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Ethnography Now

Module description

Ethnography provides a means of exploring the ways in which people live, experience, and think about their lives, particularly the networks of interaction and meaning they create and inhabit. While ethnography has a long history, this module will focus on ethnography now. This emphasis, on the contemporary, has two facets. First, the module will provide you with an appreciation of the kinds of topics and social issues that ethnographers work on in contemporary culture.
Second, the module will introduce you to some of the new ways of thinking about and doing ethnography that have emerged in the last few decades, which challenge some of the assumptions and tenets of early ethnographers. You will have the opportunity to acquire hands-on experience doing ethnographic research, by conducting and reporting on a small piece of fieldwork.

Module aims - intentions of the module

The module aims to help you develop skills, knowledge, and experiences that are crucial for anthropological scholarship, including:

• an understanding of contemporary approaches to researching and writing ethnographies

• skills in the critical reading and evaluation of ethnographic work produced by others

• knowledge of, and hands-on practice with, fieldwork techniques and methods, including data gathering and fieldnote writing;

• the ability to critically reflect on your own practices as producers of ethnographic research

• writing ethnographic accounts of a culture that has been studied first-hand

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Demonstrate a clear understanding of the distinctive benefits and drawbacks of ethnographic studies of social life
• 2. Make critical assessments of ethnographic texts.
• 3. Describe the ways that theoretical and methodological problems intersect within forms of ethnographic inquiry.

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 4. Understand how key concepts in sociology and anthropology can be illustrated and refined in relation to the analysis of detailed empirical data
• 5. Demonstrate an awareness of strategies for analytically linking micro- and macro- perspectives
• 6. Assess, challenge and develop theoretical ideas in relation to reflections on their own experiences and observations of social life.;

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 7. Build and defend an argument based on evidence
• 8. Think about social and personal lives in new ways
• 9. Communicate effectively in written and verbal form.

Syllabus plan

Whilst the module’s precise content may vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover some or all of the following topics:
- A brief history of ethnography
- Challenges to ethnographic authority
- The end(s) of contemporary ethnography
- Reflexivity and fieldwork
-New British ethnographies
- New forms of inquiry
- Student culture
- Ethnographic fieldwork and analysis.

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Where you have been referred/deferred for your written assignments, you will have the opportunity to submit new assignments in the August/September reassessment period.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

Boellstorff, T. (2008). Coming of age in Second Life: An anthropologist explores the virtually human: Princeton Univ Pr.
Bourgois, P. I. (2003). In search of respect: Selling crack in El Barrio: Cambridge Univ Pr.
Clifford, J., & Marcus, G. E. (1986). Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography: Univ of California Pr.
Clough, P. T. (1998). The End (s) of Ethnography: From Realism to Social Criticism. 2nd edn. New York: Peter Lang.
Fonarow, W. (2006). Empire of Dirt: The Aesthetics and Rituals of British Indie Music (Middletown, CT, Wesleyan University Press).
Faubion, J. D., & Marcus, G. E. (2009). Fieldwork is not what it used to be: learning anthropology's method in a time of transition: Cornell University Press.
Kulick, D. (1998). Travesti: sex, gender, and culture among Brazilian transgendered prostitutes: University of Chicago Press.
Rabinow, P., Marcus, G. E., Faubion, J. D., & Rees, T. (2008). Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary: Duke University Press.

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

ELE – http://vle.exeter.ac.uk/

Indicative learning resources - Other resources

Contemporary ethnographic and documentary films on relevant topics

Key words search

Ethnography Anthropology Fieldwork