Introduction to Anthropological Fieldwork and Ethnography

Description

The focus of this course is on the ethnographic method as a means for learning about, and learning how to talk about that elusive process we call culture. The purpose is to gain experience in ethnographic practices--interviewing, fieldwork, qualitative analysis--and to learn how to write critically informed accounts.. This course concentrates on issues involved with an anthropology of science and technology.

Requirements of the class include weekly reading assignments and class discussion (10%). Each person will be responsible for a small presentation on reading (10%).

Each person will also conduct an ethnographic interview (20%) and conduct fieldwork including fieldnotes (10%), a preliminary report (20%), and a final report (30%).

Books for the Class

• Faye Harrison, ed., Decolonizing Anthropology.
• Emily Martin, Flexible Bodies.
• Margaret Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa.
• Rojer Sanjek, ed., Fieldnotes: The Making of Anthopology.
• Sharon Traweek, Beamtimes and Lifetimes.

Week 1: Introducing the Anthropological Concept of Culture

• Clifford Geertz, (1973) "Thick Description" from Interpretations of Culture.
• Horace Miner, (1956) "Body Ritual among the Nacerima," American Anthropologist 58/3: 503-7.
• Traweek, Beamtimes and Lifetimes. Ch. 0-2.
• Watch Barbara Meyerhoff, Number Our Days.

Assignment for next two weeks is to conduct an hour-long interview with someone about their work, how they do it, the 'culture' of it.

Week 2: The Interview

• James Spradley, (1979) The Ethnographic Interview. (Selections)
• Jane Ribbens, (1989) "Interviewing--An Unnatural Situation?" Women's Studies International Forum 12/6:579-92.
• Traweek, Ch. 3-4.

Week 3: Power Relations in the Field

• Margaret Mead, (1949) Coming of Age in Samoa. New York: Mentor Books.
• Derek Freeman (1983) Margaret Mead and Samoa: the Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. (Selections).
• Traweek, Ch. 5-6.

Assignment for the next two weeks is to choose a fieldsite and begin fieldwork.

Week 4: Anthropology, Race and Colonialism

• Faye Harrison, (1991) Decolonizing Anthropology: Moving Further Towards an Anthropology of Liberation.

Week 5: Fieldnotes

• Roger Sanjek, ed. (1990) Fieldnotes: the Makings of Anthropology. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press.
• Martin, Flexible Bodies. Ch. 0-1.

Week 6: Studying Up and Out

• Laura Nadar, (1975) Studying Up (Selections).
• Arjun Appadurai (1991) "Global Ethnoscapes: Notes and Queries for a Transnational Anthropology" in Fox, ed. Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present.
• Igor Kopytoff (1986) "The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process" in Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective.
• Martin, Ch. 2-5.

Write up Fieldwork problems and worries.

Week 7: Studying Ourselves

• E.E. Evans-Pritchard, (1977) "Notion of Witchcraft Explains Unfortunate Events" from Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky, (1982) Risk and Culture Berkeley: University of California Press. (Ch. 2, 7. 8)
• David Schneider, (1980) American Kinship: A Cultural Account. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (Ch. 1, 6).
• Martin, Ch. 6-7.

Week 8: Ethics and Anonymity

• American Anthropological Association, "Statement of Ethics"
• Judith Stacey, "Can There Be a Feminist Ethnography?" 1988, Women's Studies International Forum, 11/1: 21-27.
• Martin, Ch. 8-9.

Formally write up your fieldwork and then analyze it.

Week 9: Writing Culture

• Renato Rosaldo, Culture and Truth (Selections)
• James Clifford and George Marcus, Writing Culture (Selections)

Week 10: Present Fieldwork

• Short ten-minute presentations of some of your fieldwork insights.

Ethnographies emphasizing science, technology, medicine and studying up:

• Stephen R. Barley (1984). "The Professional, The Semi-Professional, and the Machine: The Social Ramifications of Computer Based Imaging in Radiology." Doctoral Dissertation. MIT.
• Andrea Cornwall and Nancy Lindisfarne eds. (1994) Dislocating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies. London: Routledge.
• Jeane Favret-Saada. (1980). Deadly Words: Witchcraft in the Bocage. Trans. Catherine Cullen [orig. 1977]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Faye Ginsburg. (1989). Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community . Berkeley: University of California Press .
• Hugh Gusterson. (1993). Testing Times: A Nuclear Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Arthur Kleinman. (1988). Rethinking Psychiatry: From Cultural Category to Personal Experience. New York: The Free Press.
• Emily Martin. (1987). The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction. Boston: Beacon Press.
• Aihwa Ong. (1987). Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline: Factory Women in Malaysia. New York: SUNY Press.
• Judith Stacey. (1990) Brave new families: stories of domestic upheaval in late twentieth century America. New York: Basic Books.
• Michael Taussig. (1987). Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Brackette Williams. (1991) Stains on my name, war in my veins: Guyana and the politics of cultural struggle. Durham: Duke University Press.