Doing Ethnography

What does it mean to do ethnography and what research methods do ethnographers use to make sense of the human experiences they seek to understand? How do these research methods come together in the field and what are some common practical and ethical dilemmas one might encounter in doing ethnography?

Broadly speaking, ethnography is the study of human cultures through fieldwork—participating and observing in the field, the habitat, of the culture you seek to make sense of. This well-respected method of scholarly research provides perhaps the best basis to understand the lived experience of people, who are always situated within broader, intersecting cultures.

This introductory course will call attention to participant observation as the primary tool of data-collection in the doing of ethnography. Students will then learn to augment this with best practices in contemporary ethnographic fieldwork including ethnographic interviewing, listening, and note-taking, all of which rely of the ethnographer developing a keen sense of their own positions and politics as they relate to the field site. Through a combination of reading, lectures, discussion, and coached fieldwork exercises, this course will prepare an intrepid researcher for their first foray into doing ethnography.

Dates

This one-week, 17.5-hour course runs Monday-Friday, July 1-5, 2024. The course is scheduled for 1:30-5:00 pm.

Classroom Location

Faculty of Arts and Social Science, AS1 03-04

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Instructor

Kalpana Vignehsa, National University of Singapore

Detailed Description

Ethnography has become a bit of a buzzword. Market researchers and user experience experts claim to use it, policy makers understand that it is important and want to see more of it in policy research, and nobody is content saying an interview is just in-depth anymore; it has to be ethnographic. Yet few can properly articulate what ethnography is and what sets it apart.

In this course, you will learn what ethnography is and what makes it relevant, as well as how to conduct it in a rigorous way, regardless if you are planning a long-haul ethnography for your PhD or a small ethnographic project to answer a burning question about the human condition.

We will start by examining how the field/method of ethnography originated and discuss the politics of how that past affects our present-day use and interpretation of ethnography. As a class, we will then select a theme that will guide our focus in a practical way for the remainder of our ethnography intensive. This will also be the theme that students will craft their final assessment project around.

Students will explore how ethnographers design their research, do the fieldwork across many sites (including the digital), with a variety of tools, and analyse the artifacts they observe and data they collect.

Finally, we will also discuss questions that ethnographers grapple with, including accountability, commitment, and ethics, especially as they relate to the diverse (mis)alignments of power one will encounter in the field.

Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites for this course. However, those who have prior experience with qualitative research will find this course more intuitive and easier to adjust to, as the final assessment will require putting ethnography into practice.

Requirements

Participants are expected to have access to an internet-connected computer. Access to data, temporary licenses for the course software, and installation support will be provided by the Methods School.

Core Readings

Pandian, Anand. 2019. A Possible Anthropology: Methods for Uneasy Times. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.