the reproductive cells and subsequently
could be inherited by the next generation. This was essentially a variation of
Lamarck's incorrect idea of the "inheritance of acquired
characteristics."
This 3:1 ratio
occurs in later generations as well. Mendel realized that this underlying
regularity was the key to understanding the basic mechanisms of inheritance.
He came to three important conclusions
from these experimental results:
1. That the inheritance of each trait is determined by
"units" or "factors" that are passed on to descendants
unchanged (these units are now called genes )
3. That a trait may not show up in an individual but can still be
passed on to the next generation.
Note
that each of the f1 generation plants (shown above) inherited a Y allele from
one parent and a G allele from the other. When the f1 plants breed, each has an
equal chance of passing on either Y or G alleles to each offspring.
With all of the seven pea plant
traits that Mendel examined, one form appeared dominant
over the other, which is to say it masked the presence of the
other allele. For example, when the genotype for pea seed color is YG
(heterozygous), the phenotype is yellow. However, the dominant yellow allele
does not alter the recessive green one in any way. Both alleles
can be passed on to the next generation unchanged.
Mendel's observations from these
experiments can be summarized in two principles:
1.
The principle of segregation
2.
The principle of independent assortment
According to the principle
of segregation, for any particular trait, the pair of alleles of each
parent separate and only one allele passes from each parent on to an offspring.
Which allele in a parent's pair of alleles is inherited is a matter of chance.
We now know that this segregation of alleles occurs during the process of sex
cell formation (i.e.,
meiosis).
According to the principle of independent assortment, different pairs of alleles are passed to offspring
independently of each other. The result is that new combinations of genes
present in neither parent are possible.
STAGES OF MAN EVOLUTION
QUESTION:
What are the stages of man evolution?
Any documentation identifying the stages of man
evolution has to assume that man evolved rather than having been created. We believe
that evidence has failed to support the evolution from ape to man or any other
type of macroevolution.
The
Cambrian explosion and the complete absence of transitional fossils testify
against evolution. The fossil record shows all life forms appearing fully
formed and not changing during their tenure on earth, except for extinctions.
This information, and the recent finding that human DNA is losing its vitality
by developing genetic disorders supports devolution, the opposite of evolution.
The
story below represents how evolutionists describe the stages of man evolution.
The timeframe for the stages of man evolution from the ancestor of both man and
the modern ape to modern man is not known, but I will give you an abbreviated
chronology of what has been discovered from fossil remains over the years.
First of all, the word, hominidae, is used to describe the total member species of the human family that have
lived since the last common ancestor of both man and the apes. A hominid is an individual species within that
family, and the field of science that studies the human fossil record is known
as paleoanthropology. It is
made up of two disciplines of paleontology,
which is the study of ancient life
forms, and anthropology, which is the study of humans. Each hominid name
consists of a genus name (Australopithecus, Homo)
which is always capitalized, and a species name (africanus,
erectus) which is always in lower case.
To
begin our study of the stages of man evolution, the earliest fossil hominid, Ardipithecus ramidus, is a recent discovery dating
4.4 million years ago. He was 4 feet
tall and bipedal (having two feet). It is thought this species lived as forest
dwellers. Australopithecus anamensis, a
new species, was named in 1995 and was found in Kenya. This species lived
between 4.2 and 3.9 million years
ago, and its body showed advanced bipedal features, but the skull closely
resembled the ancient apes.
Australopithecus afarensis lived
between 3.9 and 3.0 million years ago. He retained the apelike face with a
sloping forehead, a ridge over the eyes, flat nose, and a chinless lower jaw,
and height, 36 and 5 tall. He was fully bipedal, and the thickness of his bones
showed he was quite strong. His build was similar to a human, but the head and
face were proportionately much larger.
The Australopithecus
africanus was similar to the afarensis,
but lived between three and two million years
ago. He was also bipedal and slightly larger in body size. His brain
was not advanced for speech. The hominid was an herbivore and ate tough, hard
to chew, plants. The shape of the jaw was human-like.
The Australopithecus robustus lived
between two and 1.5 million years ago.
His body was similar to that of the africanus, but had a larger and more
massive skull and teeth. His huge face was flat and had no forehead. He had no
indication of speech capabilities.
The Australopithecus boisei lived
between 2.1 and 1.1 million years ago.
He was smaller than the robustus, but with a more massive face. He had huge
molars, for which the largest measured 0.9 inches across. Some authorities
believe the robustus and boisei are of the same species.
Next
is the Homo habilis, or also called The Handy Man because
tools were found with his fossil remains. He existed between 2.4 and 1.5 million years ago. The brain shape
shows evidence some speech had developed. He was 5 tall and weighed about 100 pounds.
Homo erectus lived between
1.8 million and 300,000 years ago.
Toward the end, his brain was that of the size of modern man, and definitely
could speak.
Erectus developed tools, weapons, fire, and
learned to cook his own food. He traveled out of Africa into China and the
Southeast Asia developing clothing for northern climates. He turned to hunting
for his food, and only his head and face differed from modern man.
Homo sapiens (archaic) lived
during the period 200,000 to 500,000 years ago.
He had speech capabilities; his skull was rounded with smaller features. The
skeleton shows a stronger build than modern human, but well proportioned.
Homo sapiens neandertalensis lived
in Europe and the Mideast between 150,000 and
35,000 years ago. Brain size averaged larger than modern man, but
the head was shaped differently, longer and lower. His nose was large and
extremely different from modern man in structure. He was a massive man, about
56 tall with a heavy skeleton that showed attachments for massive muscles. He
was far stronger than modern man, and his jaw was massive with a receding
forehead like erectus.
