Writing Assignment 1: The Ethnographic Perspective—Guests of the Sheik (Week 4)This assignment asks...

Question

Writing Assignment 1: The Ethnographic Perspective—Guests of the Sheik (Week 4)

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.

and

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?

David · Accepted Answer

APA Standard Format: title
Student Name   
Course/Number  
Date  
Instructor Name
1
Overview 
The simplest description of Fernea’s fieldwork is that it is an accidental ethnography. 
Whereas an ethnographer by training, especially now, would spend significant time studying 
the subject under investigation, Fernea with little in the way of prior knowledge or training. 
Her fieldwork is the process of learning to fit in, rather than guided by a research imperative. 
This is what makes the book so readable and at the same time unreliable as an ethnographic 
account.  
She gives a detailed narrative account of what it is like to have many of the cultural 
norms that you never think about disrupted. The most compelling parts of her story is in the 
understandings it took time for her to come to, where something that she had previously 
considered a natural part of behaviour was shown to be a social construct, such as when the 
local women come round to give her company when foreign friends come to visit and it is 
assumed she will not be speaking to them. The fieldwork itself is a cautionary tale, since she 
often reacts strongly and negatively to local requirements. However, these reactions and her 
adaptation to circumstance are a good model to bear in mind about our own work in this field.  
Area A Topic 1: Gender.  
Fernea’s interactions with women in Iraq are a central part of both this book and her 
ongoing academic development. Having started with the common western assumption that 
the veil was a sign of medieval repression of women, she comes to realise that it has several 
advantages, both practical and social. The veil keeps away dust and flies, shows piousness in 
an extremely religious and social country, and provides a screen of useful anonymity, to the 
point that men often wear the veil when they do not want to be noticed. She continues to 
investigate this thread over the rest of her professional career, returning to it in books and 
2
documentary, such as Symbolizing Roles: Behind the Veil and Reformers and 
Revolutionaries:

Writing Assignment 1: The Ethnographic Perspective—Guests of the Sheik (Week 4) This assignment asks you to reflect on the ethnographic perspective through the experiences of Elizabeth Fernea as...

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