Suchergebnisse

Indigenous social anthropologists investigating communities in their own country are not insulated from many of the difficulties their foreign counterparts face. This article is based on the experience of the author while carrying out, as a doctoral student, a year-long participant observation among the Orring, a little-known minority ethnic group in Nigeria's south-eastern districts. The researcher's ethnic group is not the same as that of his host community but both are Nigerian. Initially interactions with the culture-bearers went on without any trouble but the more the researcher became integrated in the host community, human-relations problems that are hard to ignore arose. But the author concludes that experiences such as the ones the article describes, inconvenient such as they certainly can be, may be the indication that an ethnographer has been integrated in their host community without which no claim of participant observation may be made. Low literacy rate and peculiarities of social structure of non-Western host communities both make the use of participant observation compelling in many cases despite current innovations in qualitative research.

Participant observation is a minimal method that, as its name suggests, involves participating and observing places, practices and people. It proceeds along two trajectories. The first trajectory is searching for a setting where the social or cultural thing that the researcher wishes to study is happening and becoming intimate with the group that populates that setting. The second trajectory, which moves in parallel with the first, is that the researcher themselves changes how they understand the setting and its inhabitants. By undertaking participant observation the researcher aims to gain the authority of 'insider' knowledge. They will then able to report on what matters for that culture, how things are organised and why locals do things in the distinctive ways that they do. Geographers have used it to study communities, public spaces, institutions, embodied practices, game playing, illness, political action, online communication, everyday life and other spatial phenomena.

Abstract
All different sciences are defined in a specific way. It is not enough to define anthropology as a science that has studied human beings at all times and all places. It is the methodology of anthropology that is unique and increasingly appreciated by other fields. With the spread of COVID-19, as displacement became a problem, for the researcher and for those s/he had to be with, this methodology was temporarily put into question: social media or simply telephone contacts to gather data was used. The collection of articles in this issue reconfirms that it is through participant observation that the researcher can diligently and exhaustively study a topic or shine new light upon well-studied topics. Our topics are varied this time, some papers are from different fields, our methodology remains the same.

Qualitative research in such diverse areas as anthropology, sociology, education, nursing, and medical research draws on the insights gained through the use of participant observation for gaining greater understanding of phenomena from the point of view of participants. This book serves as a basic primer for the beginning researcher and as a useful reference and guide for experienced researchers who wish to re-examine their own skills and abilities in light of best practices of participant observation