College of Social Sciences & Humanities (PG)

Ethnographic methods are a means of tapping local points of view, households and community “funds of knowledge” (Moll & Greenberg, 1990), a means of identifying significant categories of human experience up close and personal. This module examines the practice of ethnography (‘writing about culture’); changing methods of field research, documentation, data interpretation and representation in its development from the 19^th to 20^th century; the ‘crisis of representation’ in the 1970s and 80s; ethnographies as a literary genre; ethical considerations in ethnographic representation (ethnographic authority, ethnocentrism, orientalism, gender bias…); critical analysis of selected classical and recent writings in terms of research methods, writing styles, and theoretical framework.  Part of the module gives emphasis on the significance of language in anthropology: relations between language and culture (ethno-linguistics); relations between language and social relations (socio-linguistics); relations between language and oral literature.