The Ethnography Seminar

PGSP11042

MSc Social Anthropology

School of Social and Political Science
University of Edinburgh

Time: Thursday 11.10 – 13.00 Semester 2 2018-2019

Place: Chrystal Macmillan Building, Seminar Room 5

Course Organiser
Dr Delwar Hussain Delwar.Hussain@ed.ac.uk
Guidance and Feedback Hours: Friday 10 - 12pm (By appointment only)

Course Administrator
Jack Smith: pgtaught.sps@ed.ac.uk, GSO office, CMB first floor, 1.20

Aims
This course introduces students to ethnography as distinctive form of research and writing.
Through a series of close and critical readings of sections of ethnographic studies, students will
develop an appreciation of how anthropologists author understandings of other people and their
lives through the experience of “being there."

Learning and Teaching Activities

Seminar/Tutorial Hours 20
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4
Directed and Independent Learning 176
Total 200

Assessment
1500 word Short Essay 30%
3000 word Long Essay 70%
Total 100%
Learning Outcomes
This course aims for an understanding of ethnographic fieldwork as a process and its links to written
ethnography as a product. By the end of the course, students will have read and discussed a range of
ethnographic works focusing on different anthropological themes and geographic regions. They will
have developed their ability to critically read ethnographies, and to draw connections between
theory and ethnography in terms of methods and authorial strategies.

Format
The course is organised as a series of weekly two-hour seminars. Through a mixture of short lectures,
student presentations and discussions, as a class and in small groups, these seminars will explore a
number of subjects concerning ethnographic research and, in particular, the complex relationship
between theories, those abstract and more general propositions we make concerning the nature of
reality, and ethnographic research as a mode of enquiry grounded in the intimate experience of
“being there”. We will consider how anthropologists try to bring other people and other places “alive
in the writing" (Narayan). All students will be asked to show their engagement and understanding of
the assigned texts through questions and discussion. The seminar’s success is entirely dependent on
engaged readers and vocal participants.

Reading
Each week there will be TWO kinds of readings, ethnographies and further readings. (1) ALL
students are required to read the week's assigned ethnography, (2) ALL students read at least one
of the further readings.
As much as possible I will ensure that these will be available electronically, either on e-reserve or
through e-journals.

For Assessment requirements you should consult the Taught MSc Student Handbook 2018-19. This is
available on Learn.

Requirements included are:

• Coursework submissions
• Extension request
• Plagiarism
• Penalties

External Examiner

The External Examiner for the course is Dr Arnar Arnason, University of Aberdeen.

ASSESSMENT
Assessment is 100% by coursework. There are TWO assessed components: (1) a short essay on a
specific ethnography (30%) and (2) a longer essay on how ethnographies are informing students'
own dissertation research (70%).
(1) Class Presentations - Each week at least one student will engage with the week's
ethnographic reading/s and do a critical presentation. This shall describe the reading/s, ask
questions, make connections to other readings and theory. Creativity is encouraged. (Non-
credited).

Short Essay - students are to engage with readings from a particular week and write a
1,500 word (max.) essay. The purpose of the essay is to discuss ethnographies in light of
further readings. These essays should not attempt merely to give a summary of the
readings. Instead students explore the specific traits of the ethnography, put them into a
wider perspective (e.g. the ethnographer's other publications, other research on the
topic or the region), and point out conceptual insights. This assignment aims to develop a
critical and evaluative reading of ethnographies. Students are allowed to rework their
draft essays in light of the class discussion. Deadline for submitting.the short essay for
formal assessment is Monday 1st April 2019. The short essay makes up 30% of the overall
mark. Feedback will be returned on Monday 22nd April 2018.
(2) Long Essay - A longer essay of 3,000 words (max.) where you choose a number of
ethnographies (minimum 2, maximum 5), describe their content, put them into a wider
context, and discuss how they are helping you to shape your own MSc dissertation topic.
The typical structure of this essay will, therefore, be a) a short summary of your MSc
dissertation topic (this can be tentative, and it does not have to be exactly what you will
actually focus on in your dissertation), around 250 words long; b) a discussion of
ethnographies, c) a conclusion on how other ethnographies inform your own work. Explore
what struck you about the selected ethnographies, what you have learned from them, and
how they helped you to hone the craft of reading ethnographies. Discuss the relation
between ethnography as a method and as a form of writing. Deadline for submission of the
long essay is 11 April 2019. The long essay makes up 70% of the overall mark. (Note: in
your final MSc dissertation, you need to make sure that you do not re-use the same
verbatim lines from this essay—check guidance to avoid self-plagiarism). Feedback will be
returned on the 03rd May 2018.
 The Ethnography Seminar – Timetable

Week Topic

Week 1: 17 Jan Introducing ethnography as a kind of writing

Week 2: 24 Jan Writing the truth of other people’s lives

Week 3: 31 Jan The place of ethnography writing

Week 4: 7 Feb The voice of others

Week 5: 14 Feb Participation, reflexivity and the body of the ethnographer

21 Feb FESTIVAL OF CREATIVE LEARNING – no class this week

Week 6. 28 Feb Multi-sited/virtual anthropologies

Week 7: 7 Mar More than Human Anthropology

Week 8: 14 Mar Secondary Sources

Week 9: 21 Mar Applied, Engaged, and “Public” Anthropologies

Week 10: 28 March Visual and Sensory Anthropology

WEEK 1: Ethnography as a kind of knowledge
In this first class we will introduce the concept of ethnography. We will particularly focus on the
peculiar status of ethnography as being at once a research method, which seeks to secure a
naturalistic understanding of other people’s lives based upon the researcher’s experience of “being
there”, and a kind of writing which proceeds from this experience to provide more general and
analytical accounts of social and cultural structures and processes.

Ethnography

Lila Abu-Lughod, 1986. Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society. Berkeley:
University of California Press. Chapter 1: guest and daughter, pp. 1-35. [e-reserve]

Further reading
Adriana Petryna. 2002. Biological Citizenship, in Life exposed Biological citizens after
Chernobyl. Princeton: Princeton University Press, chpt. 5
Paloma Gay y Blasco and Huon Wardle, 2007. How to Read Ethnography. Abingdon, Oxon.:
Routledge. Introduction, the concerns and distinctiveness of ethnography, pp. 1-12. [e-
book]
Bronisław Malinowski, 1922. Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An account of native enterprise and
adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. Oxon: Routledge. Pages 1-25
Martyn Hammersley and Paul Atkinson, 2007. Ethnography: principles in practice. London:
Routledge. Chapter 1, what is ethnography, pp. 1-19. [e-book]
Kirin Narayan, 2012. Alive in the Writing: crafting ethnography in the company of Chekov. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2012. Chapter 1, story and theory, pp. 1-22 [e-book]
Clifford Geertz, 1988, Works and Lives: the anthropologist as author. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press. Chapter 1, being there: anthropology and the scene of writing, pp. 1-24.
[e-reserve]

WEEK 2: Writing the truth of peoples’ lives

Ethnographers write stories about other people’s lives. In one way or another we write these as
true stories. They are not made up, simple fictions drawn from the imagination, rather they are
fictions of a different sort, which in writing aspire to communicate something that exists beyond
writing: other lives (including perhaps our own) that are lived in places other than the place of
writing. But what is the nature of this “truth”, how is it that we can know, feel, imagine other lives
through the words of the ethnographer? This seminar explores this question.

Ethnography

Jonathan Parry, Giving, receiving and bargaining over gifts, in Death in Banaras. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, chpt. 4.

Further reading
Boellstorff, Tom (2005) The Gay Archipelago: Sexuality and Nation in Indonesia. Princeton:
Princeton University Press
James Agee and Walker Evans, 1960. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Three Tenant Families.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin. (On the porch: 2, pp. 223-253. [e-reserve]
Jonathan Spencer, 1989. Anthropology as a kind of writing, Man, New Series 24 (1): 145-164.
[e-journal]
Paloma Gay y Blasco and Huon Wardle, 2007. How to Read Ethnography. Abingdon, Oxon.:
Routledge. Chapter 4, Narrating the immediate, pp. 76-95. [e-book]
James Clifford, 1986, Introduction: Partial Truths, in James Clifford and George Marcus (eds.)
Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, pp. 1-26. Berkley and Los Angles:
University of California Press. [e-reserve]
Barbara Tedlock, 2013. Ethnographic Evocations and Evocative Ethnographies, in Ivo Strecker and
Markus Verne (eds.) Astonishment and Evocation: the spell of culture in art and
anthropology, pp. 164-179. Oxford: Berghahn. [e-reserve]
John Dorst, 2010. Ethnographic Tropes in Now Let Us Praise Famous Men, in Caroline Blinder (ed.) New
critical essays on James Agee and Walker Evans: perspectives on let us now praise famous men.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. [e-book]

WEEK 3: The place of ethnographic writing

This seminar discusses the way in which anthropologists write of places and so write places into
being. In so doing it unpicks some of the taken -for-granted ideas of place that have informed
the anthropological project, thereby opening up a more critical interrogation of how we place
our studies and how we compose the place of research.

Ethnography

Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, 2005. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press. Chapter 1, frontiers of capitalism, pp. 27-50. [e-book]

Further reading

Zaloom, Caitlin. 2006, Out of the pits: Traders and technology from Chicago to London, Chicago
University Press.
Kirin Narayan, 2012. Alive in the Writing: crafting ethnography in the company of Chekov. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2012. Chapter 2, place, pp. 23-44 [e-book]
Paloma Gay y Blasco and Huon Wardle, 2007. How to Read Ethnography. Abingdon, Oxon:
Routledge. Chapter 2, people in context, pp. 35-53. [e-book]
David B. Edwards. 1994. Afghanistan, ethnography, and the New World Order.
Cultural Anthropology 9(3): 345-360.
Akhil Gupta, and James Ferguson, 1997. Discipline and practice: “the field as site, method and
location in anthropology, in A. Gupta & J. Ferguson (eds.) Anthropological Locations:
Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science, pp. 1-46. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California
Press. [e-reserve]
George Marcus, 1995. Ethnography In/Out of the World System: the emergence of multi-sited
ethnography, Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 95-117. [e-journal]
Matei Candea, 2009. Arbitrary Locations: in defence of the bounded field-site, in Mark-Anthony
Falzon (ed.) Multi-Sited Ethnography: Theory, Praxis And Locality In Contemporary Research,
pp.. Farnham: Ashgate.
David Lipset. 2014. Place in the Anthropocene: A mangrove lagoon in Papua New Guinea in the
time of rising sea-levels. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 4(3), 215-243.
WEEK 4: The voice of others

At the heart of the ethnographic account is the encounter with other people. This is not just an
encounter with other people taken as some collective (The Nuer, The Balinese etc.) but an
encounter with real individual people in whose company we come to know something of their
lives and so, in their lives, something of their “culture” and “society” (if we feel such abstractions
even apply). This seminar will explore the ways in which other voices inhabit ethnographic
accounts and how we may write the voice of others.

Ethnography

João Biehl, 2005. Vita: Life in a Zone of Abandonment. Berkley and Los Angles: University
of California Press. Part Two, Catrina and the alphabet, pp. 71-119. [e-reserve]

Further reading
Engebretsen Elisabeth L. (2014) Queer Women in Urban China: An Ethnography.
London: Routledge
Kirin Narayan, 2012. Alive in the Writing: crafting ethnography in the company of Chekov. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2012. Chapter 4, voice, pp. 67-91 [e-book]
Geert De Neve, 2006. Hidden reflexivity: assistants, informants and the creation of anthropological
knowledge. In G. De Neve & M. Unnithan-Kumar (eds.) Critical journeys: the making of
anthropologists, pp. 67-90. Aldershot: Ashgate. [e-reserve]
Avner Segall, 2001. Critical ethnography and the invocation of voice: From the field/in the field -
single exposure, double standard? International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education,
14 (4): 579-592.
Martyn Hammersley and Paul Atkinson, 2007. Ethnography: principles in practice. London:
Routledge. Chapter 5, oral accounts and the role of interviewing, pp. 97-120. [e-book]
Denis Tedlock, 1986. The Analogical Tradition and the Emergence of a Dialogical Anthropology."
Journal of Anthropological Research 42 (3): 483-469. [e-journal]

WEEK 5: Participation, reflexivity and the body of the ethnographer

In this class we will consider the paradoxical position of the anthropologist as insider and
outsider, participant and observer. In so doing we will consider the role of autobiography and
“self-reflexivity” in the fashioning of anthropological understanding.

Ethnography

Cristobal Bonelli. 2015. Eating one’s worlds: On foods, metabolic writing and ethnographic humor.
Subjectivity 8, 181–200.

Further reading
Lewin, Ellen and Leap, William L. (1996) Out in the Field: Reflections of Lesbian and Gay
Anthropologists. Illonois: University of Illinois Press (Any chapter)
Judith Okely, 1992. Anthropology and Autobiography: participatory experience and embodied
knowledge, in Judith Okely and Helen Callaway (eds.) Anthropology and Autobiography, pp.
1-28. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. [e-reserve]
Renato Rosaldo, 1993. Grief and Headhunter's Rage, in Culture & Truth: the remaking of social
analysis, pp. 1-21. London: Routledge. [available online through the library]
Kirin Narayan, 2012. Alive in the Writing: crafting ethnography in the company of Chekov. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2012. Chapter. 5, self, pp. 93-110 [e-book]
Paloma Gay y Blasco and Huon Wardle, 2007. How to Read Ethnography. Abingdon, Oxon.:
Routledge. Chapter 7, positioning the author, pp. 140-162. [e-book]
Peter Collin and Anselma Gallinat, 2010. The Ethnographic Self as Resource: an introduction, in P.
Collins and A. Gallinat (eds.) The ethnographic self as resource: writing memory and
experience into ethnography, pp. 1-24. Oxford: Berghahn Books. [e-book]
Tami Spry, 2010. Call it swing: A jazz blues autoethnography. Cultural Studies↔ Critical
Methodologies 10 (4): 271-282. [e-journal]

FESTIVAL OF CREATIVE LEARNING : NO CLASS

WEEK 6: Multisited and virtual anthropologies

This seminar will turn attention to the kinds of anthropological work that takes place before, after,
among, and between “field sites.” How does one go about doing research in multiple places—or in
the virtual space of the internet? What kinds of knowledge might emerge through anthropological
engagement with other communities of “expert” knowledge such as that of scientists, financiers or
crafts people?

Ethnography

Karen Ho, 2008. Situating global capitalisms: a view from Wall Street investment banks, Cultural
Anthropology 22 (1): 68-96.

Further reading

Androutsopoulos Jannis (2008) “Potentials and Limitations of Discourse-Centred Online

Ethnography” in Language@internet. 5: 9 pp 1-20
Boellstorff, Tom (2005) “Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually
Human”. Princeton: Princeton University Press
Driscoll, Catherine and Gregg, Melissa (2010) “My profile: The ethics of virtual ethnography” in
Emption, Space and Society. 3(1): pp. 15-20
Dumit, Joseph. Writing the Implosion: Teaching the World One Thing at a Time. Cultural
Anthropology 29(2): 344-362.
Haraway, Donna. 1988. Situated Knowledges The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of
Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies. 14 (3): 575-599.
Hannerz, Ulf. 2003. Being there … and there … and there! Reflections on multi-site ethnography.
Ethnography 4(2): 201-216.
Jean Baudrillard, 1988. Simulacra and simulations, Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings, ed.
Mark Poster. Stanford; Stanford University Press, pp.166-184.
Kelty, Christopher. 2006. Collaboration, Coordination, and Composition: Fieldwork after the
Internet. IN Fieldwork Isn’t What it Used to Be. Eds. James Faubion and George
Marcus. Ithaca: Cornell UP, pp. 184-206.
Kendall, Lori (2002) “Hanging Out in the Virtual Pub: Masculinities and Relationships Online”.
California: University of California Press

WEEK 7: More than Human Anthropology

In an important way, anthropology—particularly British and French anthropology—has always

been about something more than humans. Evans-Pritchard wrote extensively about human-animal
relations in The Nuer, and Levi-Strauss’ structuralism was drawn in part from an interest in the
ways in which the social world ordered and was ordered by the natural world. This session will
briefly trace this history, stopping to discuss the more recent contributions of Amazonian
anthropologists to what Kohn calls anthropology beyond the human.

Ethnography

Helmreich, Stefan. 2009. The Message from the Mud: Making Meaning Out of Microbes in
Monterey Bay, in Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas. Berkeley:
University of California Press, chpt. 1.

Further reading

Eben Kirksey and Stefan Helmreich. 2010. The Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography.
Cultural Anthropology. 25(4): 545-576.
Jenkins, Henry (2006) Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers Exploring Participatory Culture. New York: NYU
Press
Kohn, Eduardo. 2007. How Dogs Dream: Amazonian Natures and the Politics of Transspecies
Engagement. American Ethnologist. 34 (1): 3-24.
Matei Candea. 2010. “I fell in love with Carlos the meerkat”: Engagement and detachment in
human–animal relations. American Ethnologist 37(2): 241-258.
Anna Tsing. 2012. Unruly Edges: Mushrooms as Companion Species Environmental Humanities. 1
(1): 141-154. [Open Access]
Ann Kelly. 2012. The Experimental Hut: Hosting Vectors. Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute. 18: S145-S160.
Natalie Porter. 2013. Bird Flu Biopower: Strategies for Multispecies Coexistence in Viet Nam.
American Ethnologist. 40 (1): 132-148.
Nayanika Mathur. 2015. "It's a conspiracy theory and climate change": Of beastly encounters and
cervine disappearances in Himalayan India. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 5(1): 87-
111.

WEEK 8: Secondary Research

Although ‘ethnography’ has lately become a synonym for ‘primary qualitative field research’,
neither the primary research nor the subsequent writing up can be done responsibly without
substantial use of ‘secondary research’. This is a catch-all term meaning re-examination of
information which has been gathered for other purposes. Developing these capabilities and habits
will not only help your dissertation but will help you develop crucial life skills in learning from and
communicating with multiple sources in many places.

Ethnography

Joseph Dumit. 2012. Pharmaceutical Witnessing, in Drugs for Life: How Pharmaceutical Companies
Define Our Health. Durham: Duke UP, chpt. 2.

Further reading

Weston, Kath, 1998. Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship, Columbia University Press.
Stefan Ecks and Christine Kupfer. 2014. “What is strange is that we don't have more
children coming to us”: A habitography of child psychiatrists and scholastic pressure
in Kolkata, India. Social Science & Medicine.
Joseph Dumit. 2013. Writing the Implosion: Teaching the World One Thing at a Time.
Cultural Anthropology 29(2)344–362.
Neil Thin, 2013. ‘On the primary importance of secondary research.’ In N. Konopinksi [ed], Doing
Ethnographic Research. London: Routledge.
Elaine Barnett -Page and James Thomas, 2009. Methods for research synthesis: a critical
review, ESRC National Centre for Research Methods NCRM Working Paper Series
Number (01/09) http://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/Default.aspx?tabid=188
Hugh Raffles. 2001. The Uses of Butterflies. American Ethnologist 28(3):513-548.
Robert V. Kozinets. 2010. Netnography: doing ethnographic research online. London: Sage.
Sarah Pink. 2009. Doing sensory ethnography. Los Angeles: SAGE.

WEEK 9: Applied, Engaged, and Public Anthropologies

Ethnographic writing can happen anywhere—on just about anything—but where does it go, and for
whom does it exist? In several branches of anthropology—particularly anthropology of
development and medical anthropology—there has been a concerted turn toward applying our
ethnographic findings to real-world problems. At the same time, there has been a reassessment of
anthropology itself as a transformative, engaged project. Finally—and much more recently—a
genre of public anthropological writing has emerged.

Ethnography

Nancy Scheper-Hughes. 1992. Nervoso: Medicine, Sickness, and Human Needs, in Death without
weeping, Berkeley: University of California Press, chpt. 5.

Further reading

Chase, Thomas (6 Jun 2012) “Problems of Publicity: Online Activism and Discussion of Same-Sex
Sexuality in South Korea and China” in Asian Studies Review. 36:2. Pp. 151 – 170.
Clifford, James and George Marcus. 1988. Two Contemporary Techniques of Cultural Critique in
Anthropology. IN Anthropology as Cultural Critique. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Pp. 137-164
James Ferguson, 1997. Anthropology and its Evil Twin: Development in the Constitution of a
Discipline, in F. Cooper & R. Packard (eds) International Development and the Social Science:
Essays in the History and Politics of Knowledge. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Nancy Scheper-Hughes, 1993. The Primacy of the Ethical: Propositions for a militant anthropology,
Current Anthropology 36 (3): 409 – 440 (see also responses to this article in the same
journal).
David Pollock. 1996. Healing dilemmas. Anthropological Quarterly 69(3): 149-157.
Joao Biehl and Ramah McKay. 2012. Ethnography as Political Critique. Anthropological Quarterly
85(4): 1209-1228.
Kim Fortun. 2012. Ethnography in Late Industrialism. Cultural Anthropology 27(3): 446-464.
Philippe Bourgois, 2001. The Power of Violence in War and Peace: Post-Cold War Lessons from
El Salvador, Ethnography 2(1):5-34.
Paul Farmer, 1999. Infections and inequalities: the modern plagues. Berkeley, London: University of
California Press. Introduction and any of the chapters.
De León, Jason. 2012. Better to Be Hot than Caught: Excavating the Conflicting Roles of Migrant
Material Culture. American Anthropologist 114(3): 477-495.
Thom Van Doreen. 2010. Pain of Extinction: The Death of a Vulture. Cultural Studies Review
16(2):271-289.

WEEK 10: Visual, Aural, and Sensory Ethnography

Films, pictures, sounds, and smells straddle the boundary between secondary and primary
ethnographic sources. Anthropologists can of course collect these things, but they also frequently
produce them. This final session concerns the how, who, where, and why of such productions—
both as sources of ethnographic material and as results of anthropological fieldwork.

Ethnography

Chris Gregory. 2011. Skinship: Touchability as a virtue in East-Central India. HAU: Journal
of Ethnographic Theory 1(1), 179-209.

Further reading

Hoek, Lotte (2013) Cut-Pieces: Celluloid Obscenity and Popular Cinema in Bangladesh.
New York: Columbia University Press
Columbia University PressSeremetakis, Nadia, 1991. The Last Word: Women, Death and
Divination in Inner Mani. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilsa Barbash. 2009. Sweetgrass (film). Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab.
Stefan Helmreich. 2007. An Anthropologist Underwater: Immersive Soundscapes, Submarine
Cyborgs, and Transductive Ethnography. American Ethnologist 34(4)621-641.
Donna Haraway. 2008. Crittercam: Compounding Eyes in Naturecultures. In When Species Meet.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Pp. 249-263.
Bill Nichols, 2001. Documentary film as modernist avant- garde, Critical Enquiry 27 (4): 580-
610. Danny Hoffman. 2012. Corpus: Mining the Border. Read the photo essay and
commentary at http://www.culanth.org/photo_essays/1-corpus-mining-the-border.
Sarah Pink. 2009. Doing sensory ethnography. Los Angeles: SAGE.