MOVIE REFLECTION “AVATAR”

There are three types of data collection methods in Field Studies. Intensive Interviewing, Group Interviewing and Observations.

1)   In Intensive Interviewing, the person giving the information is called an “informant”. Nam the “informant” in the movie and explain how he/she shares information with the researcher.

In the movie the Infomant is Neytiri because she is the one who teach Jake about the culture, language and people of Omaticaya. She helps Jake (researcher) to become one of the people of this tribe, closer the distance between normal human and tribe Omaticaya.

In Field Studies, there’re four types of researchers. Overt Participant Observer, Over Non- Participant Observer, Covert Participant Observer and Covert Non- Participant Observer

2)   The researchers in the movie are overt observers. Name the character that is a participant observer and the one that is a non- participant observer. Describe how both of them collect information.

In the movie, Dr. Grace Augustine is a non- participant observer and Jake Sully is a participant Observer.

For Dr. Grace, although she had her own avatar and she did a lot of research about Pandora and tribe Omaticaya but she didn’t really involve the activities in Pandora. She collected information by watching Jake and others people in the tribe did and noted it down.

For Jake, he really stepped inside tribe Omaticaya’s shoe. He learnt a lot of thing: how to create Tsaheylu to ride direhourse, how to use bow to hunt and how to be a part of the tribe. He learnt the culture and language of Omaticaya. And he did the video log to record all his information.

Field Study is a combination of emic and etic research.

3)   In the movie, describe the kind of information gathered that can be constituted as emic/etic data

Etic data is the data collected through existing theory. The information that Colonel Miles Quaritch gets is from Jake, Dr.Grace, Norm,… He watched the subjects of his study and he only had a surface understanding about Pandora and Omaticaya. In an easy way to understand etic data is the data you collect when you’re outside and looking in. What you can see and understand from your perspective is etic data.

Emic data, in the other side, is the data collected by real events that occurred and self- experience. The information that Jake’s collected is emic data. He really stepped in the Omaticaya society and tried to become one of them. The things that he learnt were from Neytiri- a girl from that tribe. The video he recorded was based on this real experience from Pandora. Therefor he had deeper understanding about the culture, language and the people of Omaticaya.