Postgraduate Course: Reading and Writing Ethnography (SCAN11031)
Course Outline
| School | School of Social and Political Science |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | Intended for MSc students in Social Anthropology, this course is meant to give them the opportunity to consider their forthcoming dissertations through a consideration of the questions raised by particular ethnographies, the methodologies on which they are based, and the analytic strategies employed. |
| Course description |
Course Outline: Indicative Topics
What is ethnography?
Ethnography as process
Ethnography as product
Engaging Others
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
|
Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | Students MUST NOT also be taking
The Ethnography Seminar (PGSP11042)
|
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
Course Delivery Information
|
| Academic year 2025/26, Available to all students (SV1)
|
Quota: None |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 20,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
|
| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
|
| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Assessment is 100% by coursework. There are TWO assessed components: (1) a 2000 word essay on a specific ethnography (50%) and (2) a 2000 word essay on how ethnographies are informing students' own dissertation research (50%). |
| Feedback |
Students will receive written feedback with their marks for their short and long essay assessments. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Identify and engage with key theories related to questions of ethnographic representation.
- Critically read and discuss ethnographic texts that are essential for the discipline of social anthropology.
- Draw connections between theory and ethnography in terms of methods and authorial strategies
- Creatively engage a diverse range of ethnographic representation in their own writing.
- Exercise autonomy in their own writing practice.
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Reading List
Aunger, Robert On Ethnography: Storytelling or Science? Current Anthropology 36, no. 1 (1995): 97130
Becker, Heike &Emile Boonzaier & Joy Owen. 2005. Fieldwork in shared spaces: positionality, power and ethics of citizen anthropologists in southern Africa, Anthropology Southern Africa
Biehl, João. 2013/2005. Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Cooper, Jessica. 2018. Unruly Affects: Attempts at Control and All that Escapes from an American Mental Health Court. Cultural Anthropology 33(1): 85-108.
Crapanzano, Vincent. 1980. Tuhami: Portrait of a Moroccan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Fassin, Didier. 2013. Why Ethnography Matters: On Anthropology and Its Publics. Cultural Anthropology 28(4): 621-646.
Herzfeld, Michael. 1993. Introduction. The Social Production of Indifference: Exploring the Symbolic Roots of Western Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 1-16.
Jobson, Ryan. 2020. The Case for Letting Anthropology Burn: Sociocultural Anthropology in 2019. American Anthropologist 122(2): 259-271.
Lester, Rebecca. 2019. Famished: Eating Disorders and Failed Care in America. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Nyamnjoh, Francis. 2011. Cameroonian Bushfalling: Negotiation of Identity and Belonging in Fiction and Ethnography. American Ethnologist 38 (4): 701 19
Pink, Sarah. 2015. 'Principles for sensory ethnography : Perception, place, knowing, memory and imagination' in Principles for sensory ethnography. SAGE Publications Ltd
Scott, James C. 1987. Weapons of the Weak. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Tengan, Ty P. Ka¯wika. 2005. Unsettling Ethnography: Tales of an O¯ iwi in the Anthropological Slot. Anthropological Forum Vol. 15, No. 3, pp. 247-256 |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Chisomo Kalinga
Tel: (0131 6)51 5118
Email: Chisomo.Kalinga@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mr James Wills
Tel:
Email: jwills2@ed.ac.uk |
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