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Ethnography

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Course Type Course Code No. Of Credits
Discipline Elective SPG3EL602 4

Semester and Year Offered: 2nd  Semester, 1st Year

Course Coordinator and Team: N. Nakkeeran

Email of course coordinator: nakkeeran@aud.ac.in

Pre-requisites: None

Aim:

This course aims to introduce students to ethnography as a process of research and a product of research – nuances of doing ethnographic research; diverse traditions within ethnography and engage with the problems in writing ethnography. The last module of the course will help to discuss the opportunities provided by ethnography for public health research.

Learning Outcome:

By the end of the course, students will gain

  • A familiarity with ethnography as a methodology and use of its components
  • An understanding on different formats of ethnographic writing, their strengths and challenges
  • An ability to use ethnographic methodology in public health and health care settings.

 

Brief description of modules/ Main modules:

1. Understanding ethnography, history of ethnography: This module will start with a discussion on the relationship between Anthropology and Ethnography – the former’s celebration of the latter and the latter’s origin in the former; and more recent efforts to differentiate the two. This module will also include a discussion on early anthropological contributions towards ethnography, introducing some of the classical ethnographic work done from the discipline of Anthropology. This will be followed by a discussion on contributions from other disciplines towards ethnography, notably the Chicago school of sociology towards urban ethnography. This module will also discuss the way ethnography and ethnographic theory is seen and shaped from critical, post-colonial perspectives. The problematic link between understanding, doing and writing ethnography will be unpacked.

2. Doing ethnography – Participant Observation: This module will aim to cover ethnography as a field based methodology. It will take up a number of key issues for discussion such as: meaning of participant observation vis-à-vis ethnography, different types of ethnography – following a site, people, phenomenon, concepts or a product; ethnography among others and one’s own; nuances of ethnography of rural, urban, migrant, multi-cultural spaces; role of ‘selection’ of informants; entering the field; nature and meaning of ethnographic data; methods of data collection in ethnography - ethnographic interviews, small talk, observation, case study, and other methods; Description – thick or otherwise; writing and maintaining notes; strategies to infuse rigour; Positionality and reflexivity; encountering discrimination, oppression; negotiating procedural and substantive questions of research ethics in ethnography. This module will also aim to briefly introduce alternative forms of ethnography such as short ethnographies, auto-ethnographies, visual / film based ethnography, digital ethnographies and their uniqueness and limitations.

3. Writing ethnography: This module will focus on ethnography as a process and product of writing. This module will start with ‘writing as analyses’; will discuss the challenges in generalising the particular; will introduce different forms of writing ethnography and how it has shifted from a “scientific” into various other genres of writing including creative and fictional. This module will also prise open the problem of ‘writing as representation’ and the associated debates that anthropology had had on this theme. The ethnography as a narrative and conjoining methods around narratives will be introduced and distinguished here.

4. Ethnography in specific substantive fields – Public health: This module will specifically deal with ethnographic work undertaken in the field of public health and associated field like nursing and medical care. A number of anthropological / sociological researches from ethnographic research traditions have been done with health / hospital / death etc as the principal field / theme. In addition, research in professional fields like public health, nursing, and hospital care have increasingly started to study administrative or care related problems employing ethnography. This module will introduce students to these works as case studies.

Selected Readings:

  • Asad, T., (1973) “Introduction” in TalalAsad (ed.) Anthropology and the Colonial Encounters, Ithaca Press.
  • Atkinson, P., and Hammersley, M., “Chapter 1: What is ethnography?” in Ethnography: Principles in Practice
  • Bourdieu, P., “The Sense of Honour” in Algeria 1960, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp.95-132.
  • Brettell, C.B. (1993) Introduction: Fieldwork, Text, and Audience. In When they read what we write: the politics of ethnography. C.B. Brettell (ed.). Westport, Connecticut – Londres: Bergin y Garvey
  • Brodkey, L., “Writing Critical Ethnographic Narratives”, Anthropology & Education Quarterly , Jun., 1987, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Jun., 1987), pp. 67-76.
  • Clair, RP., (2003) “The Changing Story of Ethnography (Chapter 1)”, in RP Clair Expressions of Ethnography: Novel Approaches to Qualitative Methods,  State University of New York Press
  • Clifford, J. & G.E. Marcus (eds., 1986) Writing Culture: the poetics and politics of ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press. (Selected Chapters)
  • Clifford, J. (1983) “On Ethnographic Authority”. Representations 1 (2): 118-146
  • Cohn,BS., (1987)  “An Anthropologist among the Historians: A field study” in Bernard S. Cohn An Anthropologist Among Historian and Other Essays OUP,
  • Comaroff J., and Comaroff J., “Ethnography on an awkward scale: Postcolonial anthropology and the violence of abstraction” Ethnography , June 2003, Vol. 4, No. 2 (June 2003), pp. 147-179
  • Comaroff, Jean and John L. Comaroff (1988) 'On the Founding Fathers, Field work, and Functionalism: A Conversation with Isaac Schapera', American Ethnologist 15(3): 554
  • Das, V., Poole, D., (2004) “State and Its Margins: Comparative Ethnographies” in Veena Das and Deborah Poole (eds) Anthropology in the Margins of the State, OUP
  • Deegan, MJ., (2001) “The Chicago School of Ethnography”, in Paul Atkinson, Amanda Coffey et al (eds.) Handbook of Ethnography, Sage, Los Angeles
  • Driessen H., and Jansen, W., "The Hard Work of Small Talk in Ethnographic Fieldwork," Journal of Anthropological Research 69, no. 2 (Summer 2013): 249-263.
  • Emerson, RM., Fretz RI., and Shaw LL., (1995) Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes, University of Chicago Press,
  • Escobar, A. (1993) The Limits of Reflexitivity: politics in anthropology’s post-writing culture era. Journal of Anthropological Research 49 (4): 377-391.
  • Essential Readings
  • Fine GA. (1993) “Ten lies of ethnography”. J Contemp Ethnogr;22:267-94.
  • Geertz, C., (1988) Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author, (Chapter 3: “Slide Show: Evans-Pritchard's African Transparencies” & Chapter 4: “!-Witnessing: Malinowski's Children”) Standford University Press, Standford
  • Geertz, C., (1988) Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author, (Chapter 1: “Being There: Anthropology and the Scene of Writing”) Standford University Press, Standford
  • Geertz, C., Deep play: notes on the Balinese cockfight,  Daedalus; Fall 2005; 134, 4:56-86.
  • Goffman, E., (1956)“Introduction” in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, pp.1-9.
  • Gough, K., (1968) “Anthropology and Imperialism”, Monthly Review, April 1968
  • Ingold T., (2017) “Anthropology contra ethnography”, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 7 (1): 21–26
  • Madison, DS (2005): “Chapter 1 – Introduction to Critical Ethnography: Theory and Method”, in Critical Ethnography: Methods, Ethics and Performance, Thousand Oaks CA: Sage.
  • Marcus, G.E. & D. Cushman (1982) Ethnographies as Texts. Annual Review of Anthropology 11: 25-69.
  • Marcus, GE., “Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography”,  Annual Review of Anthropology , 1995, Vol. 24 (1995), pp. 95-117
  • Mills, C. Wright. 1959. The sociological imagination. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Miner, Horace (1956)."Body Ritual among the Nacirema” The American Anthropologist, 58:503-507
  • Narayan, K. (1993) How Native is a “Native” Anthropologist? American Anthropologist 95 (3): 671-686.
  • Narayan, K., (1999) “Ethnography and Fiction: Where Is the Border?”, Anthropology and Humanism 24(2): 134-147.
  • Ortner, Sherry B. (1997) `Fieldwork in the Postcommunity' , in Sandra Bamford and Joel Robbins (eds) Fieldwork in the Era of Globalization, special issue of Anthropology and Humanism 22(1): 61-80 .
  • Parmar, P., “Indigeneity and Legal Pluralism in India: Claims, Histories, Meanings” (Introduction) (2015). Cambridge University Press, Indigeneity and Legal Pluralism in India: Claims, Histories, Meanings (2015), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3048032
  • Plummer, K., (2001) “The Call of Life Stories in Ethnographic Research” in Paul Atkinson, Amanda Coffey et al (eds.) Handbook of Ethnography, Sage, Los Angeles
  • Reed-Danahay, D., (2001) “Autobiography, Intimacy and Ethnography”, in Paul Atkinson, Amanda Coffey et al (eds.) Handbook of Ethnography, Sage, Los Angeles
  • Ruby, J. (1975). Is an Enthnographic Film a Filmic Ethnography?. 2 (2), 104-111. Retrieved from https://repository.upenn.edu/svc/vol2/iss2/6
  • Srinivas, MN., (1960) “Introduction” in MN Srinivas (ed.) India’s Villages, Asia Publishing House, Bombay
  • Waldrop, A., &Egden, S., (2018) Getting Behind the Walls and Fences: Methodological Considerations of Gaining Access to Middle-class Women in Urban India, Forum for Development Studies, 45:2, 239-260, DOI: 10.1080/08039410.2018.1466830
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