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FIELDWORK METHODS

ANTHRO 1610, FALL 2016

Tozzer 203

Mondays 1-3

Dr. Laurence Ralph Office: Barker 241 Email: [email protected] Office Hours: Thursdays 1-3

Course Description

This course provides a critical introduction to some of the key methods used in anthropological research, paying special attention to topic formation, the deployment of theoretical resources, the techniques of engagement in field work sites and with people, and the politics and ethics What’s in this of fieldwork and ethnographic knowledge production. Our approach will combine readings in critical anthropology Syllabus relevant to methodological practice with workshop-style Course Description pg. 1 explorations of particular techniques for gathering, analyzing, and presenting field material. We will explore the Grading Scale pg. 2 limits and powers of ethnography (broadly construed) by setting up model projects and experimenting with typical fieldwork tasks. The course is intended to help students Assignments, develop the tools needed to clarify their own research Readings and projects, while reflecting critically on the history of Exercises pg. 2-7 Anthropology.

Rubric for Ethnographic Exercises pg. 8

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GRADING SCALE WEEKLY BLOG ASSIGNMENT

Grades will be based on class participation Pick one of these two questions to write a blog and performance on the eight exercises entry (at least 200 words). Blog entries are due described below. EVERY Friday at noon:

1) What is the most useful aspect of this Class Participation method? (Including Blog entries): 10 % 2) How would you apply this method to a real Ethnographic Exercises: 10 % each word issue?

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September 19 SCHEDULE OF READINGS TOPIC FORMATION

AND EXERCISES EXERCISE 1: Every participant in the class is to write a statement, of no more than two single- spaced pages (12pt font), outlining—in respect of August 31 an imaginary but feasible project—a statement of GENERAL COURSE INTRODUCTION topic, the anthropological problem it presents, some ruling questions, and a specification of field site. These are to be uploaded to the course page September 5 on the Thursday (September 15th) before class by noon. A selection will be mounted on the course NO CLASS: LABOR DAY page by Friday at noon to be discussed in class. This exercise is the first of eight requirements for September 12 the course. TRADITIONS OF PRACTICE Akil Gupta and James Ferguson, “The Field as Site, Method, and Location in Anthropology” in Bronislaw Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific Anthropological Locations, eds. A Gupta and J. (1922), pp. 1-26. Ferguson (Berkeley: University of California Press,

1997) pp. 1-46. Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, “Beyond Culture”: Space, Identity and the Politics of Difference” in Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology, eds. A. Gupta and J. Ferguson (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), pp. 33-51.

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September 26 October 3 PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY, SUBJECTIVISM, THE “OTHER” EXERCISE 2: Spend two hours observing (and participating) in a public site. Some possible examples [Note: This class meeting will take place at the include: a grocery store, a shopping mall, a bar or Harvard Film Archive] nightclub, a coffee shop, a bus or train stop, or a library. Keep field notes. You should have a fairly focused EXERCISE 3: Find an individual/place that reminds you question in mind before you begin. Some possible of an ethnographic subject area we’ve covered in themes to explore include the negotiation of difference class. Capture a day-in-the-life of that person/place in shared spaces, sexuality an seduction, the relation through a visual medium. The visuals should reveal between commodities and identities, and/or the activities, say something about social/cultural life of generation of geographies of security and menace. You the place, as well as capture personalities of people. are allowed to talk to people. Please upload your field Framing is important to this exercise. In particular, notes and two single-spaced (12 pt) pages of look for details that describe the person without commentary on the exercise to the course page by noon them having to be in every image. Please upload your on Thursday (September 22nd). A selection will be visuals to the course page by Thursday (September mounted on the course page by Friday at noon to be 29th). A selection will be uploaded to the course discussed in class. This is the second course page by Friday at noon. This is the third course requirement. requirement.

Clifford Geertz, “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Film: "The Jaguar" by Jean Rouch Cockfight” in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), pp. 412-452. Rouch, Jean and Steven Feld, eds. “The Camera and Man” in Cine-Ethnography: Jean Rouch. Theodore Bestor, “Inquisitive Observation: Following Networks in Urban Fieldwork” 317-334.

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Lorem Ipsum Dolor Issue [#] :: [Date] October 10 NO CLASS: COLUMBUS DAY

October 17 ETHICS, INSTITUTIONS, HUMAN SUBJECTS

Presentation by staff of Harvard University’s Institutional Review Board.

Readings: “Nuremberg Code” (1949—Developed during the course of the Nuremberg trials, it was the first attempt to create an international standard for contemporary human subjects research protections. Non leo: Although an important benchmark, it was not ratified by any state has no legal standing). October 31 “Belmont Report” (Ethical Principles and Guidelines UNSTRUCTURED INTERVIEW for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research, The National Commission for the Protection of EXERCISE 5: Conduct an interview of 30-40 minutes with Human Subject of Biomedical and Behavioral somebody of your choice—but neither a friend nor a Research, April 18, 1979). This document outlines the person related to you—on one of the following topics: basic ethical principles that underlie the federal (a) her/his autobiography system of human subjects research protections. (b) the history of her/his family, community, town (c) a (nontrivial) dispute in which he/she was involved October 24 (d) an encounter with the police, state bureaucracy, or GENEALOGIES legal system

Exercise 4: Collect a family genealogy by conducting Record the interview, transcribe the first 10 minutes, and an interview with someone over the age of 30. Do write up a brief report on the exercise, covering, (a) what not tape the interview. Instead, devise a way of you found difficult about doing the interview; (b) what keeping notes for the interview that will enable you most surprised you about it; (c) what you would do to draw a genealogical table. Submit the (1-page) differently if you did it again; (d) what kinds of knowledge table with annotations and a brief discussion of the you hoped would be produced but were not; (e) what the value (or non-value) of this field method. Your problems would be in deriving “ethnographic data” from submission should not exceed three double-spaced your informant’s answers to your questions. These notes pages total. Please upload this material to the should be no more than 3 single-spaced pages (12 pt) in course page by noon on Thursday, October 20th. A addition, of course, to the transcription. Upload them, selection will be mounted on the course page by with the transcription, to the course page by noon on Friday at noon to be discussed in class. This is the Thursday (October 27th). A selection will be mounted on forth course requirement. the course page by Friday at noon to be discussed in class. This is the fifth course requirement. John Barnes, “Genealogies,” in The Craft of Social Anthropology, ed. A.L. Epstein (New Brunswick NJ: Charles L. Briggs, Chapter 3 (“Interview Techniques vis-à- Transition, 1978 (1967)), pp. 107-127. vis Native Metacommunitcative Repertoires; or, On the Analysis of Communicative Blunders”) and Chapter 5 Pierre Bourdieu, “the Biographical Illusion, “ (Listen Before you Leap: toward Methodological Working Papers and Proceedings of the Center for Sophistication”) in Learning to Ask: A Sociolinguistic Psychosocial Studies, No. 14. Chicago: Center for Appraisal of the Role of the Interview in Social Science Psychosocial Studies (1987). Research (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 39-60, 93-111.

Dipesh Chakrabarty, Chapter 3 (“Translating Life Worlds into Labor and History”) in Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 72-96.

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Lorem Ipsum Dolor [Issue] :: [Date] November 7 November 14 TEXTS, ARCHIVES, RHETORICS THE AIMS AND ETHICS OF REPRESENTATIONS

EXERCISE 6: From popular media, the web, archival EXERCISE 7: Treat a class at Harvard University as a field sources, published memoirs, or fictional writing, gather (sub)site. Design an anthropological mini-analysis of the three to five short texts (or extracts from texts) that class. You will need to frame a narrow question that can be relate to your own anthropological interests. Prepare a answered ethnographically, rather than attempt a one-page annotated list of these sources, describing comprehensive ethnographic study of the setting. Write a each and noting its potential usefulness as a source of three-page “ethnography” that includes both description ethnographic understanding. Then present one of and some preliminary answers to your research question. these texts in an interpretive discussion, showing how Come to class prepared to discuss the choices you had to your reading might advance your anthropological make as you wrote (e.g., risky speculations, necessary research interests. Upload your work (three pages silences, truncated contextualizations). Upload these total, single-spaced) to the course page by noon on papers to the course page by noon on Thursday (November Thursday, November 3rd. A selection will be mounted 10th). A selection will be mounted on the course page by on the course page by Friday at noon. This is the sixth Friday at noon to be discussed in class. This is the seventh course requirement. course requirement.

John Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, Chapter 1 Sherry Ortner, “Fieldwork in the Postcommunity,” (“Ethnography and the Historical Imagination”) in Anthropology and Humanism 22, 1 (1997): 61-80 (1997). Ethnography and the Historical Imagination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 3-48. Clifford Geertz, “Thinking as Moral Act: Ethical Dimensions of Anthropological Fieldwork in the New States,” pp. 21-41.

Arthur Kleinman, “Moral Experience and Ethical Reflection: Can Ethnography Reconcile Them? A Quandary for ‘The New Bioethics’,” 69-97.

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November 28

FINAL ASSIGNMENT DUE: DESIGNING AND PRESENTING A METHODOLOGY

EXERCISE 9: Write a methods section consisting of 2 single-spaced pages (12 pt) to one of five projects previously funded or conducted. Five anonymous project proposals will be mounted on the course website by the end of November—but without their original methods’ sections. Your completed exercise is to be uploaded no later than noon on Sunday (November 27th). This is the final course requirement. November 21 SUBJECTIVITY AND POSITIONALITY

EXERCISE 8: Pick a field site outside of Harvard University. Design an anthropological mini- analysis of the site with a particular question about “subjectivity,” “positionality,” or “erotics” in mind. Write a three-page [Issue] :: [Date] “ethnography” that includes both description and some preliminary answers to your research question. Come to class prepared to discuss the choices you had to make as you wrote. Upload these papers to the course page by noon on Thursday (Nov 17th). A selection will be mounted on the course page by Friday at noon. Double- spaced copies on paper are to be tuned in for written comments at class time. This is the seventh course requirement.

Altork, Kate, “Walking the Fire Line: The Erotic Dimension of Fieldwork,” in Taboo, Sex, Identity and Erotic Subjectivity in Anthropological Fieldwork, ed. Don Kulick and Margaret Wilson (London: Routledge, 1995), 81-105. [Recipient]

Powdermaker, Hortense, “A Woman Going Native,” in Ethnographic Fieldwork: An Anthropological Reader, ed. Antonius Robben and Jeffrey Sluka, Second Edition (Oxford: Wiley- Blackwell, 2012), 92-102.

Michael Hertzfeld, “The Cultural Politics of Gesture Reflections on the Embodiment of Ethnographic Practice,” 131-152.

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Rubric for Conducting and Writing Ethnographic Exercises

Quality No/Limited Some Proficiency Proficiency High Proficiency Rating Proficiency Engagement Did not engage with Engagement with Engagement Develops fresh insight with appropriate method is obvious with method is that integrates and Ethnographic method. or unimaginative original in terms challenges course Context (i.e. in terms of of questions readings and (a) Originality questions asked/raised. conversations. Student asked/raised, place Student pushes beyond comfort where research is somewhat zone by engaging with conducted). challenges communities/people her/himself by outside of Harvard pushing beyond (unless specifically asked comfort zone. to do engage with a Harvard community). Writing Up Reader cannot Thesis, arguments, Thesis, Thesis, argument, and Exercise determine how and argument, and questions raised are clear (b) Clarity thesis, arguments, questions raised questions raised and closely related to and questions raised are loosely related are fairly clear method. relate to method. to method. and related to method. (c ) Organization Unclear organization Some signs of Organization Fully & imaginatively OR organizational logical supports stated supports thesis and plan has nothing to organization. May thesis and purpose of the exercise. do with have abrupt or purpose of Sequence of ideas is ethnographic illogical shifts & exercise. But effective in illuminating exercise. ineffective flow of sequence of the significance and/or ideas. ideas could be drawbacks of a given better related to methodological method. approach. (d) Ideas Offers simplistic or Offers somewhat Offers solid but Substantial, logical, & undeveloped obvious reasoning less original concrete development of support for ideas. that may be too reasoning. ideas. Assumptions are Has off-topic broad. Details Contains some made explicit. Details are generations or pertaining to appropriate germane, original, and errors of fact methodological details or convincingly interpreted pertaining to a given approach are too examples with regards to method. general, not illuminating usefulness and/or interpreted, usefulness drawbacks of method. irrelevant, or and/or repetitive. drawbacks of method.

Grade/Additional Comments:

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