Ethnographic Illustration practice questions.

A paragraph opens: 'In Bali, cockfights show that gambling is about status.' A marker notes that the sentence cannot yet earn credit as an illustration. The change that repairs it fastest is to

• attach the ethnographer, the period and the detail the claim rests on: Geertz's 1950s Balinese fieldwork and the size of the side bets
• add several further sentences describing how a cockfight is organised and what the spectators around the ring do while the contest runs
• replace the word 'status' with a fuller definition of the concept, set out before the Balinese example is introduced at all
• move the sentence to the conclusion, where general claims about a case are conventionally placed in an essay of this kind

Answer: attach the ethnographer, the period and the detail the claim rests on: Geertz's 1950s Balinese fieldwork and the size of the side bets

An illustration becomes evidence only when it is attributed and dated and when one detail is made to carry the claim. Without those, the sentence is a generalisation about a place rather than a report of fieldwork.

A candidate writes: 'The Nuer settle their disputes through cattle.' The sentence is marked down not for its facts but because it

• reports a custom rather than a belief, and only beliefs may be used to illustrate a key concept in a Paper 2 answer
• refers to livestock, which belongs to materiality rather than to social relations
• presents one dated field account as a standing description of a people, no ethnographer or period attached
• is too short to count as an illustration, since the markbands set a minimum length for each example given

Answer: presents one dated field account as a standing description of a people, no ethnographer or period attached

This is the ethnographic present: a description written as though it were always true. Evans-Pritchard's Nuer material came from particular places in the 1930s, and saying so is what turns the sentence into evidence.

Malinowski's Trobriand fieldwork of the 1910s, published in 1922, is used in one essay to argue about materiality and in another to argue about social relations. This is possible because

• an ethnography may be cited for any claim, since the marker assesses the writing rather than the fit between case and claim
• materiality and social relations amount to the same thing whenever objects travel between partners on different islands
• both arguments concern the same island group, and a claim about an island group may be supported by any account of it
• the kula was recorded in enough detail that different features of it can be pinned to different claims

Answer: the kula was recorded in enough detail that different features of it can be pinned to different claims

Rich ethnography supports more than one argument because the writer selects the detail that bears on the claim being made. What is not allowed is to cite the case in general terms and leave the selection unmade.

Two paragraphs use Bourgois's East Harlem fieldwork of the late 1980s. One narrates a dealer's working week over half a page; the other names the fieldsite and period, quotes one exchange between the dealer and a former employer, and links it to the claim being argued. Only the second is credited. The feature that separates them is

• the quantity of ethnographic detail supplied to the reader in the course of the paragraph
• the selection of the single detail that carries the claim, rather than the sequence of events
• the presence of the ethnographer's name, left out of the first paragraph and supplied in the second
• the length of the paragraph, since the markbands reward economy of expression above other qualities

Answer: the selection of the single detail that carries the claim, rather than the sequence of events

Retelling shows that the ethnography was read; illustration shows what it is being used to prove. The link sentence that ties the quoted detail to the argument is where the credit lies.

A paragraph reads: 'Evans-Pritchard showed that people explain misfortune by witchcraft.' The examiner notes that the sentence is incomplete as an illustration because

• the claim is inaccurate, since Evans-Pritchard did not write about witchcraft
• it names neither the people, the region nor the period, so nothing anchors the claim
• the name of the ethnographer should not appear in an illustration of this kind
• explanations of misfortune belong to a different area of inquiry from the one being discussed

Answer: it names neither the people, the region nor the period, so nothing anchors the claim

An ethnographic claim is a claim about particular people described at a particular time by a particular researcher. Without the anchors it becomes a generalisation about human beings, which is what an anthropological illustration is supposed to replace.

A candidate writes that a named ethnographer 'proved' a claim about the society he studied. The preferable verb would be 'argued' or 'showed', principally because

• the ethnographer in question never stated the claim attributed to him in that passage
• verbs of this kind are matters of style and carry no consequence for the argument
• an ethnographic account is an interpretation of a body of material, which later work can contest
• proof is reserved for claims that have been established statistically across a large sample, and no ethnographic study is in a position to meet that requirement

Answer: an ethnographic account is an interpretation of a body of material, which later work can contest

The choice of verb signals whether the candidate understands what kind of knowledge this is. Restudies, disagreements and revisions are a normal part of the record, and a writer who has noticed that will also be able to handle a contested case when one appears in a question.