Inquiry groups 1–3 · Reading and comparing ethnographies

IB Diploma Programme Social and Cultural Anthropology SL (first assessed in 2019; 2017 guide). This topic covers the areas of inquiry 探究领域 and how to read and use ethnographic material 民族志材料: the books and articles anthropologists write after fieldwork. It is examined in Paper 2 (2 hours 30 minutes, 45% at HL; 1 hour 30 minutes, 40% at SL).

In the Trobriand Islands, Malinowski watched men sail for days across open sea in canoes, risking storms, to give away necklaces made of red shell. In return, months later, they received armbands of white shell. Nobody kept the objects: after a time, each one was passed on to the next partner. To a European economist this looked mad. Why risk your life for an object you cannot keep or use? Malinowski's answer, in Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922), was that the kula 库拉 exchange is not about the objects. It builds partnerships between islands, and a man becomes famous by having held famous shells and giving them away generously.

Must-know for engaging with ethnography:

The course groups its nine areas of inquiry in three groups. SL students study one area from each group; HL students study a fourth from any group.

For each area you need ethnographic material from at least one real study, with the details that make it real: the anthropologist, the place, the time and the methods.

Ask five questions of every ethnography:

Yan's material is useful because it can test a theory. The French scholar Marcel Mauss argued in The Gift (1925) that a gift creates three duties: to give, to receive and to reciprocate 回报 (give back). The giver gains prestige 声望, and the receiver is in debt 债务. Yan found that in Xiajia, gifts to people of higher rank often went one way: the receiver did not give back and did not lose status. Here gifts followed hierarchy 等级 instead of creating it.

Exchange 交换 is part of the area production, exchange and consumption. Compare two ethnographies:

Same: in both places, giving creates relationships that last. Different: what counts as a proper return, and who is expected to give to whom.

A third area, health, illness and healing: Nancy Scheper-Hughes, in Death Without Weeping (1992), studied mothers in a very poor town in north-east Brazil, where many babies died. She found that some mothers did not grieve 哀悼 openly for babies who died young. She linked this to poverty and hunger, not to a lack of love: a way of surviving in a place where many children did not live.

Section A asks you to connect a key concept, an area of inquiry and a real-world issue. The IB's sample: With reference to ethnographic material from one area of inquiry you have studied, discuss how either symbolism or materiality or society helps you to understand one of the following issues that is grounded in a contemporary, real-world example: inequality, violence, poverty, mobility, environment.

Section B asks about the other areas of inquiry (SL one question, HL two), for example: Discuss how the body is constructed through either symbolism or social relations.

Worked plan (Section A). Concept: materiality. Area: production, exchange and consumption. Issue: inequality.

• Real-world example: the rising cost of wedding gifts in rural China, which many families report as a burden.
• Ethnography: Yan's gift lists show that gifts are material evidence of relationships, and that poorer families must still give to keep their place in the network.
• Comparison: the kula shows exchange creating equal partnerships; Xiajia shows exchange that can follow and widen inequality.
• Evaluation: Yan was partly an insider, which gave him trust and access, but may have made some habits seem normal to him.

• The nine areas in three groups; SL three, HL four.
• Five questions for any ethnography: who, where and when, how, what, which concepts.
• The kula ring (Malinowski, 1922); Mauss's three duties; Yan's Xiajia gifts flowing upwards.
• Scheper-Hughes on health and poverty in Brazil.
• Paper 2: HL 2 hours 30 minutes, 45%; SL 1 hour 30 minutes, 40%; Sections A and B; the worked plan.