What is ethnography & orientalism?

Question

does orientalism help us understand Australian society more?how?

Answer 1

Orientalism is the study of Eastern and Middle Eastern cultures. Do not use that term if you can help it. It has negative connotations attached  these days. Most Middle Eastern people have charged Orientalist with racism. Mostly the charges are due, by admission of the Middle Eastern peoples, as a lack of understanding between cultures, due to the fact that humans have a nasty tendency to COMPARE cultures to their own, instead of studying cultures in-and-of themselves. If you want good information on Orientalism, read the book simply titled, "Orientalism" by Edward Said. He is a gentleman of Middle Eastern origin that is against Orientalism, and has a lot to say about it. Then there is a book titled, "Dangerous Knowledge, Orientalism and Its Discontents", by Robert Irwin, which is actually an answer to the accusations put forth by Edward Said. Happy Reading.

Answer 2

ethnogrophy is an indepth study of one culture...this culture can be anything; police departmen, elementary school, drug dealers, prostitutes, strip club, carnies, athletes,....anything that one can spend an extended length of time studying where a trusting relationship can be formed....

i don't know what orientalism is.

Answer 3

Ethnography (ἔθνος ethnos = people and γράφειν graphein = writing) is the genre of writing that presents varying degrees of qualitative and quantitative descriptions of human social phenomena, based on fieldwork. Ethnography presents the results of a holistic research method founded on the idea that a system's properties cannot necessarily be accurately understood independently of each other. The genre has both formal and historical connections to travel writing and colonial office reports. Several academic traditions, in particular the constructivist and relativist paradigms, claim ethnographic research as a valid research method.

Orientalism is the study of Near and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, and peoples by Western scholars. It can also refer to the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists.

In the former meaning, the term Orientalism has come to acquire negative connotations in some quarters and is interpreted to refer to the study of the East by Westerners shaped by the attitudes of the era of European imperialism in the 18th and 19th centuries. When used in this sense, it implies old-fashioned and prejudiced outsider interpretations of Eastern cultures and peoples. This viewpoint was most famously articulated and propagated by Edward Said in his controversial 1978 book Orientalism, which was critical of this scholarly tradition and also of a few modern scholars, including Princeton University professor Bernard Lewis.

Regarding to Orientalism in Australia, the historical presence of Chinese in Australia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century has been documented, more narratives are beginning to emerge about the struggles of Chinese migrants and their descendants to establish their lives in Australia during the years of the white Australia policy, a task made more difficult by institutionalised racism and social exclusion.

Nonetheless, it is necessary to highlight the multifarious ways in which 'difference' became inscribed in the lives of individual Chinese-Australians during childhood in and through social encounters that occurred at the interface of mundane, everyday life and the wider (white) Australian community in which Chinese-Australians and their families lived.

Other factors that influence this idea include the concept of "Replacement". This explains how the fertility rate in Australia has dropped over the last generation below replacement levels, meaning that without immigration, Australia's population would both age and decline, raising the question of long-term social and cultural sustainability.

In 2006, Treasurer Peter Costello warned Australians to increase their birth rate to replacement levels or run the risk of Australia's population composition being fundamentally transformed by immigration. Raising the spectre of social fragmentation and violence under a low birth rate, high immigration scenario, Costello cautioned that immigrants might not be absorbed successfully if the Australian-born population dwindled. He stated: "Increasing immigration to cover natural population decline will change the composition of our population and raise concerns about social dislocation

Answer 4

Ethnography studies ethnicity's around the globe.

Orientalism studies oriental Cultures.