Qualitative Research Methods and the Study of Current Issues of Nationalism 2018/2019 Spring

Week 3

Ethnographic methods                  

 

3.1. Discussion: students’ research plans

Assignment:

Please, bring with you and be prepared to read it out your research plan.

 

 

3.2. Entering the field and doing ethnographic research

 

Topics

How to select research settings and cases?

How can you find the informants?

How to establish relationships?

Stages of participant observation (entering the field and doing participative research)

How to deal with personal attachments?

What anthropologists do with fieldnotes? Professional and personal uses and meanings of fieldnotes

Writing up fieldnotes. Concepts and styles in writing fieldnotes

Organizing descriptions based on fieldnotes

 

Readings:            

Schensul, Stephen (1999): Entering the field. In: Schensul, Stephen et al ed. Essential Ethnographic Methods. Seven Oaks Innovation. CA: Altamira Press, 69-89

Bernhard, R. Participant observation. (2006): Ch 7 in Bernhard R. Research Methods in Anthropology. Oxford: Altamira Press, 136-164.

Recommended readings

Robert M. Emerson, Rachel I. Fretz and Linda L. Shaw (1995): “Fieldnotes in Ethnographic Research” and “In the Field: Participating, Observing, and Jotting Notes,” In: Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995): 1-38.

 

Assignment: Field notes and ethnographic observation

Choose a field where you can do participant observation (min. two times in the field). Make a description of the observed event, interactions etc. based on your fieldnotes (max. 2 pages, 4000 characters) and bring your ethnographic description to the last class. (Week 5)