ANTHROPOLOGY 169B

ETHNOGRAPHIC METHODS
Fall 2014
Professor Saba Mahmood
GSI: Jean-Michel Landry
Class meeting times: M and W, 4:00-5:30pm
166 Barrows
Office hours and contact information
Mahmood:

Office: 117 Kroeber Hall

Office hours: Wednesday 11:30 am1:30 pm (sign up sheet on the office door)
Or by appointment (email instructor)
[email protected]

Landry:

51 Barrows
Office hours: Monday 1:00-3:00 pm or by appointment
email: [email protected]

Course description
This course is a practicum organized around student research projects. Much of your time in
lecture and sections (as well as outside the class meetings) will be devoted to developing your
own ethnographic project, conducting original research, and writing up a final paper based on
this work. Lectures, readings and discussions will assist you in formulating research questions,
identifying a field site, conducting participant observation, writing up field notes, and analyzing
field data. Our exploration will be rooted in the theoretical importance of the unique method of
participant observation to the discipline of anthropology. Throughout the semester, our attention
will be focused on understanding how theory and method are intimately entwined in
anthropology, and on the practical and intellectual task of designing a research project that
addresses key themes central to the discipline. We will also think collectively about the ethical
demands of ethnographic field work, and the responsibilities of the ethnographer to her/his
research subjects. The course readings are drawn from the reflections of generations of
anthropologists who have struggled with these issues as the discipline has developed historically.
Course requirements and assignments
Students are required to read the assigned articles before coming to class each week, and to
participate in class discussion of the texts. You are required to bring a hard copy of the readings
to class. Failure to do so will result in reduction of grade. You are required to take detailed notes
in sections and lectures so as to assist you with your projects and papers. The use of computer
lap tops and other electronic devices in class to write or read is prohibited. For those with
special needs, accommodation will be made provided you can have the DSP office submit the
1

request to the instructor.

There are three major types of assignments for this course, each accounting for one third of your
grade. First, each student will design and conduct a research project, culminating in a final,
written paper (15-20 pages) due at the end of term. Sections and some of lecture time will be
used to refine your proposals, to develop research plans, and to address issues that arise while
conducting research and writing. Second, there will be several shorter exercises and assignments
based on this same project to help you develop your research skills. They will include such
things as a short description of your research problem and field site, submission of a sample of
your field notes, preliminary write-up of field notes, etc. The final third of your grade will be
based on your participation in lecture and section, including your ability to discuss readings, your
participation in larger and smaller group discussions, and of course attendance which is
mandatory.
Assigned Readings
There are no required books for this course. All assigned readings are available on bCourses.
There is also a hard copy of all the readings on reserve at the Kroeber Library for you to make
hard copies and bring to class.
PART ONE: DEFINING A PROBLEM, DEFINING A PROJECT
Week I: September 3 Course introduction
Week II: September 8-10 What makes a research project anthropological?
What is research in the social sciences? What are the different kinds of questions involved in
research? How does one go about answering these questions? What is data, hypothesis,
observation, description, concept, analysis?
Readings
Paul Leedy. 1996. What is Research? In Practical Research Planning and Design. Pp. 1-12. New
Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
Edmund Leach. 1983. My Kind of Anthropology. In Social Anthropology. Pp. 122-148. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Section Assignment
Your Research Problem (one paragraph):
Taking the cue from our discussion in lecture during LAST week, please prepare a typed, one
paragraph description of the general topic you are interested in pursuing and the problem or questions
you seek to raise about it. Be as specific as you can.

Week III: September 15-17 Concept, observation, analysis

2

What are some of the analytical frameworks anthropologists have used? What sorts of questions
do these frameworks seek to answer? How, for example, is structural functionalism different
from interpretive anthropology? What kinds of data and analysis does each of these frameworks
require? Does research always involve answering true or false questions, or does it require
something else? What is this something else? How have anthropologists talked about it?
Readings
Reginald Radcliffe-Brown. 1965. On the Concept of Function in Social Sciences. In Structure
and Function in Primitive Society. Pp. 178-187. New York: Free Press.
Clifford Geertz. 1973. Thick Description. In The Interpretation of Cultures. Pp. 3-30. New York:
Basic Books.
Clips to play in class: http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/315-doing-anthropology
http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/4363-thought-for-food
Section Assignment
Your Research Problem (one paragraph):
Hone down and decide on the field site and research questions to pursue for the rest of the semester.

Week IV: September 22-24 Field site(s)

What is a field site in anthropology? How has it been defined differently over time in the
disciplines history? How do you identify or select a field site? How does it relate to your
research questions?
Readings
E.E. Evans-Pritchard. 1976. Some Reminiscences and Reflections on Fieldwork. In Witchcraft,
Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande. Pp. 240-254. Oxford: Clarendon.
Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson. 1997. Discipline and Practice. In Anthropological Locations.
Pp. 1- 46. Berkeley: UC Press.
Section Assignment
Discourse (1-2 pages):
Collect and report back on words, language, concepts that you find about your topic in print, on the
news, on the radio, in various corners of the web, in expert publications, in public discussions, and in
whatever other media and textually-mediated worlds you live in and have access to. Do certain ways
of talking about particular issues start to cluster? Be specific about your sources. How do you get to
the words that people use (vs. your own words). People often don't use abstract concepts yet their
way of talking about the practices these concepts encompass is important.

Week V: September 29-October 1 Field work and process of research

This week you will hear from two graduate students in our department who have finished field
work and are writing their dissertations. How did they come to their research questions in the
first place, and how were these questions transformed/reworked once they started their field
work? What advice can they impart to us as we think about these issues?
Guest lecturers: Mareike Winchell and Alex Beliaev
Readings
TBA
Section Assignment
Your Field Site(s) (1.5 pages, double spaced):
Describe three possible field sites that will help you answer your research questions. For example, if
your research question is How has the legalization of gay marriage in the Bay area changed patterns
of same-sex interactions?, then your possible field sites may include: bars, online dating, lawyers
offices that deal with issues of same-sex domestic partner issues (such as taxation, health care,
property), and child adoption agenciesto name a few.

Week VI: October 6-8 Field work (continued)

What is field work? What is participant observation, its norms and requirements? How has the
notion of field work changed in anthropology over time?
Readings:
Kathleen DeWalt and Billy DeWalt. 2002. Informal Interviewing in Participant Observation. In
Participant Observation: A Guide for Fieldworkers. Pp. 120-140. Washington: Altamira Press.
Renato Rosaldo. 1993. After Objectivism. In Culture & Truth: Remaking of Social Analysis. Pp.
46-67. New York: Beacon.
Resource: UC Berkeley Regional Oral History Office (ROHO) guide for interviewing:
http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ROHO/resources/rohotips.html
Section Assignment:
From field site to field research: your interview questions (two paragraphs):
Having identified your field-site, paraphrase your research question. Then, think about the questions
that you can ask your informants (i.e., interview questions). Remember that you should not pose your
research question to your informants directly. Instead, you need to ask your informants about
practical, concrete, everyday issues. It is after analyzing the answers for these interview questions
that you will be able to answer and reconsider your research question. Suppose that your research
question is How has the legalization of gay marriage changed same-sex relations?, and your field site
is a child adoption agency. In this case, you want to come up with a list of potential questions to ask
the people who work and use the adoption clinic. At this stage of your project, it will also be useful for

you to look at what journalists and other researchers have written on this topic. What research and
interview questions have they posed? How are your research and interview questions different?

Week VII: October 13- 15 Field Notes

What are field notes? How do you go about taking field notes? How have anthropologists talked
about different conditions under which field notes are produced? How are field notes part of
producing knowledge about people? How to think about issues of power and inequality in the
process of doing field work? Who has the right to observe and who gets observed?
Readings:
Jean E. Jackson, 1990. 'I am a fieldnote': Fieldnotes as a Symbol of Professional Identity. In
Roger Sanjek, ed. Fieldnotes: The Making of Anthropology. Ithaca and London: Cornell
University Press. Pp. 3-33.
James Clifford, 1990. Notes on (Field)notes. In Roger Sanjek, ed. Fieldnotes: The Making of
Anthropology. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Pp. 47-70.
Nicholas Wolfinger. 2002. On Writing Fieldnotes. Qualitative Research 2(1):85-95.
Section Assignment
Field Notes:
At this point you should be into the process of conducting fieldwork and taking notes. Please turn in a
printed copy of a two-page section of your field notes.

PART 2: CONDUCTING RESEARCH, REFINING QUESTIONS

Week VIII: October 20-22 Ethics of conducting field work
Field work involves you in other peoples lives intimately. Often anthropologists are in a
position of power over those they study. What are the ethical demands such an encounter poses
on you as a field researcher? We will talk about issues of confidentiality: How to maintain the
anonymity of your informants? How to secure informed consent from them before you start
working with them?
Readings:
Kathleen DeWalt and Billy DeWalt. 2002. Ethical Concerns in Participant Observation. In
Participant Observation: A Guide for Fieldworkers. Pp. 195-208. Washington: Altamira Press.
Phillipe Bourgois. 1990. Confronting Anthropological Ethics: Ethnographic Lessons from
Central America. Journal of Peace Research 27(1):43-54.
American Anthropological Association Ethics Resources Page:
http://www.aaanet.org/committees/ethics/ethics.htm
5

UC Berkeley Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects Overview Page:

http://cphs.berkeley.edu/content/overview.htm
Section Assignment
Ethical Concerns (2-3 paragraphs, double spaced):
Think about ethical conundrums you may encounter in the course of doing your field work, such as
issues of confidentiality, how to procure informed consent, vulnerability of your informants. Write two
to three paragraphs on these issues as they relate to YOUR field site.

Week IX: October 27-29 From field notes to analysis: Example 1

This week we will learn how field notes inform anthropological analysis. We will read an
excerpt from Professor Mahmoods field notes and then follow how it was developed
analytically in her article.
Readings:
Saba Mahmood. 2001 Feminist Theory, Embodiment and the Docile Agent. Cultural
Anthropology 16(2): 202-236.
Section Assignment
Research proposal: How to tweak your research? (3 pages double-spaced):
Based on discussions we have had so far in class, flesh out your proposed research project. Revisit
your research question and ask how would you modify it? Re-visit your field notes and the questions
you are asking your informants: what have you left out? How would you tweak these questions given
your research goals? What other sources of information can you turn to that you have not explored so
far? What terms and concepts have emerged from your field work so far that you think are important
that you did not focus on before, and how would you follow them through?
Section Assignment
Bibliography:
This is a short list of literature that will help guide the writing of your ethnography. Please include 2-3
works addressing the particular topic or problem you have chosen, and 1-2 ethnographies that may
provide some methodological or theoretical inspiration.

Week X: November 3-5 From field notes to analysis: Example 2

Readings
Max Gluckman. 1958. The Social Organization of Modern Zululand. In Analysis of a Social
Situation in Modern Zululand. Pp. 1-27. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Jean-Michel Landry. TBA.
Section Assignment
Terms and concepts (1 page):

Based on the field work you have done so far, analyze two key terms that your informants use that
have helped you tweak your research question and conceptual framework.
The people we work with in the field do not necessarily use the concepts and terms we use as
researchers to define a problem. So, for example, rather than use the term capitalism our
informants might talk about the conditions in which the work, their jobs, unemployment, their
earnings versus those they are related to or socialize with, the things they want to and can buy versus
those they cannot and how this effects their lives, and so on. Anthropological insight comes from how
people talk about abstract concepts (such as the concept of personhood, capitalism, law, the state),
and this helps us rethink these abstractions and tweak them. In this Section Assignment you want to
think about the relationship between your conceptual abstractions and the terms used by the people
you are doing field work with.

PART THREE: WRITING

Week XI: November 10-12 What is ethnography about?
What is an ethnography? How does one go from field work and taking field notes to writing an
ethnography?
Readings
E.E. Evans-Pritchard. 1976. Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande. Oxford:
Clarendon. (Selections TBA).
Section Assignment
Research Report (8 pages double-spaced):
Please write an account telling us with as much specificity as you can where things stand with your
ethnographic research, where you feel things are working, and where/how you are having trouble.
Bring two copies of the reportone for the instructor and another one for your peers. This will be a
collective exercise and we will all give feed back to one another.

Week XII: November 17-19 Open session (attendance is required!): troubleshooting, pendientes
Readings
TBA
Section Assignment:
Peer Feedback (2 pages double spaced)
Carefully read your peer's research report and provide constructive feedback. In your feedback, you
may wish to attend to: author's voice, clarity of argumentation, sufficiency of evidence presented, and
whether or not the evidence helps answer the analytical questions posed, etc.

Week XIII: November 24-26 Research forum (1 of 2)

Research conference (1) on student projects
7

Week XIV: December 1-3 Research forum (2 of 2)

Research conference (2) on student projects

Final papers due: Monday December 15 at 12pm