This module introduces students to classic concerns and contemporary debates in the doing and writing of ethnography across the social sciences. We focus on the practice of observation and fieldwork, but students will also become familiar with a range of theoretical and philosophical perspectives that underpin the various ways that ethnography is done in a number of disciplines. The module will develop students’ understanding of the ways in which an ethnographic sensibility stands in relation to the conduct of social inquiry in a number of contexts.     

In and through reading classic ethnographies and conducting their own ‘micro-ethnography’, students will be introduced to, and reflect upon, modes of ethnographic inquiry and representation across diverse, relevant and exciting geographic and substantive contexts (from a number of fields but, in particular, urban ethnography, crime and deviance, and mobilities). The module will specifically address writing as both a core skill and a topic of inquiry in engaging with the way social science represents worlds, cultures, and practices studied. We also consider representation beyond the text, critically reflecting upon the affordances of working with photography, film, maps and sound, among others. These modes, however, are not treated simply as ‘tools’ for social inquiry, but as ways of seeing and showing social organisation, to various ends, with varying consequences. Engaging with the politics of (re)presentation enables us to better see ethnographic inquiry as one way of writing culture and as a writing culture in itself.

Students taking this module will be extremely well prepared for conducting independent work, for a number of linked third year modules and, most importantly, will develop a critical and reflexive engagement with everyday cultures, institutions and experiences. You will learn to fight familiarity, find the familiar in the strange, the general in the particular, and the value of specificity.

• Describe and critique a range of classic and contemporary ethnographies in terms of theory, methodology and analysis. (LO1)
• Demonstrate an understanding of some of the core principles of the ethnographic sensibility and method. (LO2)
• Work with and apply complex ideas to everyday experiences and observations with appropriate language. (LO3)
• Understand and be able to demonstrate what it is to write ethnographically. (LO4)

Students will participate in 10 x 3 hour sessions across the semester.

Sessions will feature a combination of lectures, practical tasks and group work, and fieldwork around campus and in Cardiff city centre.

Students are expected to attend all sessions. The sessions are closely tied to the completion of the micro-ethnography, and each week will provide opportunities to discuss key readings and themes, and work together to produce, analyse, and write about data of various kinds.

Students will be required fully utilise non-contact time in reading full monographs, independent scholarship, conducting practical activities that will surround and support the workshops and, of course, the doing of the fieldwork that will underpin the final coursework.

Academic Skills

• Reading, summarising, and critiquing full monographs. (LO1)
• Evaluate and integrate a range of different forms of data and commensurate analysis. (LO2)
• Producing, managing, and analysing a multimodal data set. (LO2 and LO3)
• Presenting and developing a coherent and cumulative argument and narrative. (LO4)

Module specific skills

• Develop an ‘ethnographic voice’. (LO4)
• Approach new situations, experiences and data with an ‘ethnographic imagination’. (LO2)
• Understand and critically evaluate points of connection and divergence between social science disciplines in the doing of ethnography (sociology, ethnomethodology, anthropology, human geography). (LO1, LO3)

Employability/transferability skills

• Problem-solving. (LO2)
• Initiative and independent working. (LO2, LO4)
• Organisation and meeting deadlines. (LO4)
• Working collaboratively with others (participate and communicate effectively in small group settings). (LO2)
• Presenting complex ideas in both oral and written form. (LO4)

• Summative Coursework 25% Students will write a review of an ethnography of their choosing (LO1, LO2). Word limit: 750
   
• Summative Coursework 75% (LO2, LO3, LO4) Word limit: 3000

Fieldwork and the importance of being there:

Why do fieldwork? What kind of understanding of people, practices and world underpins this approach? What ‘moments’ have shaped this view? What sort of questions about society is fieldwork an answer to?

Getting the seat of your pants dirty:

Why did social scientists start doing fieldwork? What is social anthropology? What is phenomenological social science? What is interactionism?

Tales from the field:

The principles and practice of fieldwork. Fieldwork as a trade craft. Ethnographic data, production and analysis. What is the relationship of ethnography and empirical observation to ‘theory’. How do we do fieldwork? What is it like? What are the challenges?

Descriptions of deviance:

How have ethnographers studied subcultures and deviance? What has been the contribution of ethnographic methods to the understanding of classic and contemporary patterns of crime, deviance, and delinquency from the participants’ perspective?

Fighting familiarity; observations in public space:

How might we make the familiar business of being in public space, strange? What is the relationship between an ethnographic lens and common sense? How do you come to see the ‘normality’ of the things that you and everyone else does as an accomplishment?

Making the strange familiar:

How might we approach seemingly ‘strange’ practices as being tied to those we find familiar and ‘normal’? What is it to find the ‘universal in the particular’ and what does this mean for analysis?

Whose side are we on?: The role of ethnography in relation to researching - and researching with - contemporary underdogs.

Telling about society:

How is society and social organisation ‘told’ in different ways by different modes of representation? What work does, say, a map do in showing social and spatial organisation and what does it hide? What are the different modes of ethnography, description and various (re)presentational styles e.g. debate between the ‘Cardiff School of ethnography’ and those working in Norman Denzin's '7th moment' of (auto)ethnography.

Inter/multi-modality, digital and sensory ethnography: How does technology shape fieldwork practice? How might we better work with those we study? How have contemporary ethnographic approaches dealt with sound, image, smell, and the body in everyday life and in research?