assignment on ethnography

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Course info.

• Dr. Xenia Cherkaev

Departments

• Anthropology

As Taught In

• Cultural Anthropology
• Ethnography

Learning Resource Types

How culture works, assignments, ethnographic projects.

Three ethnographic projects constitute 30% of your grade (10% each). These projects’ in-class presentation, workshopping, and critique constitute another 15% (5% each).

This assignment is tailored to each of the class’s first three sections: family, things, and agents and persons. It requires you to gather data about some aspect of our Bostonian life through ethnographic participant-observation and to analyze this data according to the assigned guidelines, drawing on one or more of the texts assigned for that section . You are advised, therefore, to start thinking about the project early on in each section, but to finish writing it after we have covered some of the readings. Because anthropology (and academic work generally) is a social activity, because thought happens in conversation and good ideas are collectively generated, part of this assignment also requires you to present your completed project in class and participate in the workshopping and critique of your classmates’ projects.

Ethnographic Assignment 1: Diagram a Set of Social Relations (Kin-Based or Not)

Ethnographic Assignment 2: Describe a Transaction

Ethnographic Assignment 3: Define Personhood

Reading Response Essays

Four short reading response essays (1–2 pages, one essay per section) constitute 20% of your grade.

This assignment requires you to summarize the main argument of one of the readings assigned for each of the four sections. Critical engagement of the texts’ arguments—by putting them into conversation with other assigned readings or by raising questions about how the argument’s logic does or does not work—are a welcome addition to the summary, but not a requirement. You may choose which of the assigned texts you write about, but response essays are due on the day that that particular reading is discussed .

Final Paper

A final 4–6 page essay, due on the last day of class, constitutes 20% of your grade, and there are two options for writing it:

Put three (3) texts from our syllabus in conversation, reading them against each other to discover their similarities, disagreements, and limitations: how are the social worlds described in these texts differently structured, and how have the authors differently analyzed these differently structured worlds?

Use two (2) texts from our syllabus to explain how culture works.

Student Example

“How Does Culture Work?” (PDF)

Note: All examples in the Assignments section appear courtesy of MIT students and are anonymous by request.

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Human Relations Area Files

Cultural information for education and research, ethnographic insights across cultures.

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View exercise overview

Francine barone, human relations area files, yale university, view online:, interactive slideshow group project instructions | essay instructions, note to instructors | text syllabus | syllabus slideshow group project instructions | essay instructions.

Dr. Francine Barone | [email protected] Human Relations Area Files at Yale University  

Note to Instructors

This introductory course covers a variety of anthropological themes and aspects of culture. Students are encouraged to debate whether or not cultural universals exist by comparing and contrasting ethnographic examples from around the world. Assignments include a group project and essay.

The materials for each week have been curated with quality, scope, diversity and ease of access in mind (see below). The weekly discussion topics (“key readings”) focus on engaging articles from the HRAF homepage. These articles offer cross-cultural insight on fundamental anthropological themes supported by ethnographic examples sourced from the eHRAF databases. In addition, each week is supported by one or more videos or mini-lecture for in-class or at-home viewing. Textbook chapters and optional advanced ethnographic or theoretical readings are also provided, allowing for some flexibility across different class levels at the discretion of the instructor.

Where possible, links to relevant documents within eHRAF World Cultures are indicated. Note that eHRAF database membership is required for full paragraph-level access to documents. The writing assignment similarly requires that students conduct research within eHRAF World Cultures. One week of this syllabus is therefore dedicated to an eHRAF Workshop for teaching students how to search the databases for ethnographic sources to support their essays. Instructors unfamiliar with eHRAF may be interested in learning more about teaching research skills with the eHRAF Databases in a webinar and/or free trial .

Built for online learning

For faculty currently seeking online learning resources for transitioning from traditional classroom teaching to digital environments, this syllabus and its exercises have been formatted for easy adoption via remote platforms. It has been adapted in light of campus shutdowns in March 2020 to prioritize digital resources over physical books. The required videos and articles for each week are all freely available online. A small number of the optional “advanced readings” may have a paywall where noted.

An extended “companion” reading list with texts is offered below should instructors or students have access to the texts now or in the future. These traditional textbooks, monographs, and journal articles are listed as supplementary reading. Again, links to digital versions of texts available in eHRAF are provided where applicable. Instructors can choose to assign these should students have access to them.

For more about adapting coursework for online learning conditions, see:

Remote futures: tips for online teaching and learning in anthropology

Ethnographic Insights Across Cultures  

Course description.

Through the comparative study of different cultures, anthropology explores the most fundamental questions about what it means to be human. Drawing upon eHRAF World Cultures and eHRAF Archaeology, this introductory course encourages students to explore cultural similarities and differences to better understand how culture shapes who we are: our societies, our shared meanings, and our everyday lives. Beginning with unpacking the concept of culture in anthropology, each week covers a different anthropological theme, including love, ritual performance, gender, language, food, and kinship. Evaluating cultural universals will allow students to contemplate the rich diversity of the human experience. With remote learning in mind, wholly online sources on timely topics are interwoven with classic ethnographic accounts to inspire lively class discussions. The cross-cultural and database research skills developed throughout the course provide a solid framework for understanding and analyzing anthropological concerns both within and beyond the social sciences.

Learning Objectives

• Develop an understanding of the concept of culture within anthropology
• Distinguish between ethnography and anthropology
• Read and interpret ethnographic data
• Compare and contrast diverse cultural insights and belief systems
• View one’s personal habits and beliefs within global social and historical context
• Draw meaningful cross-cultural conclusions about human universals
• Conduct independent database research

Timetable & Class Level

This teaching exercise is aimed at Introductory-level courses in socio-cultural anthropology at community colleges or universities. It is structured for approximately 2-3 course hours per week divided between a “lecture” portion as well as weekly “seminar discussions”. However, the syllabus is designed to be adaptable to suit other timetables, class sizes, and levels. It can be supplemented with more advanced ethnographic or theoretical material and additional reading to scale up for larger and/or more advanced level courses.

Suggested Grading Breakdown

Activity                                               Percentage

Attendance & Participation                 20%

Research Paper                                  50%

Group Project                                      30%

Required Texts

This syllabus prioritizes digital resources. The vast majority of the weekly materials (with the exception of the eHRAF Databases) are entirely open access. The recommended free and open-access textbooks for the course are the following:

• Brown, N., Tubelle de Gonzalez, L. and T. McIllwraith (eds.) 2017. Perspectives: An Open Invitation to Cultural Anthropology (2nd Edition) . SACC, American Anthropological Association.
• Dastrup, R. A. 2015. Introduction to Human Geography . PressBooks.
• Stein, F., S. Lazar, M. Candea, H.Diemberger, J. Robbins, A. Sanchez & R. Stasch. 2018. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology (CEA) .
• Wesch, M. 2018. The Art of Being Human: A Textbook for Cultural Anthropology . New Prairie Press.

Recommended companion texts & supplementary advanced reading

This supplementary reading list contains additional recommended texts. Links to online versions are provided if available.

• Barnard, A. & J. Spencer (eds) 1996. Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology . Routledge.
• Barnard, A. 2000. History and theory in anthropology . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (Edward Evan). 1937. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among The Azande . Oxford: Clarendon Press. https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=fo07-071 .
• Hendry, J. 2016. An Introduction to Social Anthropology: Sharing Our Worlds . Red Globe Press.
• Hobsbawm, E. and T. Ranger. 1938. The Invention of Tradition . Cambridge: CUP.
• Ingold, T. 1996. Key Debates in Anthropology . London: Routledge.
• Mead, Margaret. 1928. Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation . New York: W. Morrow & Company. https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=ou08-003 .
• Murdock, George P. 1949. Social Structure . Toronto: Macmillan. (PDF, archive.org)
• Pountney, L. and Maric Tomislav. 2015. Introducing Anthropology: What Makes Us Human? Cambridge: Polity Press.

Group Project: Interview & Presentation

The purpose of this interview project is to learn about different cultural perspectives or experiences that your fellow classmates may have in comparison with yourself. Each student should share some aspect of their own “culture” and/or ethnic background or ancestry (e.g. ideas or practices learned from their parents or grandparents), or, alternatively, another country that they have lived in or traveled to. “American” cultural examples are acceptable, but groups should have at least 3 different regional examples from personal experience to compare and contrast.

Assignment : Teams of 3-4 students must interview each other on some aspect of the topic for the week that their group is assigned to. On the class day for that topic, the entire team must come prepared to present their findings in the form of a PowerPoint presentation with annotated slides. Total presentation time should be around 20-25 minutes . The subject of the presentation should roughly be what commonalities and differences your group found between the beliefs and practices of its team members’ cultures or ethnic backgrounds. Conclude the presentation by assessing whether or not the team members believe that the chosen aspect(s) of the weekly topic covered constitute a “cultural universal”. Why or why not?

Guidelines:

• Students will be assigned into groups of 3-4 students.
• The interview and presentation should be based on the general theme of the assigned week, but groups can choose a narrower focus within this thematic area (e.g. if the theme is “love”, marriage, dating, divorce or romance are acceptable topics).
• Each team will meet – via Zoom, WebEx, Skype, or equivalent – at some point prior to the lecture for the week of their topic.
• Student teams should prepare 3-5 unique questions to ask each other in the style of an interview. Interviewers within the group can each pose different questions if desired.
• You do not have to include the exact answers to every question in your presentation.
• The interviews should help you get to know your fellow classmates , while presentations should summarize the similarities and differences that you discovered .
• Each team member should take an equal part in preparing and presenting to the class.
• An open class discussion led by the team will follow the presentation.

Essay: Do cultural universals exist?

Choose any aspect of human life or anthropological theme and evaluate whether or not you believe it to be a cultural universal based on ethnographic evidence. Refer to the eHRAF articles that we have read and discussed for each week as a model. However, endeavor to choose an original subject to focus on. If you choose to explore one of the subjects from the weekly syllabus or aspects of it, you must use predominantly new examples and a new angle, supplemented with original theoretical and ethnographic research. Any of the listed textbooks are valid sources for theoretical background, but you are welcome to go beyond these texts by visiting anthropological journals.

While you are free to write about something that you have experienced in your own culture, use the eHRAF World Cultures database to decide on your topic or trait, and to conduct research across several cultures, to ensure that you will be able to gather enough ethnographic data for comparison. You may refer to the Outline of Cultural Materials (OCM) to decide on a topic. Paper topics and proposed titles must be emailed to the professor for approval at least 3 weeks before the deadline.

Research guidelines: Aim for 3-5 ethnographic examples from various parts of the world. You may choose any cultures that interest you as long as they are not all in the same world region (refer to Browse Cultures and/or the Search Results in eHRAF for a regional breakdown). As long as you meet the minimum content requirements, you may include additional ethnographic materials from outside of eHRAF. Remember to conclude your essay with reflections on cross-cultural differences and similarities.

References: All sources must be correctly referenced with in-text citations and listed in a bibliography. Refer to university guidelines on citations, plagiarism, and academic content.

Multimedia: You may supplement your essay with multimedia content including creating your own videos, presentations, photos, or digital artwork.

Word limit: Essays have a word limit of 2000 words. If including an original video or photo narrative, word limit is flexible at around 1,500 words in addition to the media. High resolution files must be hosted somewhere accessible by the essay due date.

Course Outline

Week 1: uniqueness and universals: an introduction to anthropology and culture..

According to Horace Miner (1956:503), “The anthropologist has become so familiar with the diversity of ways in which different people behave in similar situations that he is not apt to be surprised by even the most exotic customs”. Anthropology and anthropologists have thus acquired the reputation for making the strange familiar and the familiar strange. Taking this as a starting point for the exploration of culture, this week we will ask, what (if anything) makes humans unique? What accounts for cultural variation and difference within and between societies? Why might anthropologists want to draw generalizing conclusions across many cultures? Video:

• Robert Sapolsky – The Uniqueness of Humans (~32 mins)

Key reading:

• Making the strange familiar and the familiar strange
• The Return of the Comparative Method in Anthropology

Textbook reading:

• “Understanding Culture” , Introduction to Human Geography : Read section 3.2 up to and including the section on Norms.
• Medeiros and Cowall. “The Culture Concept” , in Perspectives .

Advanced reading:

• Miner, H. 1956. “Body Ritual among the Nacirema”. American Anthropologist , 58: 503-507. doi: 1525/aa.1956.58.3.02a00080
• Howell, 2018. “Ethnography” , Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology

Week 2. eHRAF database research workshop

This workshop will prepare students to conduct research within the eHRAF World Cultures and eHRAF Archaeology databases. It will begin with a brief overview of ethnography, anthropology and cross-cultural research, including the methods employed by cross-cultural researchers. The remainder of the workshop will be a practical guide to browsing, searching, and saving search results in eHRAF. Students will be shown how paragraphs in eHRAF are indexed by subject, as well as encouraged to conduct sample searches and recognize relevant results in preparation for their essay assignments.

Recommended reading from Introducing Cross-Cultural Research :

• 1 – Introducing Cross Cultural Research (PDF)
• 2 – What’s your Question? (PDF)

About HRAF :

• History and Development of HRAF Collections
• HRAF Timeline

Class Activity :

• HRAF Jeoparody Game

Database Guides:

• Database Contents: Subjects, Cultures, and Traditions (PDF)
• eHRAF Video Tutorials (YouTube)
• Search Examples
• eHRAF User Guide (WebHelp)

Week 3. Emotions in motion: Feelings and their expression

How do different cultures around the world process and express their emotions? Are some peoples more warm and welcoming, while others are cold and stern, or are these merely stereotypes? This week looks at two specific emotions in cross-cultural perspective – fear and anger – to see how they are manifested and controlled in different societies. Do we all have the same fears? How can some cultures be better at controlling tempers than others? A class activity based on the Atlas of Emotions allows students to explore their emotions, possible triggers, and varied responses.

• Are there universal expressions of emotion? – Sophie Zadeh (~5 mins)
• How Culture Drives Behaviours – Julien S. Bourrelle (~12 mins)
• Towards an Anthropology of Fear: Are some things universally terrifying?
• How do parents around the world teach children to control their anger?

Class activity:

• Explore the Atlas of Emotions
• Russel, James A. 1991. “ Culture and the Categorization of Emotions ”, Psychological Bulletin . 110(3): 426-450 (PDF)

Week 4. Does romantic love look (and feel) the same everywhere?

You can’t eat. You can’t sleep. You can hardly concentrate on this sentence. Your heart skips a beat when the object of your affection walks into the room. In lieu of food and rest, you survive on daydreams of kisses and warm embraces. Do all cultures recognize this bizarre affliction as a tell-tale sign of being in love? This week we will discuss whether romantic love and kissing are cultural universals. The video for this topic explores the impact that technology may have on love and relationships. Has technology changed what it means to love? How many different types of love are there?

• Technology hasn’t changed love. Here’s Why. – Helen Fisher (~19 mins)
• Romantic or disgusting? Passionate kissing is not a human universal
• Goleman, D. 1992. “ After Kinship and Marriage, Anthropology Discovers Love “. NY Times.
• Wesch, M. Love in Four Cultures , in The Art of Being Human . (PDF)
• Jankowiak, W. & Fischer, E. 1992. A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Romantic Love . Ethnology . 31. 149. 10.2307/3773618. (PDF)
• Lindholm, C. 2006. Romantic Love and Anthropology . Etnofoor 10: 1-12. (online/PDF)

Week 5. Gestures of kindness and reciprocity, or when no good deed goes unpunished

Gift-giving as a means of displaying kindness and gratitude is one way that we show people that we care about them. In practice, finding the right gift can be stressful and full of potential landmines. What if the recipient hates the gift, or worse, feels insulted by it? This scenario gives us a hint that saying “thanks” can sometimes be a thankless experience in our own lives and relationships, let alone throughout cultures all across the globe. This week, we explore the anthropological perspective on gifts and other types of exchange, including reciprocity (generalized, balanced, and negative) and redistribution of wealth. We will also look at the language of exchange and the various forms a thank-you can take.

• What is a gift economy? – Alex Gendler (~4 mins)
• Gift-Giving – Anthropology Matters (~7 mins) , if assigning advanced reading below
• Thanks, but no thanks: Expressions of gratitude in eHRAF World Cultures
• Wesch, M. The Power of Language , and Creating the Good Life (pp. 307-312 only), in The Art of Being Human . (PDF)
• Lyon, S. “ Economics: Modes of Exchange ”, in Perspectives . Read section “Modes of Exchange” only, pp. 127-135. (PDF)
• Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1920. “Kula: The Circulating Exchange of Valuables in The Archipelagoes of Eastern New Guinea.” Man 20 (51): 97–105. https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=ol06-007 .
• Murdock, George Peter. 1970. “Rank and Potlach Among the Haida.” Yale University Publications in Anthropology . New Haven: Human Relations Area Files Press. https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=ne09-002 .
• Mauss, M. 2002 [1954]. The Gift: The form and reason for exchange in archaic societies . London: Routledge.

Week 6. Place, space and the dynamics house and home

Winston Churchill notably proclaimed, “We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape us.” How do the spaces we inhabit become places we embody? The concept of “home” goes well beyond the bricks and mortar (or wood or clay) of the dwellings in which we reside. How many memories of your home are of the structure itself, and how many of are the relationships that were nurtured inside of it? This week explores the concepts of house and home as both material and cultural constructions, and introduces the idea of place-making in urban anthropology.

• Where is home? – Pico Iyer (~14 mins)
• Home Truths: An Anthropology of House and Home
• On Placemaking: An Anthropologist’s Perspective
• Samanani, F. and J. Lenhard. 2019. “ House and Home ”, Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology.
• Ember, C. 2014. “ Dwellings ” in C. R. Ember, ed. Explaining Human Culture (HRAF).
• Lawrence-Zuniga, D. 2017. Space and Place . Oxford Bibliographies.
• Bourdieu, P. 1970. “ The Berber house or the world reversed. ” Social Science Information . 9(2): 151-170. (Paywall)

Week 7. Cultures and calendars: making and keeping time

Do all peoples conceive of time in the same ways? What does the past, present, or future mean for different cultures? How do we mark major milestones throughout the year, or events within our lifetimes? The videos for this week consider different ways of thinking and speaking about time and space, including deciphering the ancient Aztec calendar stone. The key readings focus on how two annual events – the spring and winter solstices – are celebrated around the world, and how these festivities mark time, space, and our place within the world.

• How Do Different Cultures Think About Time? (~5 mins)
• The Aztec Sun Stone (The Calendar Stone) (~6.5 mins)
• Celebrating the Vernal Equinox
• Winter Solstice Celebrations Around the World
• Antrosio, J. 2020. “ Time ”, Living Anthropologically (Cultural Ecology 2020).
• “Chapter III: Time and Space”, (pp. 94-138) in Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1940. Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People . Oxford: Clarendon. https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=fj22-001 . (eHRAF access required)
• Zeitlyn, D. “Looking Forward, Looking Back”, History and Anthropology 26(4): 381-407, DOI: 10.1080/02757206.2015.1076813

Week 8. Defining selfhood: gender, sexuality, identity and power

Is gender a product of culture, or of biology? How does society shape our understanding of gender, including gender roles and identities? This week will explore the connections between gender and power by focusing on the manifestation of female agency across societies. Even from within restricted or oppressed conditions, ethnographic data shows that women can assert authority and control over themselves and others in creative ways; for instance, by leveraging access to areas of society where men have little to no interest or jurisdiction. We will follow this up with ideas about fatherhood and masculinity around the world. Lastly, this week will examine the question of fixity or fluidity of gender categories by exploring pronouns. What insights can gender nonconforming children give us about the origins and/or mutability of gender as a cultural construct?

• The power of women’s anger – Soraya Chemaly (~12 mins)
• How to talk (and listen) to transgender people – Jackson Bird (~6 mins)
• Women, Gender and Power in eHRAF
• An Anthropology of Dads: Exploring fatherhood in eHRAF
• Bennet, J. 2016. “ She? Ze? They? What’s in a Gender Pronoun “, NY Times.
• Yong, E. 2019. “ Young Trans Children Know Who They Are ”, The Atlantic.
• Ember, C., et al. 2019. “ Gender ”, In C. R. Ember, ed. Explaining Human Culture (HRAF)
• Wesch, M. Becoming Our Selves , in The Art of Being Human (PDF)
• Mukhopadhyay, C. Gender and Sexuality , in Perspectives (PDF)
• Wilson, A. 2019. Queer Anthropology , Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology.
• Schäfers, M. 2017. “ Voice “, Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology
• Lozios, P, and E. Papataxiarchis. 1991. “Gender and Kinship in Marriage and Alternative Contexts”, Contested Identities: Gender and Kinship in Modern Greece . Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=eh01-079 .
• Dubisch, J. 1993. “‘Foreign Chickens’ and Other Outsiders: Gender and Community in Greece”, American Ethnologist 20(2): 272–87. https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=eh01-027 .

Week 9. “You’re, like, really pretty”: on bodies and beauty standards

Do you feel beautiful today? Is physical beauty perceived in the same ways everywhere in the world? This week we will explore how culture shapes the body and our perceptions of it. Western beauty standards promoted by the fashion industry, popular media – and perpetuated by each of us when we scroll through social media and like all the “pretty” people and things – have become ubiquitous, arguably encroaching upon every corner of the globe. But what about the majority of bodies in the world that are not tall, skinny, or white? What other perspectives on beauty exist?

• Documentary on Societal Beauty Standards (~7 mins)
• How People Define Beauty Around the World (~4 mins)
• “I have worth”: female body confidence and perceptions of beauty around the world
• Anderson-Fye E.P. Anthropological Perspectives on Physical Appearance and Body Image . In: Thomas F. Cash, editor. Encyclopedia of Body Image and Human Appearance, Vol 1 . San Diego: Academic Press, pp. 15–22.
• Wesch, M. The (Un)Making of the Modern Body and The Dynamics of Culture in The Art of Being Human (PDF)
• Gomółka, A. 2017. “Ugliness: A Cultural History” [book review] 3202/caa.reviews.2017.76 .
• Nagar, I. & Virk, R. 2017. “The Struggle Between the Real and Ideal: Impact of Acute Media Exposure on Body Image of Young Indian Women”, SAGE Open. 1177/2158244017691327 .

Week 10. Let the good times roll: rituals, rites of passage and liminality

Anthropologist Victor Turner defined ritual as “prescribed formal behavior for occasions not given over to technological routine, having reference to beliefs in mystical beings and powers”. The subject of much anthropological analysis, rituals can in fact be secular or religious. They may mark major milestones for a society or community, constitute a rite of passage for individuals, or be enacted through more subtle behaviors in everyday life. Do all cultures have the same types of rituals? This week’s videos introduce Van Gennep’s three stages of rites of passage and Turner’s concepts of liminality and communitas in order to explore rituals as acts of social performance as well as personal transition. A case study of Cajun Mardi Gras ritual traditions from eHRAF World Cultures highlights the inversion of cultural norms symbolized by its carnival-like indulgences.

• History of Ideas – Rituals (~13 mins)
• Van Gennep’s Stages of Rites of Passage (~2 mins)
• Laissez les bon temps rouler ! Mardi Gras and Cajun Traditions in eHRAF
• Henninger-Rener, S. “ Religion ” in Perspectives
• Griffith, L. “ Performance “, in Perspectives . Read section “Ritual as Performance”.
• Brown, G. 2003. “Theorizing ritual as performance: explorations of ritual indeterminacy”. Journal of Ritual Studies , 17(1): 3–18. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44368641 .
• Sjorslev, I. 1987. “Untimely Gods and French Perfume: Ritual, Rules and Deviance in The Brazilian Candomble”, Folk 29: 5–22. https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=so11-009 . (Membership required)

Week 11. Witchcraft and sorcery: dealing with misfortune, magic, and a zero-sum universe

Why do some guys have all the luck? Why do bad things happen to good people? These are questions we often find ourselves asking when life seems distinctly unfair. In a zero-sum universe, one person’s good fortune is believed to come at the expense of another’s misfortune. Anthropologist Evans-Pritchard’s fieldwork and research on witchcraft and sorcery in Africa – detailed in his classic account, Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande – is a rich starting point for exploring how other cultures view misfortune and malice in the absence of a belief in “chance” or “coincidence”. Rural Irish folktales about fairies and their magic in eHRAF provide a fun case study for cultural comparison.

• Strange Beliefs: Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard (begin at 07:30; ~45 mins)

Key readings:

• Luck of the Irish: Folklore and fairies in Rural Ireland
• Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1937. “Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande.” Oxford: Clarendon Press. https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=fo07-071 . Read pages 69-70.

Textbook readings:

• Benussi, M. 2019. “ Magic ”, Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology
• Espírito Santo, D. 2019. “ Divination “, Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology

Advanced readings:

• Malinowski, B. 1935. Coral Gardens and Their Magic: A Study of the Methods of Tilling The Soil and of Agricultural Rites in the Trobriand Islands. Vol. One, The Description of Gardening . New York: American Book Company. https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=ol06-002 .
• LeVine, R. 1963. “Witchcraft and Sorcery in a Gusii Community”, Witchcraft And Sorcery In East Africa [By] John Beattie London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=fl08-015 .
• Beattie, J. 1963. “Sorcery in Bunyoro”, Witchcraft and Sorcery In East Africa By John Beattie And Others . London: Routledge and Paul. https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=fk11-008 .

Week 12. Puppy love: animals and their humans

You may have noticed by now that the internet is full of cat photos and cute puppy memes. It is clear that the human love of pets is a powerful and global phenomenon. For many pet owners, their furry (or scaly) domestic companions transcend any simple categorization of non-human animal. Indeed, research shows that it is a growing global trend for pet owners to consider their animals to be full members of their families, to dote upon them as they would children or romantic partners, and to thereby develop strong mutual bonds of dependency, love, and support. What can anthropology tell us about the relationship between humans and their fur babies?

• A Brief History of Dogs – David Ian Howe (~4 mins)
• Why We Love Dogs More Than Humans (~4 mins)
• Defining Domestication with Timothy Ingold (~3 mins)
• Unconditional Love: Is devotion to pets a cultural universal?
• White, T. and M. Candea. 2018. “ Animals “, Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology

Advanced Reading:

• “Chapter 10: The Sacrificial Role of Cattle”, 248-271, in Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1956. “Nuer Religion.” Oxford: Clarendon Press. https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=fj22-016 . (Membership required)
• Leach, E. “Anthropological Aspects of Language: Animal Categories and Verbal Abuse”,Anthrozoös,2:3,151-165,DOI: 10.2752/089279389787058055 (Paywall)

Week 13. Good Eats: The Anthropology of Food

Food is powerful and omnipresent within human society. We need to eat to survive, yet the enjoyment of food is about much more than nutrition alone. The symbolic ability of food to connect people to time, place, and relationships makes it a diverse field of study for anthropologists. We all have strong feelings about foods that we love or hate. Is pineapple an acceptable topping for pizza? How do you feel about black licorice? And let us not get the British or Australians started on Marmite. Some aspects of food and eating are universal, such as commensality – the act of eating together with others. This practice, found the world over, reinforces strong bonds of family and friendship within a community. Food can also be a marker of social distance, as you will rarely share a meal with people you dislike (Thanksgiving dinner notwithstanding!). This week will take an ethnographic look at culinary adventures, including the social life of cheese, as well as the delights of chocolate and its origins in Mesoamerica.

• The History of Chocolate – Deanna Pucciarelli (~4 mins)
• American Kids try Dutch Food (~5 mins)
• The Social Life of Cheese
• The Mesoamerican origins of chocolate featuring eHRAF Archaeology
• Craving Comfort: bonding with food across cultures
• Nahum-Claudel, C. 2016. “ Feasting “, Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology
• Fox, R. 2014. Food and Eating: An Anthropological Perspective . SIRC. ( PDF )
• Mintz, S., and C. M. Du Bois. 2002. “The Anthropology of Food and Eating”, Annual Review of Anthropology, 31: 99-119. Read online: jstor.org/stable/4132873
• Douglas, M. 1972. “Deciphering a Meal”, Daedalus, 101(1): 61-81. Read online: jstor.org/stable/20024058

Breaking Down Barriers – Using Ethnography to Build Cultural Understanding

Ethnography is a research method used to study human cultures and societies. At its core, ethnography is the study of human cultures and societies through observation and participation in their day-to-day activities.

Table of Contents

Ethnographers aim to gain an in-depth understanding of the culture they are studying by immersing themselves in it and observing it from within. This approach allows them to gather rich qualitative data that can help explain how people think, behave, interact with one another, and make sense of their world.

This research method is widely used across various fields such as anthropology, sociology , education, business, and more to gain insights into different cultures and ways of life.

Ethnography – An Introduction

Ethnography is a research method that involves the systematic study of human cultures and societies through observation and participation in their daily activities. It typically requires immersion in the culture being studied, often for an extended period of time, to gain a deep understanding of its norms, values, beliefs, and practices.

The key components of ethnography include participant observation, fieldwork, and data analysis.

Participant observation involves the researcher taking an active role in the culture they are studying by participating in its activities and observing its members’ behaviour. Fieldwork refers to the process of collecting data through direct observation, interviews, and other methods while living among the people being studied. Data analysis involves interpreting the data collected during fieldwork to develop insights into the culture under study.

Ethnography differs from other research methods like surveys or interviews in several ways. Surveys typically involve collecting data from a large group of people using standardized questions or measurements. Interviews involve asking individuals about their experiences or opinions on a particular topic. In contrast, ethnography emphasizes direct observation of cultural practices and behaviors within their natural context rather than relying on self-reported information.

Overall, ethnography provides a unique perspective on human cultures and societies that cannot be obtained through other research methods. By immersing themselves in a culture and experiencing it first-hand, ethnographers can gain insights into how people think, behave, and interact with one another that would be difficult to obtain through any other means.

Participant Observation

Participant observation is a research method used in ethnography and other social sciences that involves the researcher taking an active role in the culture or group being studied.

In participant observation, the researcher immerses themselves in the culture and participates in its activities while observing and recording their experiences. This approach allows the researcher to gain a deep understanding of the culture’s norms, values, beliefs, and practices from an insider’s perspective.

Participant observation typically involves several stages, including gaining entry into the culture or group being studied, establishing trust with its members, learning about its social structure and dynamics, participating in its activities while observing them, and collecting data through field notes or other methods.

The process is time-consuming and challenging, but it can provide rich qualitative data that would be difficult to obtain through other means.

Fieldwork is a research method used in ethnography and other social sciences that involves conducting research in the natural environment or “field” where the culture or group being studied is located. In the context of ethnography, fieldwork typically involves immersing oneself in the culture being studied to gain a deep understanding of its norms, values, beliefs, and practices.

During fieldwork, researchers may engage in participant observation by actively participating in the activities of the culture they are studying while observing and recording their experiences. They may also conduct interviews with members of the culture to gain additional insights into their perspectives and experiences.

Cultural Informant Interviews

Cultural informants are individuals who are knowledgeable about the culture being studied and can provide valuable information to researchers. The ethnographer interviews them to gain insights into their perspectives, experiences, and beliefs.

During cultural informant interviews, researchers ask open-ended questions to gather information about the society’s norms, values, beliefs, and practices. The goal is to gain a deep understanding of the culture from the perspective of its members. Informants may be chosen based on their expertise in specific areas or because they are representative of particular groups within the culture being studied.

Cultural informant interviews can be conducted individually or in groups and may take place in person or remotely. They typically involve building rapport with informants over time to establish trust and create an open dialogue.

Analysing and Describing Ethnographic Findings

Analyzing and describing ethnographic findings involves interpreting the data collected during fieldwork in order to draw conclusions about the culture being studied. The anthropologist begins by organizing their field notes, transcripts, and other data into categories or themes that emerge from the data itself. This involves identifying recurring patterns, themes, or ideas that arise during observation or interviews.

Once the anthropologist has organized their data into categories or themes, they identify the key cultural concepts that emerge from their analysis. These may include values, beliefs, practices, symbols, or social structures that are central to the culture being studied.

The anthropologist then uses their data to describe the norms and behaviors that are common within the culture being studied. This could involve discussing how people interact with each other in social settings or how they communicate with one another.

To understand cultural practices and beliefs fully, it’s important for the anthropologist to provide context for them. One of the ways anthropologists achieve this aim is by using a style known as thick description .

Thick description refers to the practice of providing detailed, contextualized accounts of cultural phenomena. When writing anthropological reports, ethnographers aim to provide readers with enough information to understand the cultural context in which events or activities took place. This type of detailed description is essential for understanding the complexities of human cultures and societies.

Based on their analysis of the data, the anthropologist draws conclusions about what they have learned about the culture being studied. This could involve making generalizations about cultural values or identifying unique features of a particular group within the culture.

Finally, the anthropologist presents their findings in a clear and concise manner using appropriate qualitative research methods such as narrative description, thematic analysis, or grounded theory.

Best Practices for Conducting Ethnographic Research

Develop a clear research question: Before beginning your research, it’s important to have a well-defined research question that will guide your study and help you stay focused on what you want to learn.

Build rapport with participants: Ethnography often involves spending extended periods of time in the field and building relationships with members of the community being studied. It’s essential to establish trust and create an open dialogue with participants.

Use multiple methods: Ethnographers use a variety of data collection methods, including observation, interviews, surveys, and document analysis. Using multiple methods can provide a more comprehensive understanding of the culture being studied.

Maintain detailed field notes: Accurate and detailed field notes are crucial for ethnographic research as they provide a record of observations, conversations, and experiences that can be analyzed later.

Practice reflexivity: Reflexivity is the process of reflecting on one’s own role in the research process and how this may impact data collection and analysis. Ethnographers should be aware of their own biases and assumptions and actively work to minimize their influence on the study.

Ensure confidentiality: Confidentiality is critical in ethnographic research as participants may share personal information or engage in behaviors that could put them at risk if made public. Researchers must take steps to protect participant privacy and ensure that any information shared is kept confidential.

Analyze data systematically: After collecting data, it’s essential to analyze it systematically using established qualitative research methods such as coding, thematic analysis, or grounded theory.

By following these best practices, ethnographers can conduct rigorous and ethical research that provides valuable insights into human cultures and societies while also respecting the rights and privacy of participants.

How Ethnography Differs from Other Qualitative Methods

Ethnography differs from other qualitative research methods, such as focus groups or interviews, in two key ways.

First, the main aim of ethnographic research is the interpretation of the shared norms and beliefs of the community under study. This means that ethnographers are more interested in understanding how a group interacts with each other and their cultural worlds than they are in individual perspectives.

Second, ethnography relies heavily on fieldwork. This means that ethnographers must immerse themselves in the daily lives of the people they are researching in order to understand their culture. This can be done through direct observation or participation in activities. This means that ethnographers often live with the people they are researching for extended periods of time in order to really understand their culture.

The Ethical Considerations of Ethnographic Research

When conducting ethnographic research, there are a number of ethical considerations that need to be taken into account in order to ensure that the research is conducted in a responsible and respectful manner. This is especially important when working with vulnerable populations.

The following are some of the challenges involved in conducting ethnographic research and the ethical considerations that need to be taken into account.

Informed Consent

Conducting anthropological research requires gaining the trust of those being studied. This can be a challenge, especially if the researcher is coming from a different culture.

It is important to build relationships of trust and mutual respect in order to conduct ethical research. This can be done by spending time getting to know the people you will be working with, learning about their culture and customs, and respecting their way of life. If people do not trust you, they will not participate in your research.

It is also important to obtain informed consent from those who will be participating in your research. This means that participants must be made aware of what the research entails, what their role in the research will be, and how their personal information will be used. Participants must also be given the opportunity to ask questions and withdraw from the study at any time.

Respecting Privacy and Confidentiality

Another ethical consideration is protecting the confidentiality of participants. This means keeping their information safe and ensuring that it will not be used for any purpose other than what was originally agreed upon.

In some cases, researchers may need to change the names of participants or use pseudonyms in order to protect their identity. Any recordings or notes that are made during the course of the research should also be kept confidential.

This can be a challenge in ethnographic research because the very nature of the methodology involves observing people in their natural environment. This means that researchers may inadvertently collect personal information about participants without their knowledge or consent. One way to overcome this challenge is to establish clear boundaries with participants at the beginning of the research process and make sure they are aware of what information will be collected and how it will be used.

Code of Ethics

All anthropologists are bound by a code of ethics which sets out principles for conducting responsible and ethical research. The code of ethics includes principles such as respect for human dignity, protecting participant welfare, minimizing harm, upholding confidentiality, and obtaining informed consent.

The Challenges of Conducting Ethnographic Research

The goal of ethnographic research is to understand how people interact with each other and the world around them. In order to do this, ethnographers immerse themselves in the lives of the people they are studying. This can be a challenge, both logistically and emotionally. Here are some of the challenges involved in conducting ethnographic research.

Gaining access to the people being studied

One of the biggest challenges in conducting ethnographic research is gaining access to the necessary people and places. This can be difficult for a number of reasons, including language barriers, unfamiliarity with local customs, and lack of personal connections.

One way to overcome this challenge is to partner with someone who is already familiar with the community you’re researching. This person can act as a guide and introduce you to key members of the community who can provide valuable insights into your research topic.

Another challenge faced by many ethnographers is gaining the cooperation of research subjects. This can be difficult because people are often reluctant to talk about sensitive topics or share personal information with strangers. One way to overcome this challenge is to build rapport with your research subjects by establishing trust and demonstrating your understanding of their culture and values. Only once you have gained their trust should you begin asking questions about your research topic.

Time Commitment

Another challenge is the time commitment required. In order to really understand a culture, an ethnographer needs to spend a significant amount of time observing and interacting with the people in that culture. This can be logistically difficult, especially if the society under study is located in a different country or region. It can also be emotionally challenging, as it requires an ethnographer to be open and vulnerable with the people they are studying.

Analysis and Interpretation

Once an ethnographer has collected their data, they then face the challenge of analysis and interpretation. This is difficult because ethnographers must not only understand the culture they are studying, but also their own culture and biases.

In addition, ethnographic data often takes the form of unstructured observations, interviews, and field notes, which can be challenging to organize and interpret. One way to overcome this challenge is to use data management software like NVivo or Atlas.ti to help you organize and analyse your data.

And finally, the ethnographer must find a way to communicate their findings to others who have not experienced the society first hand. This is where thick description is crucial.

Conclusion – Ethnography is a Powerful Tool

Ethnography is a powerful research method that allows anthropologists to study human cultures and societies in depth. Its strength lies in its ability to provide rich, detailed descriptions of cultural practices, beliefs, and values while also providing context for these phenomena.

Ethnography differs from other qualitative research methods in that it emphasizes the importance of long-term fieldwork and participant observation as a way of gaining deep insights into cultural phenomena. By immersing themselves in the culture being studied, ethnographers can gain a nuanced understanding of complex social processes and interactions.

As such, ethnography continues to be an important tool for anthropologists seeking to understand the diverse ways in which people live and interact with one another around the world.

Related Terminology:

Thick description: A type of ethnographic data that provides highly detailed, contextualized accounts of social phenomena.

Triangulation: A method used by ethnographers to corroborate their findings by collecting data from multiple sources.

Qualitative research : A type of research that uses inductive, observational methods to generate rich, detailed data about a particular phenomenon.

Quantitative research: A type of research that uses deductive, statistical methods to generate numerical data about a particular phenomenon.

Anthropology Glossary Terms starting with E

Ethnogenesis

Ethnosemantics

Ethnography

Ethnomusicology

Existentialism

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Anthropology

What this handout is about.

This handout briefly situates anthropology as a discipline of study within the social sciences. It provides an introduction to the kinds of writing that you might encounter in your anthropology courses, describes some of the expectations that your instructors may have, and suggests some ways to approach your assignments. It also includes links to information on citation practices in anthropology and resources for writing anthropological research papers.

What is anthropology, and what do anthropologists study?

Anthropology is the study of human groups and cultures, both past and present. Anthropology shares this focus on the study of human groups with other social science disciplines like political science, sociology, and economics. What makes anthropology unique is its commitment to examining claims about human ‘nature’ using a four-field approach. The four major subfields within anthropology are linguistic anthropology, socio-cultural anthropology (sometimes called ethnology), archaeology, and physical anthropology. Each of these subfields takes a different approach to the study of humans; together, they provide a holistic view. So, for example, physical anthropologists are interested in humans as an evolving biological species. Linguistic anthropologists are concerned with the physical and historical development of human language, as well as contemporary issues related to culture and language. Archaeologists examine human cultures of the past through systematic examinations of artifactual evidence. And cultural anthropologists study contemporary human groups or cultures.

What kinds of writing assignments might I encounter in my anthropology courses?

The types of writing that you do in your anthropology course will depend on your instructor’s learning and writing goals for the class, as well as which subfield of anthropology you are studying. Each writing exercise is intended to help you to develop particular skills. Most introductory and intermediate level anthropology writing assignments ask for a critical assessment of a group of readings, course lectures, or concepts. Here are three common types of anthropology writing assignments:

Critical essays

This is the type of assignment most often given in anthropology courses (and many other college courses). Your anthropology courses will often require you to evaluate how successfully or persuasively a particular anthropological theory addresses, explains, or illuminates a particular ethnographic or archaeological example. When your instructor tells you to “argue,” “evaluate,” or “assess,” they are probably asking for some sort of critical essay. (For more help with deciphering your assignments, see our handout on understanding assignments .)

Writing a “critical” essay does not mean focusing only on the most negative aspects of a particular reading or theory. Instead, a critical essay should evaluate or assess both the weaknesses and the merits of a given set of readings, theories, methods, or arguments.

Sample assignment:

Assess the cultural evolutionary ideas of late 19th century anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan in terms of recent anthropological writings on globalization (select one recent author to compare with Morgan). What kinds of anthropological concerns or questions did Morgan have? What kinds of anthropological concerns underlie the current anthropological work on globalization that you have selected? And what assumptions, theoretical frameworks, and methodologies inform these questions or projects?

Ethnographic projects

Another common type of research and writing activity in anthropology is the ethnographic assignment. Your anthropology instructor might expect you to engage in a semester-long ethnographic project or something shorter and less involved (for example, a two-week mini-ethnography).

So what is an ethnography? “Ethnography” means, literally, a portrait (graph) of a group of people (ethnos). An ethnography is a social, political, and/or historical portrait of a particular group of people or a particular situation or practice, at a particular period in time, and within a particular context or space. Ethnographies have traditionally been based on an anthropologist’s long-term, firsthand research (called fieldwork) in the place and among the people or activities they are studying. If your instructor asks you to do an ethnographic project, that project will likely require some fieldwork.

Because they are so important to anthropological writing and because they may be an unfamiliar form for many writers, ethnographies will be described in more detail later in this handout.

Spend two hours riding the Chapel Hill Transit bus. Take detailed notes on your observations, documenting the setting of your fieldwork, the time of day or night during which you observed and anything that you feel will help paint a picture of your experience. For example, how many people were on the bus? Which route was it? What time? How did the bus smell? What kinds of things did you see while you were riding? What did people do while riding? Where were people going? Did people talk? What did they say? What were people doing? Did anything happen that seemed unusual, ordinary, or interesting to you? Why? Write down any thoughts, self-reflections, and reactions you have during your two hours of fieldwork. At the end of your observation period, type up your fieldnotes, including your personal thoughts (labeling them as such to separate them from your more descriptive notes). Then write a reflective response about your experience that answers this question: how is riding a bus about more than transportation?

Analyses using fossil and material evidence

In some assignments, you might be asked to evaluate the claims different researchers have made about the emergence and effects of particular human phenomena, such as the advantages of bipedalism, the origins of agriculture, or the appearance of human language. To complete these assignments, you must understand and evaluate the claims being made by the authors of the sources you are reading, as well as the fossil or material evidence used to support those claims. Fossil evidence might include things like carbon dated bone remains; material evidence might include things like stone tools or pottery shards. You will usually learn about these kinds of evidence by reviewing scholarly studies, course readings, and photographs, rather than by studying fossils and artifacts directly.

The emergence of bipedalism (the ability to walk on two feet) is considered one of the most important adaptive shifts in the evolution of the human species, but its origins in space and time are debated. Using course materials and outside readings, examine three authors’ hypotheses for the origins of bipedalism. Compare the supporting points (such as fossil evidence and experimental data) that each author uses to support their claims. Based on your examination of the claims and the supporting data being used, construct an argument for why you think bipedal locomotion emerged where and when it did.

How should I approach anthropology papers?

Writing an essay in anthropology is very similar to writing an argumentative essay in other disciplines. In most cases, the only difference is in the kind of evidence you use to support your argument. In an English essay, you might use textual evidence from novels or literary theory to support your claims; in an anthropology essay, you will most often be using textual evidence from ethnographies, artifactual evidence, or other support from anthropological theories to make your arguments.

Here are some tips for approaching your anthropology writing assignments:

• Make sure that you understand what the prompt or question is asking you to do. It is a good idea to consult with your instructor or teaching assistant if the prompt is unclear to you. See our handout on arguments and handout on college writing for help understanding what many college instructors look for in a typical paper.
• Review the materials that you will be writing with and about. One way to start is to set aside the readings or lecture notes that are not relevant to the argument you will make in your paper. This will help you focus on the most important arguments, issues, and behavioral and/or material data that you will be critically assessing. Once you have reviewed your evidence and course materials, you might decide to have a brainstorming session. Our handouts on reading in preparation for writing and brainstorming might be useful for you at this point.
• Develop a working thesis and begin to organize your evidence (class lectures, texts, research materials) to support it. Our handouts on constructing thesis statements and paragraph development will help you generate a thesis and develop your ideas and arguments into clearly defined paragraphs.

What is an ethnography? What is ethnographic evidence?

Many introductory anthropology courses involve reading and evaluating a particular kind of text called an ethnography. To understand and assess ethnographies, you will need to know what counts as ethnographic data or evidence.

You’ll recall from earlier in this handout that an ethnography is a portrait—a description of a particular human situation, practice, or group as it exists (or existed) in a particular time, at a particular place, etc. So what kinds of things might be used as evidence or data in an ethnography (or in your discussion of an ethnography someone else has written)? Here are a few of the most common:

• Things said by informants (people who are being studied or interviewed). When you are trying to illustrate someone’s point of view, it is very helpful to appeal to their own words. In addition to using verbatim excerpts taken from interviews, you can also paraphrase an informant’s response to a particular question.
• Observations and descriptions of events, human activities, behaviors, or situations.
• Relevant historical background information.
• Statistical data.

Remember that “evidence” is not something that exists on its own. A fact or observation becomes evidence when it is clearly connected to an argument in order to support that argument. It is your job to help your reader understand the connection you are making: you must clearly explain why statements x, y, and z are evidence for a particular claim and why they are important to your overall claim or position.

Citation practices in anthropology

In anthropology, as in other fields of study, it is very important that you cite the sources that you use to form and articulate your ideas. (Please refer to our handout on plagiarism for information on how to avoid plagiarizing). Anthropologists follow the Chicago Manual of Style when they document their sources. The basic rules for anthropological citation practices can be found in the AAA (American Anthropological Association) Style Guide. Note that anthropologists generally use in-text citations, rather than footnotes. This means that when you are using someone else’s ideas (whether it’s a word-for-word quote or something you have restated in your own words), you should include the author’s last name and the date the source text was published in parentheses at the end of the sentence, like this: (Author 1983).

If your anthropology or archaeology instructor asks you to follow the style requirements of a particular academic journal, the journal’s website should contain the information you will need to format your citations. Examples of such journals include The American Journal of Physical Anthropology and American Antiquity . If the style requirements for a particular journal are not explicitly stated, many instructors will be satisfied if you consistently use the citation style of your choice.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Scupin, Raymond, and Christopher DeCorse. 2016. Anthropology: A Global Perspective , 8th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall.

Solis, Jacqueline. 2020. “A to Z Databases: Anthropology.” Subject Research Guides, University of North Carolina. Last updated November 2, 2020. https://guides.lib.unc.edu/az.php?s=1107 .

University of Chicago Press. 2017. The Chicago Manual of Style , 17th ed. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Contributed Content Teaching Tools

Ethnographic Experiments for Undergraduates: Reflections from The Ethnography Lab at the University of Toronto

By Noha Fikry

July 19, 2022

Cite As: Fikry, Noha. 2022. "Ethnographic Experiments for Undergraduates: Reflections from The Ethnography Lab at the University of Toronto." Teaching Tools, Fieldsights , July 19. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/ethnographic-experiments-for-undergraduates-reflections-from-the-ethnography-lab-at-the-university-of-toronto

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Watching and analyzing TikTok viral videos, walking and engaging with students on campus, and attending meetings of a particular social movement are examples of exercises that undergraduate students can undertake in social science courses both within and beyond anthropology departments. In most cases, stepping outside the library, the classroom, or Zoom is very captivating for students, especially as we move back to in-person teaching in various parts of the world.

As a Teaching Assistant (TA) at the American University in Cairo between 2016-2019, I was fortunate to work with professor Soraya Altorki, who incorporated ethnographic assignments in most of her undergraduate courses. Because these courses were usually focused on kinship and religion in the Middle East, most students found it accessible and exciting to work with their own families. Undergraduate students from various majors, including engineering, economics, and psychology, interviewed family members, looked for family albums, and wove together autoethnographies tackling issues of migration, religious belonging, and family intimacies in Egypt and the Middle East. Students initially found ethnographic assignments awkward, asking questions such as: “Why is my family, myself, or my “hanging out” worthy of attention?” As the semester progressed, students not only appreciated anthropological perspectives, but in many cases ended up changing their majors or minors to anthropology. This brief and playful ethnographic engagement reoriented students to understand themselves, their surroundings, and their assignments differently and with a new perspective.

At the University of Toronto, I have been a lead TA for the Ethnography Lab , an initiative by faculty and graduate students to promote ethnographic practice inside and outside the university. Among other interest groups and activities, the Ethnography Lab invites other departments to incorporate ethnographic experiments in their undergraduate courses. What follows here is a summary of a conversation with Professor Tania Li, who has taken up the role of promoting ethnographic practicums in other departments around the University of Toronto and who shares useful insights for instructors wishing to add some ethnographic spice to their courses.

“Students initially found ethnographic assignments awkward, asking questions such as: Why is my family, myself, or my “hanging out” worthy of attention? As the semester progressed, students not only appreciated anthropological perspectives, but in many cases ended up changing their majors or minors to anthropology.”

How It All Began: Ethnography of the University Course

Dr. Tania Li (University of Toronto) began teaching an undergraduate course titled “Ethnography of the University” in 2006, inspired by Professor Nancy Abelmann, the founder of the Ethnography of the University initiative at the University of Illinois. As Nancy Abelmann describes on the Ethnography of the University website , one of the origins of this initiative extends to her own experience when she began research on Korean American undergraduate students at the University of Illinois. As she searched for some demographic information on students, she realized that there are a lot of people on campus whose jobs were to research and report on the university. It was then that she realized that it is useful to think of the university not as a neutral background but as an active agent. Collaborating with her colleague the co-director of the Ethnography of the University initiative Professor Bill Kelleher, they began teaching undergraduate courses that invite students to research not at but on universities. During a meeting with Tania in 2006, Abdelmann proposed that Tania begin a similar course/initiative at the University of Toronto (U of T). Tania began teaching her Ethnography of the University course at U of T in 2012—a self-selected undergraduate course with around ten to fifteen students, each in their final year of undergraduate coursework.

Each semester, Tania picks a theme for the course—something broad such as power, time, or work, and the students spend the first two weeks reading a set of common texts on that theme, while preparing for their ethnographic projects. The purpose of the foundational readings is to open up lines of questioning and provide a shared vocabulary for class discussions. So, for example, when the course theme was power, or more specifically how power organizes life at the university, students read essays by Foucault and Weber; on the theme of work, they read Kathi Weeks and Frédéric Lordon; on diversity, they read Sara Ahmed.

After these two weeks of set readings, students individually engage in ethnographic fieldwork on campus, while working towards their final essay submission for the course, and Tania mentors them throughout the process. At the end of every semester, students showcase their final projects in a conference that Tania organizes on campus and in which students invite their friends, family, and professors. Equally excitingly, students also publish individual blog posts on the Ethnography Lab website in which they summarize and reflect on their semester projects.

After teaching this course for multiple semesters, Tania decided to expand these ethnographic experiments beyond the walls of the anthropology department. Under the auspices of the Ethnography Lab, she applied for funds to promote ethnographic research in other departments, including political science, history, and area studies. While many faculty members were excited about the prospective collaboration, most were concerned about two challenges: 1) class sizes and 2) the elaborate ethics application process since ethnographic research projects would include involvement with human subjects. In addition, some faculty were confused about grading procedures for student projects (i.e. How can we grade participant observation or “hanging out” in a gym?). Through the funds that Tania received, she hired a Teaching Assistant (TA) [myself] who is responsible for supporting faculty in designing and incorporating an ethnographic practicum component in their courses, along with facilitating an expedited ethics approval process through an internal review committee in the anthropology department.

Beyond the Classic Essay: Why Ethnography?

In incorporating an ethnographic component into undergraduate courses, instructors invite students to find a topic that puzzles them, something they are curious about, or a group of people that they wish to understand better. They locate that puzzle in one or more field-sites, and simply “hang out” there, while attuning themselves to social interactions, power hierarchies, and whatever their field-sites offer. The final assignment submission can be more flexible than in more usual classroom settings, including a long essay, a number of shorter written reflections, or a final in-class presentation.

Insider’s secret: Students are exceptionally excited about these ethnographic assignments. Alongside asking them to “hang out” for an assignment (every student’s dream!), we also advise students not to do any external readings for this assignment. Rather, only rely on your hang-outs, observations, and participation in your field-sites. In this sense, we push students to focus their undivided attention and effort on training and cultivating their ethnographic sensibilities. But more importantly, the main reason for discouraging students from carrying out any library research for this assignment is that we would like students to appreciate ethnography as a unique form of knowledge production. Theory may stimulate a line of questioning but ethnographic fieldwork is also theory-building: it is not mere “data” to be distilled or translated through the words of theorists and their books. As Tania eloquently clarifies, students are usually unconfident about their fieldwork, and running to the library is usually the first thing for them to do in efforts to corroborate or prove the truth of what they observed. Inviting students to reflect on their fieldwork and to think of their experiences as a contribution to knowledge is a way to help students foster confidence in their budding ethnographic skills.

In this view of ethnography as a unique mode of knowledge production, students learn to develop a methodology of weaving an essay slowly and entirely from their firsthand fieldwork experience. This is always a good reminder for students: An ethnographic assignment is a slow craft, one that cannot be rushed or pulled together in an all-nighter. As the final deadline approaches, however, students realize that they have all the threads they need to weave their creative final submission. Their fieldwork provides all the “knots” of data, and all they need to do is un-tie and re-tie these knots to provide a commentary on an existing social setting. As ethnography instructs, students begin with the banal everyday hang-outs with their interlocutors and ask themselves: How are these everyday moments meaningful? What can they tell us about how a particular group sees and lives in the world? In this playful engagement with their ethnographic material, students practice situating their fieldwork in broader discussions about power, work, religion, gender, or other topics that fit the theme of the course. No need to consult theorists here, for the students and their interlocutors become the theorists as they work through a given social situation.

“An ethnographic assignment is a slow craft, one that cannot be rushed or pulled together in an all-nighter.”

A Proposed Ethnographic Assignment Template

Based on Tania’s Ethnography of the University course and my experience as the Ethnography Lab TA, here is one suggested way to incorporate an ethnographic experiment in your undergraduate courses. This template is preliminary and flexible, open for you to modify creatively depending on your course content, theme, class size, and the broader course expectations:

• Decide weight of the assignment: How much weight do you want this assignment to take? How much of the overall grade will be attributed to this assignment? Is it a major final assignment? A short fieldnote? A mid-semester essay? Create a rubric to guide students and TAs on your expectations and grading elements for ethnographic assignments. See  this sample ethnographic assignment with a grading rubric and a general grade breakdown of the course.
• Provide a list of proposed themes/topics: Brainstorm and create a list of 10-12 broad topics or themes that students can pick from for their assignments. This list is not meant to limit student creativity, but to help ground their curiosities and provide some direction to students who are unsure of what they want to research. See this sample list of topics created for the course theme of Social Movements.
• Mentoring TAs (Optional/If Applicable): Are your TAs experienced in fieldwork and grading ethnographic assignments? Make sure to meet with TAs on multiple occasions separately to give time for feedback and to answer any questions they determine over the course of meeting with undergraduate students. See this helpful “tips for TAs” guide .
• Following up with your students : Make sure to touch base with your students frequently throughout the semester. Fieldwork can be (if not is always) confusing and overwhelming. Create “mini” submissions throughout the semester, graded or ungraded, such as bi-weekly fieldwork reports, proposals, sample field-notes, or reflections. This will help you and your students monitor how the project grows and matures throughout the semester, including giving opportunities for individual feedback. For ideas, see this list of suggested smaller ethnographic assignments .
• Sharing and celebrating your students’ work : If possible, plan a mini conference or create a shared blog for your students to share their final projects with a wider audience. This can be a low-stakes, optional component of the assignment, a way in which students can celebrate and reflect on their ethnographic experiments after the semester. They can invite their friends, family, and mentors!

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• Autoethnography

Alia R.Tyner-Mullings

While it is an ethnographic method on its own, an autoethnography can also be a good place to begin an ethnographic investigation. Through it, you can begin to situate yourself within the larger structural and social system. It allows you to explore your own positionality before you begin to examine the lives of others as an autothenography is a way to turn ethnography on yourself and to learn about your life in the same way you might learn about someone else’s. The process of creating an autoethnography allows you to be reflective on what makes you who you are and how you came to be. Through this process, an authoethnography can also help you to look at the larger context in which you live. [1]

Autoethnography is an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyze (graphy) personal experience (auto) in order to understand cultural experience (ethno) (Ellis, 2004; Holman Jones, 2005). This approach challenges canonical ways of doing research and representing others (Spry, 2001) and treats research as a political, socially-just and socially-conscious act (Adams & Holman Jones, 2008). A researcher uses tenets of autobiography and ethnography to do and write autoethnography. Thus, as a method, autoethnography is both process and product. [2]

History of Autoethnography

So how did autoethnography come to be?  In the 1980s, scholars introduced new and abundant opportunities to reform social science and reconceive the objectives and forms of social science inquiry. Scholars became increasingly troubled by social science’s ontological, epistemological, and axiological limitations (Ellis & Bochner, 2000). Furthermore, there was an increasing need to resist colonialist, sterile research impulses of authoritatively entering a culture, exploiting cultural members, and then recklessly leaving to write about the culture for monetary and/or professional gain, while disregarding relational ties to cultural members (Conquergood, 1991; Ellis, 2007; Riedmann, 1993).

Gradually, scholars across a wide spectrum of disciplines began to consider what social sciences would become if they were closer to literature than to physics, if they proffered stories rather than theories, and if they were self-consciously value-centered rather than pretending to be value free (Bochner, 1994). Many of these scholars turned to autoethnography because they were seeking a positive response to critiques of canonical ideas about what research is and how research should be done. In particular, they wanted to concentrate on ways of producing meaningful, accessible, and evocative research grounded in personal experience, research that would sensitize readers to issues of identity politics, to experiences shrouded in silence, and to forms of representation that deepen our capacity to empathize with people who are different from us (Ellis & Bochner, 2000). Autoethnographers recognize the innumerable ways personal experience influences the research process. For instance, a researcher decides who, what, when, where, and how to research, decisions necessarily tied to institutional requirements (e.g., Institutional Review Boards), resources (e.g., funding), and personal circumstance (e.g., a researcher studying cancer because of personal experience with cancer). A researcher may also change names and places for protection (Fine, 1993), compress years of research into a single text, and construct a study in a pre-determined way (e.g., using an introduction, literature review, methods section, findings, and conclusion; Tullis Owen, McRae, Adams & Vitale, 2009). Even though some researchers still assume that research can be done from a neutral, impersonal, and objective stance (Atkinson, 1997; Buzard, 2003; Delamont, 2009), most now recognize that such an assumption is not tenable (Bochner, 2002; Denzin & Lincoln, 2000; Rorty, 1982). Consequently, autoethnography is one of the approaches that acknowledges and accommodates subjectivity, emotionality, and the researcher’s influence on research, rather than hiding from these matters or assuming they don’t exist.

Furthermore, scholars began recognizing that different kinds of people possess different assumptions about the world—a multitude of ways of speaking, writing, valuing and believing—and that conventional ways of doing and thinking about research were narrow, limiting, and parochial. These differences can stem from race (Anzaldúa, 1987; Boylorn, 2006; Davis, 2009), gender (Blair, Brown & Baxter, 1994; Keller, 1995), sexuality (Foster, 2008; Glave, 2005), age (Dossa, 1999; Paulson & Willig, 2008), ability (Couser, 1997; Gerber, 1996), class (Hooks, 2000; Dykins Callahan, 2008), education (Delpit, 1996; Valenzuela, 1999), or religion (Droogsma, 2007; Minkowitz, 1995). Often, those who advocate and insist on canonical forms of doing and writing research are advocating a White, masculine, heterosexual, middle/upper-classed, Christian, cis-gendered and able-bodied perspective. Following these conventions, a researcher not only disregards other ways of knowing but also implies that other ways are unsatisfactory and invalid. Autoethnography, on the other hand, expands and opens up a wider lens on the world, eschewing rigid definitions of what constitutes meaningful and useful research; this approach also helps us understand how the kinds of people we claim, or are perceived, to be influence interpretations of what we study, how we study it, and what we say about our topic (Adams, 2005; Wood, 2009).

The Structure of Autoethnographies

As described above, autoethnography combines characteristics of autobiography and ethnography and in writing an autobiography, an author retroactively and selectively writes about past experiences. Usually, the author does not live through these experiences solely to make them part of a published document; rather, these experiences are assembled using hindsight (Bruner, 1993; Denzin, 1989, Freeman, 2004). In writing, the author also may interview others as well as consult with texts like photographs, journals, and recordings to help with recall (Delany, 2004; Didion, 2005; Goodall, 2006; Herrmann, 2005).

Most often, autobiographers write about “epiphanies” —remembered moments perceived to have significantly impacted the trajectory of a person’s life (Bochner & Ellis, 1992; Couser, 1997; Denzin, 1989), times of existential crises that forced a person to attend to and analyze lived experience (Zaner, 2004), and events after which life does not seem quite the same. While epiphanies are self-claimed phenomena in which one person may consider an experience transformative while another may not, these epiphanies reveal ways a person could negotiate “intense situations” and “effects that linger—recollections, memories, images, feelings—long after a crucial incident is supposedly finished” (Bochner, 1984, p.595). This is one justification for focusing the autoethnography on a student’s path to college and how they arrived at our school like we do at Guttman Community College. When researchers do autoethnography, they retrospectively and selectively write about epiphanies that stem from, or are made possible by, being part of a culture and/or by possessing a particular cultural identity. However, in addition to telling their audiences about experiences, autoethnographers often are required by social science publishing conventions to analyze these experiences. As Mitch Allen says, an autoethnographer must

“look at experience analytically. Otherwise [you’re] telling [your] story—and that’s nice—but people do that on Oprah [a U.S.-based television program] every day. Why is your story more valid than anyone else’s? What makes your story more valid is that you are a researcher. You have a set of theoretical and methodological tools and a research literature to use. That’s your advantage. If you can’t frame it around these tools and literature and just frame it as ‘my story,’ then why or how should I privilege your story over anyone else’s I see 25 times a day on TV?” (personal interview, May 4, 2006) [3]

Autoethnographers must not only use their methodological tools and research literature to analyze experience, but also must consider ways others may experience similar epiphanies; they must use personal experience to illustrate facets of cultural experience, and, in so doing, make characteristics of a culture familiar for insiders and outsiders. To accomplish this might require comparing and contrasting personal experience against existing research (RONAI, 1995, 1996), interviewing cultural members (Foster, 2006; Marvasti, 2006; Tillmann-Healy, 2001), and/or examining relevant cultural artifacts (Boylorn, 2008; Denzin, 2006).

In her piece “Evaluating Ethnography,” Laurel Richardson examines the divide that has persisted between literary and scientific writing (253). This is similar to the division that has existed between academic and personal writing. She notes the “oxymoronic” naming of genres that have tried to bridge this gap, thus blurring distinctions among categories such as “creative nonfiction; faction; ethnographic fiction; the nonfiction novel; and true fiction” (253). And she seeks to lay out the criteria she uses to judge ethnography’s success. [4]

In attempting to create new standards that allow writers to move more freely in their ethnographic work, Richardson establishes the following as important evaluative criteria. She believes the work should: make a substantive contribution, have aesthetic merit, have reflexivity, make an impact, and express a reality (254). In this way, Richardson intends to show the related nature of scientific research and creative expression.

Arthur Bochner responds to Richardson in “Criteria Against Ourselves” and sets up his own evaluation criteria for what he terms “alternative ethnography,” another name often assigned to ethnography that deviates from traditional social science norms. He sees alternative ethnographies as “narratives of the self” that “extract meaning from experience rather than depict experience exactly as it was lived” (270). When looking at this personal writing, he wants abundant concrete detail, structurally complex narratives, emotional credibility, a tale of two selves, and ethical self-consciousness (270-71).

In “Evocative Autoethnography: Writing Emotionally About Our Lives,” Carolyn Ellis describes her gradual departure from traditional sociological methods into an approach that is more personally meaningful. She achieves this balance in her writing by using multiple voices, starting and restarting to establish her point of view through both analysis and storytelling. “I made myself begin again in an autoethnographic voice that concentrates on telling a personal, evocative story to provoke others’ stories and adds blood and tissue to the abstract bones of the theoretical discourse” (117). Throughout the piece, she clearly establishes a point of view, which she emphasizes in many of her works about autoethnography, “I think that sociology can be emotional, personal, therapeutic, interesting, engaging, evocative, reflexive, helpful, concrete, and connected to the world of everyday experience” (120). She aims to be true to her feelings, move away from time ordered structures and convey her emotions (128).

Ellis draws on interviews, notes, conversations, and diaries to construct her writing and seeks to find herself in the context of a larger world. “The inner workings of the self must be investigated in reciprocal relationship with the other: concrete action, dialogue, emotion, and thinking are featured, but they are represented within relationships and institutions, very much impacted by history, social structure, and culture, which themselves are dialectically revealed through action, thought, and language” (133).

She seeks to find value in autoethnography through the impact it has on her audience. “A story’s ‘validity’ can be judged by whether it evokes in readers a feeling that the experience described is authentic and lifelike, believable and possible; the story’s generalizability can be judged by whether it speaks to readers about their experience” (133). She believes that by sharing stories this way, we open up a world that allows others to share their stories (134).

To accomplish this, your first attempt at autoethngraphy might begin with Allen’s simple retelling of a “story”. This story connects with something powerful in your life and may lead you to a particular conclusion about how your individual world works and how that is affected by larger social institutions. If you are able to do multiple drafts, the opportunity for reflection grows and the connection to larger social institutions is more easily made. [5]

Preparing for the Autoethnograhy

In writing an autoethnography, you will be asked to analyze your epiphany, position in the subculture or the educational path you are currently on as well as the positioning of others and how it might affect your perspective. Autoethnographic analysis in this case might include interviewing other members of the subculture, conducting field observation, analyzing textual materials, investigating histories, and engaging in self-reflection. Previous involvement in or attachment to a subculture provides a vested interest in the project, a sense of authority, and a position from which to analyze. [6]

When conducting autoethnographic research, as opposed to traditional ethnographic research, you start out with a certain amount of knowledge about the subculture or epiphany you are investigating because you have some expertise about it. At the same time, because it is necessary to explain the subculture to those who are unfamiliar with it, you must also learn how to translate that knowledge to an outside audience. In addition, when considering any observations you might make, you need to look at the subculture afresh and describe elements you may have taken for granted. You must account for rituals, language and subtleties that make it operate as something unique and situated. You might consider interviewing members of the subculture who inhabit a different position than you do, and you can also gather new perspectives from insiders that will help you to further articulate your own ideas and question your own authority in communicating exactly what the subculture is. Interviewing and conducting observations can both empower you and decenter you from your own experience, forcing you to question and revise your representation of your experience to an intended audience (your instructor and classmates, who may see this writing at multiple stages). [7]

When you draw on visceral experiences as well as textual evidence, it can also create a richer understanding of the subculture and an ethical responsibility to convey its multiple facets and to avoid being reductive. This can increase your understanding and involvement in the subculture and produce a new appreciation for an activity that perhaps had been an unexamined part of your life outside the classroom. In this way, the writing carries an impact that extends beyond the scope of the assignment and its evaluation against classroom standards.

One of the first steps you want to take in preparing for your autoethnograpy is to determine its structure. An autoethnography assignment will generally provide you with an overall question, a particular subculture or epiphany or a series of smaller questions related to an overall theme. You should pay close attention to what is being asked of you including what you will need to submit, the research required to complete it and what the differences are between any subsequent drafts.  At Guttman, we generally begin with an exercise that helps you to think about your path to college. This might be a brainstorm, a list of questions or an exploration of your own notes, posts, assignments or journal entries. [8]

Collecting data for your autoethnography

If you have not been provided a list of questions, you may need to develop your own. In this case, you will need to review whichever aspect of your world your professor has asked you to examine and any experiences, people and artifacts that are related. [9]

The structure of your autoethnography should be similar to how you might write up an ethnography. This will generally include one or more narrative stories that describe the particular aspects of your subculture or epiphany that are referred to in your assignment. You might include pictures or images that capture your experiences. As part of this assignment, you may find it useful to speak to family or friends who might also have insight into those parts of your life, examining journals, photos and pictures to collect information can also provide information.

As you think about your autoethnography, you must also understand that memory is fallible. As a rule, people remember only a very small amount of what they experience. If this were not true, we would not be able to function on a daily basis. Consider whether you have a memory of something that others dispute—maybe something that happened in childhood or an experience with a friend on which you disagree about what actually occurred.

It is important to establish that just because memories differ does not mean they are invalid. There is a fine line between remembering something to the best of our ability and willfully misremembering something. Talking to others who were involved in memories, if possible, can be helpful in fleshing out details. . Since memory is fallible, interviewing others who were present at important events, speaking to multiple people directly involved in the memories or reading journals or other first-hand accounts can be an important part of the writing. It may come as a surprise that writing about your own life can require research. [10]

Once you have your data, you want to begin to organize it. There are two general ways to organize your autoethnography—chronologically and by theme. If you are describing your path to or through something, you will likely want to write this chronologically. You should begin with the earliest event, person or activity and share a story or multiple stories through to the current time. [11]

If you are not writing your essay as building up to something or this is later draft that includes some analysis or examination of social institutions, you might want to organize your paper by theme. In this case, you might collect particular examples that share a particular pattern or connect to a theme.

Ethnographic Narratives

The forms of autoethnography also differ in how much emphasis is placed on the study of others, the researcher’s self and interaction with others, traditional analysis, and the interview context, as well as on power relationships. [12] Many assignments in a class are likely to focus more on the self but others might ask you to pull on data outside of your own experiences. These are built off of different structures of ethnographic research and the ways in which narratives are composed. [13]

Indigenous/native ethnographies, for example, develop from colonized or economically subordinated people, and are used to address and disrupt power in research, particularly a (outside) researcher’s right and authority to study (exotic) others. Once at the service of the (White, masculine, heterosexual, middle/upper-classed, Christian, cis-gendered, able-bodied) ethnographer, indigenous/native ethnographers now work to construct their own personal and cultural stories; they no longer find (forced) subjugation excusable (see Denzin, Lincoln & Smith, 2008). [14]

Narrative ethnographies refer to texts presented in the form of stories that incorporate the ethnographer’s experiences into the ethnographic descriptions and analysis of others. Here the emphasis is on the ethnographic study of others, which is accomplished partly by attending to encounters between the narrator and members of the groups being studied (Tedlock, 1991), and the narrative often intersects with analyses of patterns and processes.

Reflexive, dyadic interviews focus on the interactively produced meanings and emotional dynamics of the interview itself. Though the focus is on the participant and her or his story, the words, thoughts, and feelings of the researcher also are considered, e.g., personal motivation for doing a project, knowledge of the topics discussed, emotional responses to an interview, and ways in which the interviewer may have been changed by the process of interviewing. Even though the researcher’s experience isn’t the main focus, personal reflection adds context and layers to the story being told about participants (Ellis, 2004).

Reflexive ethnographies document ways a researcher changes as a result of doing fieldwork. Reflexive/narrative ethnographies exist on a continuum ranging from starting research from the ethnographer’s biography, to the ethnographer studying her or his life alongside cultural members’ lives, to ethnographic memoirs (Ellis, 2004, p.50) or “confessional tales” (Van Maanen, 1988) where the ethnographer’s backstage research endeavors become the focus of investigation (Ellis, 2004).

Layered accounts often focus on the author’s experience alongside data, abstract analysis, and relevant literature. This form emphasizes the procedural nature of research. Similar to grounded theory, layered accounts illustrate how “data collection and analysis proceed simultaneously” (Charmaz, 1983, p.110) and frame existing research as a “source of questions and comparisons” rather than a “measure of truth” (p.117). But unlike grounded theory, layered accounts use vignettes, reflexivity, multiple voices, and introspection (Ellis, 1991) to “invoke” readers to enter into the “emergent experience” of doing and writing research (Ronai, 1992, p.123), conceive of identity as an “emergent process” (Rambo, 2005, p.583), and consider evocative, concrete texts to be as important as abstract analyses (Ronai, 1995, 1996).

Interactive interviews provide an “in-depth and intimate understanding of people’s experiences with emotionally charged and sensitive topics” (Ellis, Kiesinger & Tillmann-Healy, 1997, p.121). Interactive interviews are collaborative endeavors between researchers and participants, research activities in which researchers and participants—one and the same—probe together about issues that transpire, in conversation, about particular topics (e.g., eating disorders). Interactive interviews usually consist of multiple interview sessions, and, unlike traditional one-on-one interviews with strangers, are situated within the context of emerging and well-established relationships among participants and interviewers (Adams, 2008). The emphasis in these research contexts is on what can be learned from interaction within the interview setting as well as on the stories that each person brings to the research encounter (Mey & Mruck, 2010).

Similar to interactive interviews, community autoethnographies use the personal experience of researchers-in-collaboration to illustrate how a community manifests particular social/cultural issues (e.g., whiteness; Toyosaki, Pensoneau-Conway, Wendt & Leathers, 2009). Community autoethnographies thus not only facilitate “community-building” research practices but also make opportunities for “cultural and social intervention” possible (p.59; see Kardorff & Schönberger, 2010).

Co-constructed narratives illustrate the meanings of relational experiences, particularly how people collaboratively cope with the ambiguities, uncertainties, and contradictions of being friends, family, and/or intimate partners. Co-constructed narratives view relationships as jointly-authored, incomplete, and historically situated affairs. Joint activity structures co-constructed research projects. Often told about or around an epiphany, each person first writes her or his experience, and then shares and reacts to the story the other wrote at the same time (see Bochner & Ellis, 1995; Toyosaki & Pensoneau, 2005; Vande berg & Trujillo, 2008).

Generally, the autoethnographies you will write for classes will be personal narratives–stories about authors who view themselves as the phenomenon and write evocative narratives specifically focused on their academic, research, and personal lives (e.g., Berry, 2007; Goodall, 2006; Poulos, 2008; Tillmann, 2009). These often are the most controversial forms of autoethnography for traditional social scientists, especially if they are not accompanied by more traditional analysis and/or connections to scholarly literature. Personal narratives propose to understand a self or some aspect of a life as it intersects with a cultural context, connect to other participants as co-researchers, and invite readers to enter the author’s world and to use what they learn there to reflect on, understand, and cope with their own lives (Ellis, 2004, p.46)

Even if it is not assigned, an autoethnography can be a good exercise before embarking on ethnographic research. It allows you to begin to think like an ethnographer with familiar data. It can also provide space for you to began to think about your perspectives on a particular research subject, as well as your biases and blindspots. In addition, the reflective purposes it serves can be invaluable in moving your own research forward. [15]

Chapter Summary

• Autoethnography is a reflective practice that allows the researcher to use their own experience in understanding social phenomena
• The researcher may need to consult sources outside of themselves
• A researcher can do an autoethnography on their own experiences but can also ask research subjects to do them on themselves
• Value-centered
• How has autoethnography been used over time?
• If you had to develop three themes that illustrated your life so far, what would they be and what epiphanies led to them or are a result of them?
• How should autoethnographies be organized?

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[1] In order to make this book  as relevant to our students as possible, the author added this paragraph

[2] Ellis, Carolyn; Adams, Tony E. & Bochner, Arthur P. (2010). Autoethnography: An Overview [40 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research , 12 (1), Art. 10, http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1101108

[3] Ellis, Carolyn; Adams, Tony E. & Bochner, Arthur P. (2010). Autoethnography: An Overview [40 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research , 12 (1), Art. 10, http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1101108

[4] The Autoethnography Project by Melissa Tombro is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

[5] In order to make this book  as relevant to our students as possible, the author added this paragraph

[6] In order to make this book  as relevant to our students as possible, the author added this paragraph

[7]  The Autoethnography Project by Melissa Tombro is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted

[8] In order to make this book  as relevant to our students as possible, the author added this paragraph

[9] In order to make this book  as relevant to our students as possible, the author added this paragraph

[10]  The Autoethnography Project by Melissa Tombro is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted

[11] In order to make this book  as relevant to our students as possible, the author added this paragraph

[12]  The Autoethnography Project by Melissa Tombro is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted

[13] In order to make this book  as relevant to our students as possible, the author added this paragraph

[14] Ellis, Carolyn; Adams, Tony E. & Bochner, Arthur P. (2010). Autoethnography: An Overview [40 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research , 12 (1), Art. 10, http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1101108

[15] In order to make this book  as relevant to our students as possible, the author added this paragraph

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Home > Conferences and Symposia > Student Research Symposium > 2024 > PRESENTATIONS > 4

Presentations

My Father's Story: An Ethnography About Language Loss

Presenter Information

Ariel Wilsey-Gopp , Portland State University Follow

Presentation Type

Oral Presentation

5-8-2024 9:00 AM

5-8-2024 11:00 AM

Applied Linguistics, Serbia, War

Student Level

War disrupts everything, including a child’s developing language and cultural identity. My father grew up in both Serbia and Germany during the post-WWII political upheaval. By the time he was an adult, he knew five languages, yet lacked his own language and languacultu re (Agar, 1994).

It benefits us to understand more completely the effects of language loss as political borders continue to shift and human migration increases. Research in social sciences, psychology, and biology all examine the effects of trauma, the brain, and child development. Applied linguistics examines language loss in relation to Second Language Acquisition (Altarriba & Heredia, 2018).

My presentation shifts the focus of this research onto a family ethnography around language and identity loss; about war, trauma, and forced migration; about the effects of shame. Using interviews, field research, and family history, this presentation utilizes the methodology employed by ethnographers to draw on “thick, rich description” (Geertz, 1973; Spradley, 1979). In this re-telling of my father's story, I intend to use the following questions as a guide (1) How does language get lost?; and (2) What are the effects? This story is particular to my family but it could be one of many across the globe.

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