Professor Denise Brennan
Anthropology 310; Fall 2012
Wednesday 2-4:30
Classroom: Car Barn, 300
Office Hours: Wednesdays 4:30-6:00
Office: Car Barn, 308 H; 687-7327
brennade@georgetown.edu
9/5/12
Doing Anthropological Fieldwork
“An openness to the surprising and the deployment of categories that are important in
human experience can make our science more realistic and, we hope, better. As
economist Albert O. Hirschman, an ethnographer at heart, writes, ‘I like to understand
how things happen, how change actually takes place’ (Hirschman 1998:67). People’s
everyday struggles and interpersonal dynamics exceed experimental and statistical
approaches and demand in-depth listening and long-term engagement. Anthropologists
demarcate unchartered social territories and track people moving through them. The
maps we produce allow the navigators – the interpreters – to consider these territories and
their life force (their capacities and possibilities as much as their foreclosures).” Joao
Biehl and Peter Locke, “Deleuze and the Anthropology of Becoming,” Current
Anthropology, Volume 51, Number 3, 2010: 318.
“…ethnographic work can make public the constellations through which life chances are
foreclosed and highlight the ways desires can break open alternative pathways. For in
learning to know people, with care and an “empirical lantern” (Hirschman 1988:88), we
have a responsibility to think of life in terms of both limits and crossroads – where new
intersections of technology, interpersonal relations, desire, and imagination can
sometimes, against all odds, propel unexpected futures.” (Biehl and Locke 2010: 318)
Overview of Course:
This course offers you the opportunity to design and conduct your own field-research
project. It also gives students a chance to get involved in communities beyond Georgetown’s
gates while developing research skills.
In order to acquire the skills necessary for participant observation, we will read about
how cultural anthropologists select a research topic, decide what constitutes the “field”, design
the study, pose larger theoretical questions to frame the research, carry out the research –
possibly with local collaborators -- analyze ethnographic data, consult historical archives, read
other sources, and then finally, write an ethnography. As inspiration, and to help you get started
on your own projects, we will read ethnographies in both rural and urban settings in the United
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States and around the world. Students will learn methodological possibilities that they may want
to replicate – or avoid. We also will read/listen to/watch: books/oral histories/documentaries and
theatre performances to learn how these methodologies resemble (or don’t resemble)
ethnography. For example, award-winning playwright Anna Deavere-Smith bases her plays on
interviews she conducts. The Malawi Project (that we learn about the first day of class) involves
local people keeping journals about their sexual practices. Through these ethnographies and
other non-ethnographic assignments, we will explore some of the most challenging and
contentious debates within anthropology. To what kinds of public discussions (on politics,
economics and cultural matters) can and should anthropology contribute today? Can anyone
really “speak” for anyone else? Can anthropologists go too far -- for example by shooting up
drugs or participating in the sex trade -- as they try to grasp, as Malinowski described it, “the
native’s point of view?” How does being an “insider” or an “outsider” shape one’s research?
Where/what constitutes the field? Can it be where one lives? Can it be research with a political
or social service organization in which the researcher is an activist? Does “collaborating” with
informants help to bridge any power differentials? What kind of ethical responsibilities do
researchers have to the communities they research? How have communities responded to what
anthropologists have written about them? How do non-anthropologists (playwrights, performers,
radio journalists, and photographers) use “field research” and interviews? How do these
different mediums – ethnographies, testimonials, oral histories, plays, radio journalism, and
photography – communicate peoples’ stories?
Course Goals:
By the end of the semester you should be able to:
1. Understand the contributions anthropologists make – as field workers and writers – as well as
through others ways of doing research (historical, activist, policy-oriented).
2. Critically discuss debates within anthropology that have shaped how ethnographic fieldwork is
conducted and written about.
3. Design and conduct a field research project.
4. Recognize some of the inevitable flaws of your project, and take steps to mitigate them.
5. Write an ethnography that incorporates your field research.
6. Make meaningful connections between your field research and key theoretical concepts in
anthropology. These theoretical concepts should inform the analysis of your field research.
7. Have a deeper appreciation for the many ways we all construct our lives, particularly
understanding power dynamics. Some of the people we read about and with whom you will do
research have many choices and considerable control over their lives; others have few choices
and little control over their lives. Ideally, your engagement in the new community, institution,
issue, or cause will not stop when the semester ends.
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Course Format and Requirements:
Most weeks’ readings (usually book-length) are paired with articles that engage key theoretical
discussions that have shaped anthropological thinking.
1. Every week, students should come to class ready to solve dilemmas I pose from the research
about which we read, as well as from fellow students’ research. So that you can assess how your
knowledge about field work shifts throughout the course of the semester, the Sunday before the
third week of class (Sunday, September 16th), please email to the class:
a. A one-page single-spaced thinkpiece on what you think constitutes “good” field research?
What has to be in place for an ethnographer to conduct research? What could make it better?
How do you perceive research that is terrific – or lacking?
b. A one-page single-spaced overview of what kind of field research you have conducted, what
you learned, what was missing, how you could have improved and/or expanded it, and what you
are itching to learn.
Then at the end of the semester, the Sunday before the last class (Sunday, December 2nd),
please email to the class:
d. A one-page single-spaced thinkpiece on what you think constitutes “good” field research?
What has to be in place for an ethnographer to conduct research? What could make it better?
How do you perceive research that is terrific – or lacking?
e. A one-page single-spaced overview of what kind of field research you have conducted, what
you learned, what was missing, how you could have improved and/or expanded it, and what you
are itching to learn. What other kinds of research could you have done to improve the project?
(5% of grade)
2. Each student will have a chance to lead discussion – in teams -- a few times throughout the
semester for the first part of class. You will meet as “discussants” to prepare how to frame the
readings. Discussants pull out the “anthropological thinking” on display in the readings. We
will decide on a schedule during our first meeting.
3. Students will submit a 1-page single-spaced rough sketch of a field research idea in class on
October 3rd. Students will circulate their 1-page single-spaced research design to their
classmates ahead of time (through email by Sunday, September 30th). I ask that students read
their classmates’ proposals and come to class with suggestions and insights for their classmates
(print them out, and write comments on them to hand back to your classmates). I will not grade
this 1-page proposal. Note: We will meet off campus in one of your living rooms, TBD, and I
will bring food.
4. You will build a bibliography to frame the analysis of your paper – so that it is not a loose
assortment of ethnographic observations. You are required to read at least ten books/chapters in
edited volumes/or journal articles written by anthropologists on themes you engage in your final
paper. Begin this early! The five page-paper requires that you engage at least five readings
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(outside of class readings).
5. Students will write a 5-page paper that lays out the analytical framework of your field research
project. What anthropological scholarship elucidates the major themes in your project? Due:
October 24th in class – no extensions without a Dean’s intervention. 25% of grade.
5. Students will keep field notes throughout the semester. I expect students to visit their field
sites at least once a week and to write up field notes once a week, if not more. I will look over
your notes at different points in the semester and when you submit your final projects.
Please come see me in my office with your field notes on a regular basis so that I can give
you regular feed back. Also, see the suggested readings related to “field notes” in Week 2,
September 14th readings. 10% of grade.
6. Your semester-long field research will result in a 20-page final paper. I will give you detailed
on instructions on this assignment. The final field research paper -- with your field notes -- are
due during exam week on December 14th by 12:00 (there will be a box on Kurt’s desk – the
Department’s Administrator -- outside of my office door for the papers and field notes). No
extensions (the grade drops 5 points each day the paper is late). 60% of grade.
The final paper should be a clearly-written interplay between what you learned from
listening to others in the field, key themes in anthropological scholarship from your
readings, and your own analysis. You must find someway to communicate what is
important to the individuals you spent time with. You might recount events that they
participated in during the semester or past events that they told you about; you might
research their history – through archival research -- with particular issues; you might
describe what they told you; and you might report on their activisms. What animates their
engagements in the world?
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Readings:
The following books are on sale at Bridge Street Books (located at 2814 Pennsylvania Avenue
– at the end of M street near the short bridge that enters into Foggy Bottom). Their hours are 119, Sundays 12-6. 202-965-5200. All of the other required and suggested assignments are on
electronic reserve.
Required Texts:
Biehl, Joao. 2005. Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Bourgois, Philippe. 1996. In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Brennan, Denise. 2004. What’s Love Got to Do with It? Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism
in the Dominican Republic. Durham: Duke University Press.
Ehrenreich, Barbara. 2001. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America. New York:
Henry Holt and Company.
Frank, Katherine. 2002. G-Strings and Sympathy: Strip Club Regulars and Male
Desire. Durham: Duke University Press.
Garcia, Angela. 2010. The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession along the Rio Grande.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Rabinow, Paul. 1977. Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Wolf, Margery. 1992. A Thrice Told Tale: Feminism, Postmodernism, and Ethnographic
Responsibility. Stanford: Stanford University Press
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Week 1: September 5
Overview of course
Readings, assignments and class goals. First stab at designing your field research for the
semester.
See required and suggested readings for next week to answer your questions on field work
and field notes.
If you are interested in listening to the recording we heard today:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/444/gossip
And, read the journals from the Malawi Project (all 897 are downloadable!):
http://www.investinknowledge.org/
Week 2: September 12
What constitutes the "Field?" What is Ethnography? What are Anthropologists’ Ethical
and Political Responsibilities? What are Possibilities for Collaboration? What are
Possibilities for Policy Recommendations?
Brennan, Denise. “Starting Over,” In Life Interrupted: Trafficking Into Forced Labor in the
United States. (Forthcoming).
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 1995. The Primacy of the Ethical: Propositions for a Militant
Anthropology. Current Anthropology, Vol. 36, No. 3.
Hale, Charles. R. 2001. “What is Activist Research?” Items and Issues, Social Science Research
Council. 2(1-2):13-15.
Rappaport, Joanne. 2008. “Beyond Participant Observation: Collaborative Ethnography as
Theoretical Innovation.” Collaborative Anthropologies. Volume 1. Pp. 1-31.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/collaborative_anthropologies/v001/1.rappaport.html
Series of articles on anthropologists’ involvement in intelligence research in Afghanistan and
Iraq. Listed under article by Rohde, “Army Enlists Anthropology in War Zones” on reserves.
Suggested (for you to use as resources throughout the semester):
MacClancy, Jeremy. 2002. “Introduction: Taking People Seriously.” In Exotic No More:
Anthropology on the Front Lines. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
T. M. Luhrmann. 2000. “Introduction,” In Of Two Minds: An Anthropologist Looks at
American Psychiatry. New York: Vintage Books. p. 3-24.
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Van Maanen, John. 1988. "Fieldwork, Culture and Ethnography." In his Tales of the Field: On
Writing Ethnography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 1-12.
Peacock, James L. 1986. "Method." In his The Anthropological Lens: Harsh Light, Soft Focus.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 48-75.
Borneman, John and Abdellah Hammoudi. 2009. “The Fieldwork Encounter, Experience and the
Making of Truth” In Being There: The Fieldwork Encounter and the Making of Truth. Berkeley:
University of California Press. pp. 1-24.
Emerson, Robert M. and Rachel I. Fretz and Linda L. Shaw. 1995. Writing Ethnographic
Fieldnotes. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Sanjek, Roger (ed.). 1990. Fieldnotes: The Makings of Anthropology. Ithaca: Cornell University
Press.
Check in regularly with an on-line column, “Fieldnotes” on the on-line journal Anthro Now
http://anthronow.com/
A terrific example of collaborative research by the D.C.-based organization Different Avenues,
“Move Along: Policing Sex Work in Washington, D.C.” 2008.
Week 3: September 19
An Anthropologist's Experience in the "Field,”
Critiques of the Malinowskian Model
and Multi-sited Fieldwork
Rabinow, Paul. 1977. Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Articles that Engage Key Analytical Concepts:
Fox, Richard G. 1991. “For a Nearly New Culture History.” In Recapturing Anthropology:
Working in the Present. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.
Marcus, George. 1995. “Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited
Ethnography.” Annual Review of Anthropology 24:95-117.
Hannerz, Ulf. 2003. “Being there….and there….and there! Reflections on Multi-Site
Ethnography.” Ethnography 4(2):201-216.
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Week 4: September 26
How to Write about Those with and without Power
Bourgois, Philippe. 1996. In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. (Intro, Ch’s 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, Epilogue).
Articles that Engage Key Analytical Concepts:
Nader, Laura. 1972. “Up the Anthropologist – Perspectives Gained from Studying Up.” In
Reinventing Anthropology, edited by Dell Hymes, pp. 284-311. New York: Pantheon Books.
Farmer, Paul. 2003. “Thoughts On Bearing Witness” in Pathologies of Power: Health, Human
Rights, and the New War on the Poor. pp. 25-28. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Week 5: October 3
Designing your Field Research
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1-page single-spaced research proposal due; you must circulate your proposal through
email by Sunday, September 30th. We will meet in one of your living rooms, TBD, for this
exchange. I will bring dinner.
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AAA (American Anthropological Association) Statement on Ethics, see
www.aaanet.org/stmts/ethstmnt.htm
Week 6: October 10
Connecting the “Local” and the “Global”
and How to Evaluate Social Change over Time
Brennan, Denise. 2004. What’s Love Got to Do with It? Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism
in the Dominican Republic. Durham: Duke University Press.
Articles that Engage Key Analytical Concepts:
Moore, Sally Falk. 1987. “Explaining the Present: Theoretical Dilemmas in Processual
Ethnography.” American Ethnologist. Pp. 727-736.
Appadurai, Arjun, 1991. Global Ethnoscapes: Notes and Queries for a Transnational
Anthropology. In Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present. R. Fox, ed. Santa Fe:
School of American Research Press.
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Week 7: October 17
Does it “take one to know one?”
And: Experimental Writing
Anthropologists shoot up and take it off
Frank, Katherine. 2002. G-Strings and Sympathy: Strip Club Regulars and Male Desire.
Durham: Duke University Press.
“Crossing the Line: A heroin researcher partakes and pays the price.” October 25, 2002,
Chronicle of Higher Education. By Scott Smallwood.
Articles that Engage Key Analytical Concepts:
Narayan, Kirin. “How Native is a ‘Native’ Anthropologist?” American Anthropologist 95:3. (In
Situated Lives pp. 23-41).
Week 8: October 24
Tales from the Field:
Anthropologist Laura McNamara, Georgetown Alum, who “does” anthropology at the
Sandia National Laboratories will visit
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5-page paper due in class
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Week 9: October 31
Working Alongside Informants
And: Positionality – Anthropologists’ and Informants’
Race, Gender, Sexuality, Religion, Nationality and Class
A Non-Anthropologist Goes “under-cover”:
Ehrenreich, Barbara. 2001. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America. New York:
Henry Holt and Company.
An Anthropologist Goes “under-cover”
Striffler, Steve. “Undercover in A Chicken Factory.” Labor History.
The “I”: Representing Ourselves/Representations of Ourselves
Edelman, Marc. 1996. “Devil, Not-Quite-White, Rootless Cosmopolitan Tsuris in Latin
America, the Bronx and the USSR. In Composing Ethnography, eds. Carolyn Ellis and Arthur P.
Bochner. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. pp. 267-300.
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Simmons, Kimberly. 2001. “A Passion for Sameness: Encountering a Black Feminist Self in
Fieldwork in the Dominican Repbulic,” In Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Politics,
Praxis and Poetics. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. pp. 77-101.
Suggested:
Back, Les. 1993. "Gendered Participation: Masculinity and Fieldwork in A South London
Adolescent Community." In Gendered Fields. pp. 215-233.
Weston, Kath. 1997. “The Virtual Anthropologist.” In Anthropological Locations. eds. Akhil
Gupta and James Ferguson. pp. 163-184.
Week 10: November 7
Writing About Lives: Writing Responsibly, Passionately and Politically
Biehl, Joao. 2005. Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Articles that Engage Key Analytical Concepts:
Kleinman, Arthur and Joan Kleinman. 1997. “The Appeal of Experience; The Dismay of Images:
Cultural Appropriations of Suffering in Our Times,” in A. Kleinman, V. Das, and M. Lock
(Eds.), Social Suffering. Berkeley: University of California Press: pp. 1-23.
Suggested:
Farmer, Paul. 2011. “Writing About Suffering,” In Haiti: After the Earthquake. New York:
Public Affairs Books. pp. 1-53.
Week 11: November 14
Writing About Lives Part II
(Or: Really Good Writing – Inspiration for Your Final Papers)
Garcia, Angela. 2010. The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession along the Rio Grande.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Week 12: November 21
No class – Thanksgiving Break
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Week 13: November 28
Meditation on Doing Field Research, Writing Ethnography, and Writing Fiction
Wolf, Margery. 1992. A Thrice Told Tale: Feminism, Postmodernism, and Ethnographic
Responsibility. Stanford: Stanford University Press
Week 14: December 5
Class Presentations on your field research
And:
Beyond Ethnography
I don’t expect you to read everything below; please check in with each of these forms of storytelling throughout the semester, these forms of production are meant to propel thinking outside
of the ethnographic box. We will assign some of these materials – you will pick – throughout
the semester.
Performance
Deavere, Smith Anna. 1993. Fires in the Mirror. New York: Anchor Books. (Selections on
electronic reserve).
Eve Ensler. 1998. The Vagina Monologues. New York: Villard. (Selections on electronic
reserve).
Hoch, Danny. 1998. Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop and Some People. (Selections on electronic
reserve).
Photography
Ewald, Wendy. (See assorted books of her photography at the Reserve desk). Also check:
http://literacythroughphotography.wordpress.com/wendy-ewald/
Lee, Niki. Projects. I will bring in pictures of her photographs. Also check:
http://www.thememagazine.com/stories/nikki-s-lee/
http://www.mocp.org/collections/permanent/lee_nikki_s.php
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Bacon, David. 2006. Communities without Borders: Images and Voices from the World of
Migration. Ithaca: ILR Press.
And see the photos in these two “ethnographies:”
Bourgois, Philippe and Jeff Schonberg (photographer). 2009. Righteous Dopefiend. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Biehl, Joao and Torben Eskerod (photographer). 2007. Will to Live: Aids Therapies and the
Politics of Survival. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Testimonials, Collaborations, and Oral Histories:
Terkel, Studs. 1972. Working: People Talk about What They Do All Day and How They Feel
about What They Do. New York: The New Press. (Book is at reserve desk).
And: listen to Terkel’s interviews with regular folks during the Depression:
http://www.studsterkel.org/htimes.php
Vollen, Lola and Chris Ying, editors. 2006. Voices from the Storm: The People of New Orleans
on Hurricane Katrina and It’s Aftermath. (Book is at reserve desk).
Stephan, Lynn, trans. and ed. 1994. Hear My Testimony: Maria Teresa, Tula, Human Rights
Activist of El Salvador. Boston: South End Press. (Selections on electronic reserve).
Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell about Life in the Segregated South, eds. Chafe,
W. and Raymond Gavins and Robert Korstad. 2001. New York: The New Press. In Association
with Lyndhurst Books of the Center for Documentary Studies of Duke University. (Selections on
electronic reserve).
And: listen to recordings of interviews:
http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/remembering/
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