What types of questions would an anthropologist ask when conducting research on a community of people?

3 ANSWERS

1. 
   

   You learn by participant-observation, not asking questions.  Participate in your community, (which you have already done, having lived there) and observe how people in your community react to certain situations.  Observe how they treat each other. Identify their norms and codes of behavior.  Identify taboos and rituals.  All this is through your own observation, and therefore qualifies as research.  The problem with asking questions to those in the community is that often times, knowingly or not, people lie about their activities.  Participant-observation is the way to go.

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2. 
   

   I'm not an anthropologist, just someone interested in cultures. Here is an idea... why not focus on one sector of the community, instead of the Community as a whole? Examples of sectors within the community... Deaf community, g*y community, elderly people (how they find living in modern times and dealing with younger people.)
   
   Just three ideas for you. Perhaps it may be easier for you to just look at elderly people in the Community? (Deaf community... sign language issues here, can you sign?, g*y community... some people are not out yet...)
   
   Anyway, good luck.

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3. 
   

   If the purpose of this assignment is to train you to think as an anthropologist, as I suspect, I would have to disagree with the participant observation suggestion.  Participant observation has its place, but it is not a great way to develop or maintain objectivity--already a hard task in social science.
   
   Anthropology typically places a lot of emphasis on values like religion, family life, mating patterns, economy, diet, clothing etc. and their related rituals,  including the influence of geography and climate on those values.  Since anthropology, like other social sciences, seeks valid generalizations, I would aim questions at people that might help form generalizations, i.e. frequency of church attendance, age at first marriage, average number of children, divorce rate, blue collar/white collar industry, relative modesty of dress, etc.

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