Stuff To Do/Look At:
- Click here for an overview of the whole unit.
- Click here to sign up for your Unit 3 grading plan.
- Sign up for Peer Review!
Everyone on the Structure & Accountability Plan is required to sign up for peer review. Everyone on the Flexibility Plan is welcome to sign up for peer review if you would like to participate.
Even if you do not sign up for peer review, you are welcome to send me an early draft if you would like my feedback.
What To Do Before Zoom Class (Tuesday 4/13)
Assignments (Structure & Accountability Plan):
- Practice mini-ethnography (3 pages on an aspect of Nacireman culture, modeled after “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” and “The Nacirema Revisited”)
Readings:
Choose 2 of the examples from professional anthropologists (#1-3) and 2 of the examples from the student anthropologists (#4-7). No annotations are required for this unit, but if you found them helpful in the past, I suggest you do them here too just for yourself. 🙂
- Unarmed Militancy: Tactical Victories, Subjectivity, and Legitimacy in Bolivian Street Protest (professional anthropologist)
- Using and Refusing the Law: Indigenous Struggles and Legal Strategies after Neoliberal Multiculturalism (professional anthropologist)
- VITAL TOPICS FORUM Chronic Disaster: Reimagining Noncommunicable Chronic Disease (a collection of several shorter pieces by professional anthropologists)
- Smile and Style: An Ethnographic Analysis of ISU’s Gamma Phi Circus (recent student ethnography of a college club)
- Building Christ-based Relationships, Disciples, and Sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ at Illinois State University (recent student ethnography of a college club)
- Who Needs a Man When You’ve Got a Gun? (student ethnography of women gun owners in the Midwest)
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From ‘Taroosh’ to ‘Tom Jones’: Mediating ‘Local’ and ‘Global’ Queer Discourses through Filipino ‘Gay Lingo’ (student ethnography of the slang of gay Filipinos)
More student examples here, if you want to see more.
Some things to think about while you read:
- How do these articles differ from the natural science articles in style, structure, and/or content?
- From looking at these examples, how would you define the rules of writing a mini-ethnography?
What We’ll Do During Class
- Discuss genre/form of ethnographic writing
- Brainstorm for projects
- Share-out ideas
What To Do For Async Thursday (4/15)
Readings: None!
Assignments: Field notes (either real or imaginary) for your project. Officially, these are due “today,” but please do your fieldwork anytime during this week that is convenient for you.
You can view an example of student field notes here, or look at the first couple pages of this student’s project from last semester, since he included his fieldnotes in the same file as his project.
Instructions for Fieldwork/Field Notes (Copy/Pasted from Unit 3 Project Instructions)
For this assignment, you will conduct a mini-ethnography of EITHER an imaginary world OR a real life place.
If you choose a real life place, it should be somewhere you either already spend time in or are comfortable visiting in light of the pandemic. Some suggestions: your own home, your workplace, a partner’s home or a friend’s home, a local park, a place in your neighborhood with a lot of foot traffic/people hanging out, or a nearby restaurant with safety precautions you feel comfortable with.
If you choose an imaginary place, it can be within the same imaginary world you’ve already been writing about this semester (examples from last semester: Hogwarts, Bikini Bottom, the Southern Water Tribe, Riverdale, Justice League Headquarters), or you can choose a different one.
Doing Your Fieldwork
- Spend 1-2 hours at/in your location. If you choose an imaginary world, that means reading the book or watching the TV show or playing the video game, etc. If you choose a real life location, behave how you would normally behave in that place. It’s okay if you let people know that you’re doing a project. In fact, you might want to! Then, you can ask people questions about what they’re doing and why (or imagine that you are interviewing an imaginary character). People you interview during ethnographic research are called “informants.”
- Whenever you’re able to, write down notes about what you observe. Try to view the situation from an outsider’s perspective—as if you are a totally new visitor who knows nothing about the place or how things work there. What social norms are there? How do people interact with each other, or choose who to interact with? How are people dressed? How do they talk? What do they do? What kinds of people are there? What do you guess/infer about them based on your observations? (If you find yourself using stereotypes, you can just be honest that you were using stereotypes). These notes are part 1 of your fieldnotes.
- After you’re done with your fieldwork, write down everything you can think of that you observed that you didn’t already write down. Try to use all 5 senses (or imagine all 5 senses if you’re doing something imaginary). These notes are part 2 of your fieldnotes– all of the details that you couldn’t write down in the moment. You can also include notes on your initial impressions/interpretations.
- Look at your notes. What seems to be important features of the norms and culture of the place/community you studied? If you were from Mars and visiting this place for the first time, what would stand out to you? How would you describe it to someone else? What seemed important? Your answers should form the basis of the focus of your mini-ethnography.
Rubric for Field Notes:
1 point — you turn something in, but the notes are very sparse/vague/general
2 points — your fieldnotes indicate an attempt to fulfill the assignment but are missing significant parts of the requirements
3 points– both sets of fieldnotes– notes you take during your observation period and the more detailed version you write after– are present.
4 points– both sets of fieldnotes are present and include observations of several different aspects of your environment/its culture
5 points–both sets of fieldnotes are present and include observations of several different aspects of your environment/its culture with a high level of detail
Preparing for Next Class (Tuesday 4/20)
We will NOT have Zoom class on 4/20.
Readings (Optional):
More examples of student ethnographies
An example from one of my students last semester– now, this is much more in-depth than what I am requiring you to do, since she used her entire time in the US Army as her fieldwork, rather than conducting new fieldwork for this unit. So, her project and analysis are much deeper than yours needs to be. But, it’s also an excellent example of ethnographic writing and analysis.
Another example from last semester — this student chose to do an ethnography of a restaurant he and his friends went to eat at
Assignments Due (Structure & Accountability Plan, AND anyone else who signs up for peer review):
First draft of mini-ethnography due! Please send to me AND to your peer review partner
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