BEN DOEPKE

Contributed Articles

The Ballast in Anthropology’s Ship: How a Universal Psychological Structure Can Provide Stability and Flexibility in Anthropological Field Work

BEN DOEPKE IX [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] [s2If !is_user_logged_in()] Join EPIC to access video: → Learn about Membership → Browse Video Library [/s2If] [s2If current_user_is(subscriber)] Join EPIC to access video: → Learn about Membership → Browse Video Library [/s2If] After a year of new social and cultural constraints, ethnographic approaches have had to quickly evolve. This is the story of how one research method, which enlists the help of close personal contacts around a participating respondent to gather interviews, artifacts, and locations, spotlighted the need for deploying a universal psychological structure (UPS). Even from emic perspectives, the influence of personal bias is uncontested, but how do we account for it? A UPS helps, but how can a structure allow lived experience to flow through it while not altering the experience itself? We can anticipate that parameters around our discipline will continue to shift, challenging some of its most revered principles. How...