As I sat here to count how many tags there are in the Tag Cloud, I noticed there are 204 tags in alphabetical order. The most popular posts would be the ones that have larger print or are a brighter blue, at least I hope that’s how it works. I chose to use the tags; teacher, participant observation, culture, social construct, education and emic/etic. These are to me six things I’ve learned, most about in the reading I’ve done, have a lot to do with anthropology.
In the last two classes we’ve learned about perception and how when researchers are collecting data it’s important to participant in some of the social constructs which that researcher may find to be weird (alien). This helps the researcher learn why it’s a social construct and why it’s important to the culture or society associated with. We also learned the difference between emic and etic, emic deals with the ’insider’s’ point of view, while etic is the ’outsider’ point of view. When researchers participant in social constructs it gives him or her a more emic look at rituals, customs, or just everyday life then if they were to sit back and continue to just observe from a distance.
Every society or culture have teachers, whether they’re referred to as teachers or not. Think about it, you’re raised by your parents, to you they’re just mom and dad but really they’re teaching you the basics of life. How to walk, talk, know what might hurt, how to use the potty, all things they teach you. Without teachers in life social constructs wouldn’t exist. It has to start somewhere for it to become a norm, and enough people have to agree with it for it to be followed.
Education ties in with the teacher thought, previously mentioned. It also usually determines how you look at the world. I learned that with education everyone should have an open mind, consider how others view the world and instead of just saying, “Well this is what I was taught so it must be right,” try thinking to yourself that every question may have more than one correct answer!
