SE307 Week 4. Ethnography: Writing the Past, Present and Future Dr Matt Hodges Saturday, 12 February 2011
Lecture Outline Today’s Aims and Objectives: 1) Examine the character and experience of ‘ethnography’ The core product and practice of social anthropology i. Partly via an overview of some of its key practitioners ii. Partly via an examination of what conducting ethnography involves 2) By the end of the lecture you should therefore have a grasp of what has been done in the name of ethnography by some key anthropologists And a sense of what it means to conduct ethnography … Saturday, 12 February 2011
Lecture Outline So how will we proceed? 1) Preamble: What is Ethnography? 2) Ethnography: the Product a) Ethnography: An Historical Perspective b) Some Key Thinkers and Practitioners 3) Ethnography: the Process a) The Method of Participant Observation b) Ethnographic Fieldwork: the Experience Saturday, 12 February 2011
1. Preamble: What is Ethnography ? Some definitions, to get us started … Saturday, 12 February 2011
1. Preamble: What is Ethnography ? Some definitions, to get us started … 1) Ethnography: from the Greek, ἔθνος (ethnos, “a people, a nation”) + γράφω (gráph ō , “write”) … i.e. originally ‘writing about a people’? Saturday, 12 February 2011
1. Preamble: What is Ethnography ? Some definitions, to get us started … 1) Ethnography: from the Greek, ἔθνος (ethnos, “a people, a nation”) + γράφω (gráph ō , “write”) … i.e. originally ‘writing about a people’? Saturday, 12 February 2011
1. Preamble: What is Ethnography ? Some definitions, to get us started … 1) Ethnography: from the Greek, ἔθνος (ethnos, “a people, a nation”) + γράφω (gráph ō , “write”) … i.e. originally ‘writing about a people’? 2) Two dimensions of ethnography: Saturday, 12 February 2011
1. Preamble: What is Ethnography ? 3) An ethnography is a ‘scientific’ description of a culture or society? (the consensus pre-1960s) An ethnography is an interpretive, ‘thick description’ of a culture or society? (the consensus, 1970s, 1980s?) An ethnography is an interpretive ‘thick description’ of how people live … usually but not always together or in an interlinked manner … somewhere, sometime … in the complex modern world system (post-1980s) Some more definitions, in relation to other uses of ethnography … 4) Ethnographies, as produced by professional anthropologists, constitute a distinctive genre of documentation and writing Carried out according to methods and practices and ethical guidelines that aim to establish agreed standards among Saturday, 12 February 2011
1. Preamble: What is Ethnography ? And a high degree of reliability and validity for data As opposed to other types of ethnography (‘para- ethnographies’, Marcus 2000) which do not employ these techniques and methods … e.g. market research? Other academic disciplines? Sociology? Cultural Studies? 5) So, we could propose that in constructing ethnographies, anthropologists do more than just ‘tidy up’ the fieldnotes they’ve made They interpret their information / data / fieldnotes, using theory … Ethnographies are the ‘building blocks’ and raw material for creating and testing anthropological theory … But they are also shaped by theory Saturday, 12 February 2011
1. Preamble: What is Ethnography ? 7) So as theory changes, the shape of ethnographies changes And as the subject matter ethnographies changes … i.e. the world … the shape of theory has changed As have the methods involved in ethnographic fieldwork … 8) One of the themes of today’s lecture … To obtain an initial grasp of how ethnography and theory have changed and developed during the history of anthropology With reference to the key theorists whose work has driven the changes … i.e. a snapshot of the history of ethnography as product and process …? 9) And to also get a sense of what ethnographic fieldwork Saturday, 12 February 2011
1. Preamble: What is Ethnography ? Which research methods feed into the creation of an ethnography? 1) In today’s anthropology, ethnography is usually based upon ‘participant observation’, a core method involving personal immersion in another culture But this is usually the foundation of a research strategy integrating several di fg erent methods 2) Participant observation involves living in, observing, and to an extent participating informally in one or more social lifeworlds Supported by taking methodical field notes (“ethnographic fieldwork”) 3) Additional inter-personal methods involve using informal, semi-structured, structured, and group interviews, and sometimes, focus groups Saturday, 12 February 2011
1. Preamble: What is Ethnography ? So what do anthropologists create ethnographies of? Or more precisely, bearing in mind our initial definitions … and the changing face of anthropology (and the world we study …) What have anthropologists created ethnographies of? What are anthropologists creating ethnographies of? Let’s take a snapshot of this historical progression … from Saturday, 12 February 2011
1. Preamble: What is Ethnography ? Or more precisely, bearing in mind our initial definitions … and the changing face of anthropology (and the world we study …) What have anthropologists created ethnographies of? What are anthropologists creating ethnographies of? Let’s take a snapshot of this historical progression … from Saturday, 12 February 2011
1. Preamble: What is Ethnography ? Or more precisely, bearing in mind our initial definitions … and the changing face of anthropology (and the world we study …) What have anthropologists created ethnographies of? What are anthropologists creating ethnographies of? Let’s take a snapshot of this historical progression … from Saturday, 12 February 2011
1. Preamble: What is Ethnography ? What have anthropologists created ethnographies of? What are anthropologists creating ethnographies of? Let’s take a snapshot of this historical progression … from Saturday, 12 February 2011
1. Preamble: What is Ethnography ? What have anthropologists created ethnographies of? What are anthropologists creating ethnographies of? Let’s take a snapshot of this historical progression … from Saturday, 12 February 2011
1. Preamble: What is Ethnography ? What are anthropologists creating ethnographies of? Let’s take a snapshot of this historical progression … from Saturday, 12 February 2011
1. Preamble: What is Ethnography ? Let’s take a snapshot of this historical progression … from Saturday, 12 February 2011
1. Preamble: What is Ethnography ? Let’s take a snapshot of this historical progression … from Saturday, 12 February 2011
1. Preamble: What is Ethnography ? Saturday, 12 February 2011
Ethnography: Then & Now Participant Observation: from the Trobriand Islands (Malinowski) to Celera Diagnostics’ work on human genomes in California (Rabinow) Saturday, 12 February 2011
Saturday, 12 February 2011
Saturday, 12 February 2011
Saturday, 12 February 2011
Saturday, 12 February 2011
Saturday, 12 February 2011
Saturday, 12 February 2011
Saturday, 12 February 2011
Saturday, 12 February 2011
Saturday, 12 February 2011
Saturday, 12 February 2011
Saturday, 12 February 2011
Saturday, 12 February 2011
Saturday, 12 February 2011
Saturday, 12 February 2011
Saturday, 12 February 2011
Saturday, 12 February 2011
Brazilian man whose kidney was sold via an Israeli broker photo Nancy Scheper-Hughes (inset) Saturday, 12 February 2011
Saturday, 12 February 2011
Saturday, 12 February 2011
2a. Ethnography: An Historical Perspective 1) An ethnography focuses on a particular population, place and time with the deliberate goal of describing it to others … So bears something in common with travel writing? Emerges from that juncture of culture contact? 2) Looking back to the 19 th century, we see a range of discourse emerging mid-century that is aiming for this goal The writings of explorers, missionaries, journalists, travellers etc … Why now? Part of both a larger project of rationalisation associated with the industrial revolution and Enlightenment … And an emergent discourse linked to colonialism and increased travel around the globe, with routes in the journals of the ‘explorers’ of the New World etc. 3) In this context, emerges an early example of ethnography … Louis Henry Morgan, The League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee or Saturday, 12 February 2011
Recommend
More recommend
