Photo Caption: 6th Form students have a chance to experience participant observation for themselves during the “BaLi ethnographic experience,” one of the workshops at the London Anthropology Day 2006 held at the British Museum.
The workshop was originally developed by Dr Luke Freeman (member of the RAI Committee on Anthropology in Secondary and Further Education) and Dr Jerome Lewis from the London School of Economics and Political Science as part of the DART project (Digital Anthropological Resources for Teaching) to give first year undergraduates insight into some of the dilemmas of anthropological fieldwork. The students are divided into two groups and taught how to behave as members of two caricatured cultures, the Ba and the Li. “Anthropologists” from each group are then sent to conduct “fieldwork” amongst the other group and figure out what is going on. In this picture one member of the Li tribe prostrates himself in front of the monarch in return for tokens of prestige, while others engage in competitive staring contests to win cards.
