Overview
The purpose of this course is to introduce you to a variety of ethnographic research methods and, with the guidance of your tutor, help you apply these methods to a research project of your own choosing. As Elliott and Culhane (2017, 3) state, “Most contemporary ethnographers would agree that the focus of ethnographic research continues to be what anthropologist Tim Ingold describes as ‘entangled relationships’ among humans, nonhumans, and natural, social, and virtual environments. ‘The environment,’ Ingold writes, ‘comprises not the surroundings of the organism but a zone of entanglement’ (2008, 1797). The methodology you will read about here flows from theoretical approaches that assume that ethnographic knowledge emerges not through detached observation but through conversations and exchanges of many kinds among people interacting in diverse zones of entanglement. This is what we mean when we refer to ethnography as a methodology of inquiry into ‘collaborative’ or ‘co-creative’ knowledge making.”
References
Elliott, Denielle, and Dara Culhane, eds. 2017. A Different Kind of Ethnography: Imaginative Practices and Creative Methodologies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Objectives
Upon the completion of ANTH 402, you should be able to
- demonstrate the processes of ethnographic research and research design in ethnography;
- evaluate the implications of methodological choices and their relationship to research questions and settings;
- gain practical experience with ethics applications and ethnographic field methods;
- develop a research proposal;
- differentiate methods for decolonizing ethnography; and
- apply Indigenous research methods.
Outline
The course consists of the following units:
Unit 1: Introduction to the Nature of Ethnographic Research
Unit 2: Ethics and Decolonization
Unit 3: Conversing, Yarning, and Storytelling
Unit 4: Writing and Drawing Fieldnotes
Unit 5: Images, Sounds, and Films
Unit 6: Entanglements and More-Than-Human Ethnography
Unit 7: Material Culture and Archives
Unit 8: Virtual Worlds and Online Resources
Unit 9: Performance and Applied Anthropology
Unit 10: Research Analysis and Results
Evaluation
To receive credit for ANTH 402, you must achieve a grade of at least D (50 percent) on each of the assignments. The weighting of the composite grade is as follows:
| Activity | Weight |
| Journals (10 at 5% each) | 50% |
| Assignment 1: Research Proposal, Ethics, and Informed Consent | 15% |
| Assignment 2: Observation | 10% |
| Assignment 3: Conversation or Interview | 10% |
| Assignment 4: Final Postcard | 15% |
| Total | 100% |
To learn more about assignments and examinations, please refer to Athabasca University’s online Calendar.
Materials
Digital course materials
Links to the following course materials will be made available in the course:
Causey, A. 2017. Drawn to See: Drawing as an Ethnographic Method. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Elliott, Denielle, and Dara Culhane, eds. 2017. A Different Kind of Ethnography: Imaginative Practices and Creative Methodologies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Mannik, Lynda, and Karen McGarry, eds. 2017. Practicing Ethnography: A Student Guide to Method and Methodology. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Physical course materials
The following course materials are included in a course package that will be shipped to your home prior to your course’s start date:
Alonso Bejarano, Carolina, Lucia López Juárez, Mirian A. Mijangos García, and Daniel M. Goldstein. 2019. Decolonizing Ethnography: Undocumented Immigrants and New Directions in Social Science. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Other Materials
All other materials are available online.