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Category Archives: Methods

Capilano U Archaeology Field School

I had the pleasure of visiting the Capilano University Archaeology Field School at one of their sites in the Seymour watershed (North Vancouver) this morning. In its twelfth year, and always under the direction of Bob Muckle, the Field School is unearthing a Japanese history in the forests of Vancouver’s north shore. The site is [...]

Public Discussions of Hunting Protests in Northern BC

One of my summer projects is to learn more about public attitudes towards indigenous rights in British Columbia. I am also looking for current examples of the stigmas and stereotypes associated with indigenous hunting by non-native people (Figure 2, in which foraging is confused with pastoralism, for example). Conveniently, events surrounding a blockade in Tahltan [...]

Flip Video MinoHD: A FieldNotes Review

Flip Video MinoHD Originally uploaded by TFM I’ve been using the tiny Flip Video MinoHD (by Pure Digital Technologies) for about a month now. I’ve had a chance to try it in a fieldwork setting (elder interviews) and while traveling on vacation. While I have never had that much interest in doing video (professionally or [...]

Good Examples of Bad Ethnographic Experiences?

A student asked me recently for examples of ethnographies in which the anthropologist ‘had a bad time’. He observed that in all of the anthropological writings he has read, the anthropologists generally present themselves and their experiences positively. I was stumped. The ethnography for the course, a survey of Canada’s first peoples, is Robert Jarvenpa’s [...]

GPS Tools

On the heels of my less-than-well-researched post about a free topographical map site — Ed pointed out how to get scanned versions of Canadian National Topographic Series (NTS) maps in the comments — let me point you to a terrific site for uploading GPS tracks and logs and plotting those tracks against all sorts of [...]

Field Research and Skype

Dease Lake Caribou Originally uploaded by TFM I spent last week — my reading break — in northwestern British Columbia. It was my first trip back to the area during the winter since I completed my dissertation fieldwork in March of 2003. It was a real treat to visit old friends. Some things hadn’t changed: [...]

The Whale Hunt – Stunning Photography and Storytelling

The Whale Hunt presents Jonathan Harris’ experience among Inuipiat Eskimos of Barrow Alaska in stunning photography and a unique, narrative-driven interface. From Harris’ statement: The purpose of this project was threefold: First, to experiment with a new interface for human storytelling. The photographs are presented in a framework that tells the moment-to-moment story of the [...]

African Group Using GPS and to Protect Sacred Sites

Two stories from the Globe and Mail in the past couple of days concerning the Mbendjele Yaka (also Pygmies; northern Congo) use of GPS units to document sacred sites and locations of traditional use. The broader context: logging of the Mbendjele Yaka’s forested territory. To get around the problem of low literacy rates, a system [...]

Seeking Consent

It has been a long time since I used a consent form in a research setting where I did not know the people I was interviewing. It happened to me recently, however, and reminded me just how uncomfortable consent forms can be especially when they appear within minutes of introductions across a table. While I [...]

Corporate Ethnography

I follow the use of ethnographic methods outside of anthropology with some interest, although without much real understanding of how its non-anthropological purveyors use it. Now, Grant McCracken at ‘This Blog Sits At …’ offers a lengthy and informative summary of the problems of corporate ethnography. The jist: … some clients are now treating ethnography [...]