Semester | Spring Semester, 2021 | ||
Department | MA Program of Ethnology, First Year | ||
Course Name | The Research Methods of Ethnology | ||
Instructor | WORK COURTNEY KATHERINE | ||
Credit | 3.0 | ||
Course Type | Required | ||
Prerequisite |
Course Objective |
Course Description |
Course Schedule |
Course Schedule
Week 1- 2/25: Course Introduction Course overview Ethnographic methods and ethnographic writing Deep description Participant Observation Reflexivity Fieldwork Assignment: Deep Description - memory
Week 2- 3/3: General Thoughts on Ethnography Read: Ingold, T. 2017. Anthropology contra ethnography. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 7 (1):21–26. Abu-Lughod; L. (1991). Writing Against Culture. In R. G.Fox (Ed.); Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present (pp. 466–479). Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.
Additional readings Nader, Laura, 2011. “Ethnography as Theory,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 1(1): 211-219. McGranahan, C. (2018). Ethnography Beyond Method: The Importance of an Ethnographic Sensibility. Sites: A Journal of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies, 15(1), 1–10. Foucault, Michel. 1994[1966]. The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. New York: Vintage. Pp. 3-17, 21-39. Geertz, Clifford. 1973. “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,” The Interpretation of Cultures, New York: Basic Books, pp. 310-333. Clifford, James. 1983. “On Ethnographic Authority,” Representations 2: 118-146. Jackson, John L., Jr. 2012. “Ethnography Is, Ethnography Ain’t,” Cultural Anthropology 27(3): 480-497. Fieldwork Assignment: Participant Observation
Week 3- 3/10: Preliminary Project Proposal Presentations Read: DQR, Introduction
Informal in-class presentation
Discuss
Fieldwork Assignment: Interview- notes only
Week 4- 3/17: Discussion/ Presentation on Fieldnotes Assignment Read: DQR Chapter 4: The What of the Study Narayan, Kirin. 2012. Alive in the Writing: Crafting Ethnography in the Company of Chekhov. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Chapter 1 and 2, plus exercises- bring writing to class)
Informal in-class presentations
Discussion
Fieldwork Assignment: Deep Description- real-time
Week 5- 3/24: Making Subjects, Intersubjects, and Fieldwork Relationships Read: DQR, Chapter 2: Qualitative Research Genres Bourdieu, Pierre. 2002. The Bachelors’ Ball: The Crisis of Peasant Society in Bearn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Read Part 1
Additional Readings: Greenberg, Ofra. 1993. When They Read What the Papers Say We Wrote. In, When They Read What We Write: The Politics of Ethnography. Caroline B. Brettell, ed. Westport: Bergin & Garvey. Rabinow, Paul. 1977. Reflections on Fieldwork in Morrocco. Berkeley: University of California Press (Chapter 3: Ali, an outsider’s insider).
Fieldwork Assignment: Participant Observation – Event with Video
Week 6- 3/31: Sites: Choosing and Navigating (5-page Proposal Outline Due) Read: Gupta, Akhil and James Ferguson. 1997. Discipline and Practice: The field as site, method and location in anthropology. In Anthropological locations Berkeley: University of California Press. 1-46. Borneman, John and Abdellah Hammoudi, eds. 2009. Being There: The Fieldwork Encounter and the Making of Truth. Blackwell Publishing (introduction and chapter 5). Marcus, George E. 1995. “Ethnography In/Of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-sited Ethnography,” Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 95-117.
Class discussion: What have your fieldwork exercises taught you about the dynamic space of field sites? Fieldwork Assignment: Mapping- spatial representation
Week 7- 4/7: Proposal Presentations (Ethics On-line course completion certificate) Read DQR, Chapter 6: Basic Data Collection Methods
Discuss In-class Proposal Presentations
Fieldwork Assignment: Kinship/Relationship charts
Week 8- 4/14: Fieldwork Ethics Read DQR, Chapter 3: Trustworthiness and Ethics Lambek, Michael, Veena Das, Didier Fassin, and Webb Keane. 2017. Four Lectures on Ethics: Anthropological Perspectives. Hau Books. https://haubooks.org/four-lectures-on-ethics/ Das: What Does Ordinary Ethics Look Like? Sluka, Jeffrey A. 1996. Reflections on Managing Danger in Fieldwork: Dangerous Anthropology in Belfast. In, Fieldwork under fire. Carolyn Nordstrom and Antonius C.G.M. Robben, ed. University of California Press.
Fieldwork Assignment: Interview – audio recording only
Week 9- 4/21: Mid-term Proposal Presentations
Week 10 and 11: Theories Week 10- 4/28 Read DQR, [review] Chapter 4: The What of the Study: Building the Conceptual Framework Bourdieu, Pierre. 2002. The Bachelors’ Ball: The Crisis of Peasant Society in Bearn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Part III
Fieldwork Assignment: Deep Description - photograph
Week 11- 5/5 Read Fortun, Kim. 2012. “Ethnography in Late Industrialism,” Cultural Anthropology 27(3): 446-464. Haraway, D. 1988. Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies 14 (3):575–599. Narayan, Kirin. 2012. Alive in the Writing: Crafting Ethnography in the Company of Chekhov. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Chapter 5, plus exercises- bring writing to class)
Additional Readings: Taussig, Michael. 2012. “Excelente Zona Social,” Cultural Anthropology 27(3): 498-517. Butler; J. 1988. Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory. Theatre Journal 40 (4):519.
Class Discussion: What are you learning from your fieldwork? Do your observations of daily life give you any insights into your research question?
Fieldwork Assignment: Recap assessment – Questions answered/New questions
Week 12 and 13: Writing Preparation Draft Proposal for Peer Review (Due week 13)
Week 12- 5/12 Read DQR, Chapter 5: The How of the Study: Building the Research Design Hastrup, K. 2004. Getting it right: Knowledge and evidence in anthropology. Anthropological Theory 4/4 455-472.
Fieldwork Assignment: Interview- audio recording and notes
Week 13- 5/19 Read Narayan, Kirin. 2012. Alive in the Writing: Crafting Ethnography in the Company of Chekhov. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Chapter 4, plus exercises – bring writing to class)
Additional readings Fabian, J. 1983. Time and writing about the other, in Time and the Other. Comaroff and Comaroff. 1992. Ethnography and the historical imagination. In, Studies in the ethnographic imagination. Westview press.
Fieldwork Assignment: Group Discussion (get a partner)
Week 14- 5/26 Funding and Proposal Writing Draft Proposal for Peer Review: On the first day of class next week bring a draft of your proposal. You will share this with one of your colleagues who will return it with comments next week.
Prepare: Come to class with at least three possible funding sources for your research
In-class Discussion Finding and winning funds for research
Peer Review Discussion Research is never wholly produced by one person How to offer constructive critique on your colleague’s proposal Using the ECAA method of critique- evaluate its qualities Open the piece to comments from the group
Fieldwork Assignment: Participant Observation- social setting, head notes and notepad
Week 15- 6/2: Peer Review Exchange papers with Peer Review partner Review comments and discuss together Re-Present individual proposals
Fieldwork Assignment: Textual analysis
Week 16- 6/9: Collecting and Organizing Data Read DQR, Chapter 7: Specialized and Focused Data Collection Methods Chapter 8: Managing, Analyzing, and Interpreting Data
Prepare Collect all your documents from observation activities for this class Bring digitized versions to class
Exercise Work independently to code and organize your data Work in groups to share experiences with data collection and management Use examples from this course or any other Present the findings of group-work to the seminar
Fieldwork Assignment: Researcher choice
Week 17-18-6/16-6/23: Proposal Presentations Formal Proposal Presentations
Further Reading in Ethnographic Methods Becker, Howard S. 1998. Tricks of the Trade: How to Think about Your Research While You’re Doing It. University of Chicago Press. Behar, Ruth. 2015. “Read More, Write Less.” Savage Minds, February 2, 2015. Bernard, H. Russell ed. 1998. Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology. Altamira Press. Borneman, John and Abdellah Hammoudi, eds. 2009. Being There: The Fieldwork Encounter and the Making of Truth. Blackwell Publishing. Briggs, Charles L. 1986. How to Ask: A Sociolinguistic Appraisal of the Role of the Interview in Social Science Research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cerwonka, A and Liisa Malkki. 2007. Improvising Theory: Process and Temporality in Ethnographic Fieldwork. University of Chicago Press. Collins, Samuel Gerald and Matthew Slover Durington. 2015. Networked Anthropology: A Primer for Ethnographers. Oxon and New York: Routledge. Comaroff and Comaroff 1992 Ethnography and the historical imagination. Studies in the ethnographic imagination. Westview press. Emerson, Robert M., Rachel I. Fretz and Linda L. Shaw. 1995. Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Fabian, J. 1983. Time and writing about the other, in Time and the Other: How anthropology makes its objects. New York: Columbia University Press. Fabian, Johannes. 2014. “Ethnography and intersubjectivity: Loose ends,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4(1): 199-209. Fortun, Kim. 2012. “Ethnography in Late Industrialism,” Cultural Anthropology 27(3): 446-464. Gupta, Akhil and James Ferguson. 1997. Discipline and Practice: The field as site, method and location in anthropology. In Anthropological locations Berkeley: University of California Press. 1-46. Hastrup, K. 2004. Getting it right: Knowledge and evidence in anthropology. Anthropological Theory 4/4 455-472. Ingold; T. 2017. Anthropology contra ethnography. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 7 (1):21–26. Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1967. A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term. New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World. Marcus, George E. 1995. “Ethnography In/Of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-sited Ethnography,” Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 95-117. McLean, Athena and Annette Leibing. 2007. The Shadow Side of Fieldwork: Exploring the Blurred Borders between Ethnography and Life. Blackwell Publishing. Narayan, Kirin. 2012. Alive in the Writing: Crafting Ethnography in the Company of Chekhov. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Nordstrom, Carolyn and Antonius C.G.M. Robben, 1996, Fieldwork under fire. University of California Press Pels, Peter. 2014. “After Objectivity: An historical approach to the intersubjective in ethnography,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4(1): 211-236. Powdermaker, Hortense. 1966. Stranger and Friend: The Way of an Anthropologist. New York: Norton. Rabinow, Paul. 1977. Reflections on Fieldwork in Morrocco. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rosaldo, Renato. 2013. The Day of Shelly’s Death: The Poetry and Ethnography of Grief. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Robben, Antonius C. G. M., and Jeffrey A. Sluka. 2012. Ethnographic Fieldwork: An Anthropological Reader. West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Taussig, Michael. 2011. I Swear I Saw That: Drawings in Fieldwork Notebooks, Namely My Own. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Taussig, Michael. 2012. “Excelente Zona Social,” Cultural Anthropology 27(3): 498-517. Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. 1991 “Anthropology and the Savage Slot: The Poetics and Politics of Otherness,” in Richard G. Fox, Recapturing Anthropology, Santa Fe: SAR Press, pp. 17-44. Van Maanen, John. 1988. Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. White, Bob W. and Kiven Strohm. 2014. “Ethnographic knowability and the aporias of intersubjectivity,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4(1): 189-197.
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Teaching Methods |
Teaching Assistant |
Requirement/Grading |
Course Requirements Annotated Bibliography 10% 5-Page Proposal: Pilot Field Study (week 5) 20% statement of the problem, background to the problem, methods to be employed, field site rationale, significance of the problem Human Subjects Protocol (week 6) 10% Following university guidelines Fieldwork Exercises (each week) 20% Conduct fieldwork one day per week and turn in typed fieldnotes for each week. Include interview transcription, photographs, video, drawings, and/or voice recordings Class Participation (each class) 20% Close readings of texts; active participation in class discussions and activities 10-Page Research Proposal (final) 20% on the pilot research proposal (includes bibliography) |
Textbook & Reference |
Bourdieu, Pierre. 2002. The Bachelors’ Ball: The Crisis of Peasant Society in Bearn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Marshall, Catherine and Gretchen B. Rossman. 2016. Designing Qualitative Research. Singapore: Sage Publications. (DQR) Narayan, Kirin. 2012. Alive in the Writing: Crafting Ethnography in the Company of Chekhov. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [all course material will be available by PDF, but students are encouraged to own these excellent texts] |
Urls about Course |
Attachment |