Kinship and Family Ethnography Project The Project has two parts: There is a kinship chart in which you will diagram your family and known ancestors. This is like a family tree but different in that you will be using the symbols and techniques employed by anthropologists. To assist you in your diagramming you will need to refer to Chapter 21 in Haviland, Kinship and Descent. Take a look at those charts and then proceed with your kinship chart. Part two is a family ethnography or culturally rich story of your family. This a paper 3-5 pages in length. Your paper should be single-spaced and double-spaced between paragraphs. In your paper you will be telling the story of your known ancestors. If you are an orphan or were dropped on someone's doorstep in a basket, then your knowledge of your biological relatives is limited. However, family is as much sociological as it is a biological phenomenon. You probably have a circle of emotional intimates who function as family. Your paper has two parts: There is a methods section and your actual ethnography. In the methods section you tell about how you collected your kinship and ethnographic data. You will need to interview members of your family, at least key informants, in order to get the information you will need to augment what you already know about your family. The interviewing is a major component of the project, and you will need to report whom you interviewed and in what setting/conditions you did your interviewing. Biologists can study lab rats in a controlled setting. However, we can't place our family in a lab. Consequently, it is important to try to replicate conditions, where possible, to conduct your interviews in similar controlled settings, such as each informant was interviewed by him/herself in the family dining room, kitchen or den. Because your family members are not lab rats you will occasionally have to collect information under whatever are the existing conditions by telephone, by email, in the middle of a family gathering or maybe at a sporting event. Anthropologists are used to working under difficult conditions, and we are prepared to collect information wherever we can. In your methods section you will also report on what constraints, limitations or problems you encountered in collecting the data. Your detailing of methods, including constraints, gives the reader tools for assessing the quality of the data. These tools include knowledge of the sample size and the representativeness of the sample. Did you interview only males while watching the Super Bowl, or individuals over 110 and under 5 years of age? If so, your sample may be skewed, meaning less than representative of the total population under study (your family). Typically, time is a constraint in any scientific project: If I only had one more week, day, hour to finish the project. Money and distance may also pose constraints. All of your relatives live in New Zealand, and it costs a fortune to interview them by p ...

1. Kinship and Family Ethnography Project
The Project has two parts: There is a kinship chart in which you
will diagram your family and known ancestors. This is like a
family tree but different in that you will be using the symbols
and techniques employed by anthropologists. To assist you in
your diagramming you will need to refer to Chapter 21 in
Haviland, Kinship and Descent. Take a look at those charts and
then proceed with your kinship chart.
Part two is a family ethnography or culturally rich story of your
family. This a paper 3-5 pages in length. Your paper should be
single-spaced and double-spaced between paragraphs. In your
paper you will be telling the story of your known ancestors. If
you are an orphan or were dropped on someone's doorstep in a
basket, then your knowledge of your biological relatives is
limited. However, family is as much sociological as it is a
biological phenomenon. You probably have a circle of
emotional intimates who function as family.
Your paper has two parts: There is a methods section and your
actual ethnography. In the methods section you tell about how
you collected your kinship and ethnographic data. You will need
to interview members of your family, at least key informants, in
order to get the information you will need to augment what you
already know about your family. The interviewing is a major
component of the project, and you will need to report whom you
interviewed and in what setting/conditions you did your
interviewing. Biologists can study lab rats in a controlled
setting. However, we can't place our family in a lab.
Consequently, it is important to try to replicate conditions,
where possible, to conduct your interviews in similar controlled
settings, such as each informant was interviewed by him/herself
in the family dining room, kitchen or den. Because your family
members are not lab rats you will occasionally have to collect
information under whatever are the existing conditions by

2. telephone, by email, in the middle of a family gathering or
maybe at a sporting event. Anthropologists are used to working
under difficult conditions, and we are prepared to collect
information wherever we can. In your methods section you will
also report on what constraints, limitations or problems you
encountered in collecting the data. Your detailing of methods,
including constraints, gives the reader tools for assessing the
quality of the data. These tools include knowledge of the
sample size and the representativeness of the sample. Did you
interview only males while watching the Super Bowl, or
individuals over 110 and under 5 years of age? If so, your
sample may be skewed, meaning less than representative of the
total population under study (your family).
Typically, time is a constraint in any scientific project: If I only
had one more week, day, hour to finish the project. Money and
distance may also pose constraints. All of your relatives live in
New Zealand, and it costs a fortune to interview them by phone,
or you had to drive all the way to Texas because your relatives
have no phone. On the way you had four flat tires and the
engine blew a rod and you had to spend two nights at the Shady
Rest Motel somewhere in Oklahoma.
As examples of field constraints to anthropological research, my
last big data gathering project was a three year socio-economic
baseline study of the 400 mile length of the Jubba River Valley
in Somalia for the World Bank. The Somali Government (back
when there was a recognizable government) wanted to build a
large dam on the Jubba River which would provide irrigation
and hydro-power. However, there were no demographic data on
the people living in the area (not even a rudimentary census)
including riverine agriculturalists, dryland agro-pastoralists,
seasonal pastoral nomads and villagers (the four sub-sets of my
stratified sample). Population clusters were randomly (no, not
haphazardly) selected amounting to 1000 households (about
8000 individuals) at 44 sites. There was an equal distribution

3. of sites on each side of the river. Occasionally, the distance
between bridges spanning the Jubba was more than 100 miles.
In order to sample populations on the “far” side of the river, it
was occasionally necessary to cross the river on foot, along with
15 Somali research assistants, carrying all of our research
materials with us. The Jubba is reputed to be one of the most
crocodile infested rivers in all of Africa (Yes, there were
plenty). Additionally, the river is infested with a parasite that
causes shistosomiasis or bilharzias. The parasite penetrates the
skin and then works its way through the blood stream,
eventually riddling every organ in the body (not good). It’s a
two host parasite; one host is a type of snail in the river and the
other host vector are humans who unfortunately return the
parasite to the river by urinating in or near the water. However,
the parasite only leaves the snail host and is active in the water
only between 10 AM and 2 PM. How does the parasite tell
time? It responds to the degree of sunlight overhead. So, in
theory, one can avoid the parasite by crossing the river any time
but those specific four hours in a day. These are just a couple
examples of the kinds of constraints anthropologists encounter
when collecting data. I don’t expect to hear that your
constraints are worse.
In the ethnography section you tell your family's story in such a
way that your key characters come to life. You put flesh and
blood and emotion into them. Why did grandpa come to
America?...because he was fleeing the law (or religious
persecution, conscription into the Czar’s army) after killing his
arch rival who also sought the hand of the woman who would
become your grandmother. In my own family, my Great Aunt
Ann lived to be 107. It was twenty years after her death before I
came to know that she had been married twice (the family
prides itself in the fact that no one had a divorce until the
present generation). Her first husband Ike was a mule skinner
(drove a wagon pulled by mules). Ann and Ike had a chuck
wagon and they followed the wheat harvest (remember your

4. instructor is a Nebraskan) from Texas to Canada, feeding the
wheat harvesters in the fields along the way. In the midst of this
great American idyll, Ike had two bad habits; he liked to drink
and gamble. On one fateful night in Kansas, Ike was drinking
and gambling and about midnight he lost the team of mules.
Well, what good is a chuck wagon without a team of mules? So,
he continued gambling, and about 4am he lost the chuck wagon
followed by losing his wife and children at daybreak. The
winner gave Ann and kids their freedom, and she eventually
found her way back home to Nebraska. Later she received word
that Ike had been incarcerated in the state penitentiary which
made it much easier for Ann to receive a divorce. Her second
husband, Jess, owned a carnival and Ann sold tickets for the
merry-go-round. This is a rich portrait of one of my ancestors
whose real life experience flies in the face of the staid ideal that
my family would like to project, but I feel the richer for having
discovered these aspects of her amazing life on the frontier.
As a result of conducting your research, I want you to include in
the ethnography what you think are your family's primary
values (hard work, religious faith, honesty, persistence,
partying big time). Having made many observations in the
course of your interviews, you will arrive at some
generalizations. Generalizations are the basis of all science:
observations lead to generalizable conclusions. Also include
anything new you discovered about your family that you never
knew before. You need not reveal dark family secrets.
Your kinship chart will be drawn on paper of whatever size you
will need. Some kinship charts can be drawn on a single sheet
of paper. Some students draw their projects on a large piece of
poster board or in some cases a sheet of butcher paper that may
be 15 feet long. Other students are able to generate their charts
using computer graphics. This method is encouraged, if you
have the skills, in an effort to cut down on clutter when you
bring your charts to my office. Try to get as much generational

5. depth in your project as possible. Three generations is
acceptable, but one student once did 14 generations.
The starting point on the chart is you. You are the EGO and
should be marked as such. There are a number of simple
symbols that you will need to use. Triangles are males. Circles
are females. Equal sign ( = ) between a man and woman means
marriage. A slash ( / ) through an equal sign means divorce. A
slash through a triangle or circle means death of that individual.
From you the EGO work upward to your parents. Connect your
other siblings. Then work upward to your grandparents, etc. If
you are confused, please consult chapter 21 of Haviland. If you
have additional questions, feel free to contact me in person or
by phone or email.