Module ANT3053 for 2021/2
- Overview
- Aims and Learning Outcomes
- Module Content
- Indicative Reading List
- Assessment
Undergraduate Module Descriptor
ANT3053: How Organisations Work: Ethnography in Institutions
This module descriptor refers to the 2021/2 academic year.
Module Aims
You will learn how to conduct an ethnographic research project through hands-on experience in combination with an introduction to landmark methodological texts in sociology and anthropology. Instruction will take the form of lectures and ‘practicums’ (where students will apply module concepts to their own ethnographic practice). Some will address challenges inherent in any ethnographic project (picking a site, negotiating with gatekeepers, elicitation techniques, the perils of participation, writing up, and disseminating findings). Others will focus in on characteristic social dynamics of contemporary institutions (reliance on infrastructure, written record-keeping, and the use of statistics). Through a guided project, you will conduct your own ethnographic study of a local institution and present your findings in both oral and written formats.
| On successfully completing the programme you will be able to: | |
|---|---|
| Module-Specific Skills | 1. Demonstrate a strong familiarity with the major contemporary social scientific approaches to the ethnographic study of institutions; 2. Show an in-depth understanding of specific aspects of ethnographic research like ethics, site selection, dealing with gatekeepers, building rapport, interviewing, participant observation, mapping, document analysis, writing up and the dissemination of findings; |
| Discipline-Specific Skills | 3. Critically apply various theories and methodologies to a specific institutional case; 4. Critically assess claims about institutions and socio-political organization more generally; 5. Think critically about the social, political, and anthropological implications of institutions; |
| Personal and Key Skills | 6. Communicate effectively in written and oral form; 7. Engage in cross-cultural translation and comparison; 8. Conduct research on a topic and organize findings in written form in a compelling manner. |
Indicative Reading List
This reading list is indicative - i.e. it provides an idea of texts that may be useful to you on this module, but it is not considered to be a confirmed or compulsory reading list for this module.
Smith, Dorothy. 2005. Institutional Ethnography. Altamira.
Borges, J.L. 1969. ‘The Ethnographer’. Penguin
Pratt, Mary Louise. 1986. ‘Fieldwork in Common Places’. Writing Culture, Marcus and Clifford, eds. University of California Press.
Marcus, George. 1995. ‘Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography’. Annual Review of Anthropology.
Nader, Laura. 1969. ‘Up the Anthropologist: Perspectives Gained From Studying Up’. Reinventing Anthropology, D. Hymes, ed. Pantheon.
Briggs, Charles. 1986. ‘Introduction’. Learning How to Ask. Cambridge
Hull, Matthew. 2010. ‘Democratic Technologies of Speech’. Linguistic Anthropology.
Herzfeld, Michael. 1992. The Social Production of Indifference. University of Chicago Press
Lewis-Krauss, Gideon. 2016. ‘The Trials of Alice Goffman’. New York Times
Deloria, Philip. 1998. Playing Indian. Yale University Press.
Star, Susan Leigh. 1999. ‘The Ethnography of Infrastructure’. American Behavioural Scientist.
Latour, Bruno. 1990. ‘Technology is Society Made Durable’. The Sociological Review.
Hull, Matthew. 2003. ‘The file: agency, authority, and autography in an Islamabad bureaucracy’. Language and Communication.
Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. ‘Good Organizational Reasons for ‘Bad’ Clinical Records’. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Polity.
Porter, Theodore. 1995. Trust in Numbers. Princeton University Press.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1981. ‘Forms of Time and Chronotope in the Novel’. The Dialogic Imagination. University of Texas Press.
Ortner, Sherry. 1995. ‘Resistance and the Problem of Ethnographic Refusal’ Comparative Studies in Society and History.
