ANT 327 Writing for a Multi-Cultural World: Ethnographic Writing
3 hours
In this course students will examine the purposes and techniques of ethnography in social science and undertake the writing of ethnography. Ethnography is the empirical, scientific and systematic description of peoples and cultures with particular emphasis on the point of view of the subject of study. Students will learn the elements of analysis an ethnography requires to be more than simple description. Students will also engage with various styles of ethnographic writing and critically explore a variety of texts in their ethnographic and cultural contexts. They will undertake individual ethnographic research, including the selection of a problem, the writing of field notes based on observation, interviewing, and on other methods, and the analyses of the data obtained. In addition to academic articles and essays, students will also explore a variety of genres of contemporary writing such as journalistic reporting, blogging and social media posts (tweets, posts e.g.), protest placards, memoir, and letters to the editor. They will assess the cultural contexts texts and their relationship to the project of ethnography.