Ethnographic Methods: ethics, practice and theory
12.00-17.00, Thursday, 23 May 2013
The University of Warwick
At its best, ethnography – often glossed as ‘participant observation’ – has provided sociology and other social researchers with a valuable tool for apprehending a world in flux. Across the humanities and social sciences (e.g. cultural studies, social anthropology, sociology), however, ethnography remains a ubiquitous research method that can often raise as many questions – ethical, methodological, political and practical – as it seeks to answer. This workshop will consider recent efforts to reassert ethnography as theory (rather than just description) in order to explore these questions. In doing so, it will survey recent scholarly debates about collaborative ethnography, multi-sited ethnography and the literature on so-called ‘new’ ethnographic objects. Participants in the seminar are required to read Laura Nader’s ‘Ethnography as Theory’ (2011, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 1 (1): 211-219) as well as Matei Candea’s ‘Arbitrary locations: in defense of the bounded field-site (2007, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 13 (1): 167-184).
The deadline for applications is 5pm on Wednesday, 15 May 2013.
Further information about this half-day workshop, which is being led by Dr Alexander Smith (Department of Sociology, University of Warwick) in collaboration with Dr Michaela Benson (Department of Sociology, University of York), can be found here: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/socialsciencesdtc/advanced/ethnographic/.
Please get in touch with Dr Smith if you have questions: alexander.smith@warwick.ac.uk.
