| CODE | ANT5010 | ||||||||||||
| TITLE | The Research Process | ||||||||||||
| UM LEVEL | 05 - Postgraduate Modular Diploma or Degree Course | ||||||||||||
| MQF LEVEL | 7 | ||||||||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 5 | ||||||||||||
| DEPARTMENT | Anthropological Sciences | ||||||||||||
| DESCRIPTION | This is a seminar series designed to take students through the Research Process in Socio-Cultural Anthropology from ‘Planning a Research Project’ to ‘Writing Up – Thesis and Reports’. It is designed as a critical input to actual dissertations. The seminar meets fortnightly for one academic year, to discuss relevant readings from the Course Outline, listing by fortnightly seminar topic a large body of literature on the Research Process. Study-unit Aims: To train students in anthropology and intending to conduct a sustained programme of research (MA and PhD) from the stage of identifying a Research Topic right up to Conducting Fieldwork, writing-up and ethical considerations. Learning Outcomes: 1. Knowledge & Understanding: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - devise a research project; - conduct a literature search; - evaluate the various research tools suitable for the particular research topic; - understand the dynamics and complexities of fieldwork from entering the community to leaving it; - comprehend te ethical issues involved; - write-up their research and come to suitable conclusion. 2. Skills: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - conduct anthropological research; - write suitable reports; - develop suitable research writing skills. Main Text/s and any supplementary readings: Postgraduate Seminar Series on The Research Process in Social Anthropology. This seminar series consists of two parts. In the first you will be selecting texts from the reading list below for discussion in class. In the second part you will be expected to apply insights from these readings in a presentation of your research proposal. Part I – Research Methods – discussions from the literature: Two weeks will be devoted to each of the numbered topics below. You will be expected to present a brief summary (10-15 minutes) of useful discussion points gleaned from your chosen readings. Please type up a short (1-3 page) summary per reading to be distributed to the rest of the class. Part II – Applying methodological theory to practice: When the topics on the reading list have all been explored, you will be asked to make brief (15 minute) presentations on your own dissertation/research projects, showing how they will draw on material covered in the course. Assessment – Due. You will submit a 5,000 word portfolio for assessment. Approximately half of this will consist of revised versions of the handouts that you prepared for the reading presentations. The other half will be an essay (approx 2,500 words) that sums up how you see ideas explored through the year’s reading for the course contributing to your own field research. (Note that taught Masters students who are not embarking on research should write instead about how the ideas from the readings have reframed their vision of what the discipline of social anthropology can achieve through its methodologies). Additional note on the reading list below – In most cases there is considerably more of interest in the sources listed below than the pages or chapters cited. You should use this list as a sampler of the material available to guide you in social anthropological research. – Introduction to the course and readings. Week 2 [PSC] – Planning a research project. What is it like to carry out anthropological fieldwork? How will people act toward you? To what extent will your values and ideas affect your observations and to what extent is objectivity possible in social anthropology? What techniques can you use to increase your objectivity and how will you guide your interaction with the people you are studying? (a) case studies. Can you detect the effect of the author's personal or theoretical orientation on their observations in the field? (i) the Yanomamo Chagnon, N. 1968 Yanomamo, the fierce people. New York: Holt, Rinehart. Lizot, J. 1985 Tales of the Yanomami. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. Good, K. 1991 Into the Heart: An Amazonian Love Story, Penguin Books. (ii) the Samoans Mead, M. 1928 Coming of Age in Samoa, New York. Freeman, D. 1983 Margaret Mead and Samoa, Penguin Books. Week 3 (b) general: Brim, J.A. and D.H. Spain 1974 Research design in anthropology. New York: Holt, Rinehart. See chapters 1, 2 and 3 (to p. 42). Ellen, R.F. (ed.) 1984 Ethnographic research: a guide to general conduct. London: Academic Press. See particularly chapter 7, sections 7.2-7.4 Rose, D. 1990 Living the Ethnographic Life, (Qualitative Research Methods Series 23), Sage Publications. Gregory, C. and J. Altman 1989 Observing the economy. London: Routledge, chapters 1 and 3, chapter 9 from p. 212. Ruby, D.W. (ed.) 1982 The crack in the mirror. Univ. Pennsylvania Press. Week 4 : Techniques of investigation: interviews and participant observation Entering a strange community and recording your daily observations. Learning to understand yourself as well as others. Construing interaction in their idiom. Being wary of those who first approach you. Identifying key cultural terms and recognising aspects of culture which may or may not be verbalised. Deciding when to carry out a survey and when to undertake lengthy interviews. (a) Case studies Frankenburg, R. 1990 Village on the border - revised edition. Prospect Heights, Ill: Waveland. Chapters titled 'a text revisited' and 'participant observers'. Murphy, M.D. 1992 On jogging with fascists and strolling with reds. In DeVita, P. (ed.) The naked anthropologist. Belmont, Ca.: Wadsworth. Chapter 19. Rabinow, P. 1977 Reflections on fieldwork in Morocco. Berkeley: Univ. California Press. Chapters 3 and 5. Turner, V.W. 1967 The forest of symbols. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press. Chapter 6. Loizos, P. 1981 The Heart Grown Bitter: a chronicle of Cypriot war refugees. pp.1-62 Anderson, B.G. 1990 First Fieldwork: the misadventures of an anthropologist, Waveland Press, pp 1-68. Strauss, S. 2000 Locating Yoga: ethnography and transnational practice, In Amit, V. (ed) Constructing the Field: Ethnographic Fieldwork in the Contemporary World. London: Routledge, pp. 162-194. Week 5: (b) General Bruyn, S.T. 1966 The human perspective: the methodology of participant observation. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Chapter 7. Crane, J. and M. Angrosino 1992 Field projects in anthropology: a student handbook. Prospect Heights, Ill: Waveland. Chapters 4 and 5. Frances, E. 1992 Qualitative research: collecting life histories. In S. Devereux and J. Hoddinott (eds.) Fieldwork in developing countries. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Chapter 6. Garfinkle, H. 1967 Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Chapter 2. McCracken, G. 1988 The long interview. London, Sage. Spradley, J.P. 1980 Participant Observation. NY etc.: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Part 2, Step 2. (pp.53-129) Week 6 : Techniques of investigation: surveys and questionnaires. (a) Case studies Fortes, M. 1970 Time and social structure, an Ashanti case study. In M. Fortes Time and social structure and other essays. London: Athlone, pp. 1-32. Geertz, C. 1959 Balinese village structure. American Anthropologist, 61: 991- 1011. Rowse, T. 1988 Middle Australia and the Noble Savage. In J. Beckett (ed.) Past and present, the construction of Aboriginality. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press. Chapter 10. Bott, E. 1971 (1957) Family and Social Network, London: Tavistock. Chapters 7-8 and section called "Reconsiderations". Chs 6-7, and summary and conclusion. Strathern, M. 1981 Kinship at the Core: an anthropology of Elmdon, a village in north-west Essex in the nineteen-sixties, CUP. Week 7 (b) General Barnard, A. and A. Good 1984 Research practices in the study of kinship. London: Academic. Chapter 2. Crane, J. and M. Angrosino 1992 Field projects in anthropology: a student handbook. Prospect Heights, Ill: Waveland. Chapter 11. Ellen, R.F. (ed.) 1984 Ethnographic research: a guide to general conduct. London: Academic Press:chapter 8, pp. 257-267. Bourdieu, P. 1984 Distinction: a social critique of the judgement of taste, Routledge and Kegan Paul. Part 1, pp.1-96. Le Wita, Beatrice. 1998. French Bourgeois Culture. C.U.P. Introduction, Ch1, and Conclusion. Week 8: Bounding the unit of research No social anthropologist today supposes that a single community can be studied without reference to its geographical or historical context, but where should the limit be drawn in time and space? How subjective are historical explanations? What empirical reality do the communities constructed by the analyst have? What forces promote continuity and change in socio-cultural organisation? (a) village, region or globe? Amit, V. 2000 Introduction: Constructing the Field, In Amit, V. (ed) Constructing the Field: Ethnographic Fieldwork in the Contemporary World. London: Routledge, pp. 1-18. Anderson, B. 1982 Imagined communities. London, Verso. Wolf, E. 1983 Europe and the people without history. Berkeley, Univ. California Press, pp. 1-72. Kohn, T. 1995 She came out of the field and into my home: reflections, dreams and a search for consciousness in anthropological method, In Cohen, A.P. and N. Rapport (eds.) Questions of Consciousness, Routledge. Hart, K. 1982 The Political Economy of West African Agriculture, CUP. Chapter 2 Wallerstein, I. 1974 The Modern World System (vol. 1), Academic Press Chapters 6-7. Week 9 (b) The historical dimension Carr, E.H. 1961 What is history? Harmondsworth: Penguin. Chapter 4. Hobsbawm, E. and T. Ranger (eds.) 1983 The invention of tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. Introduction and chapter 2. Jenkins, K. 1991 Rethinking history. London: Routledge. Layton, R. (ed.) 1989 Who needs the past? Introduction. McDonald, M. 1989 'We are not French!'. London: Routledge. Introduction. Sant Cassia, P. 1999 Tourism, tradition and memory in Malta. JRAI 2: 247-263. Week 10 :– Ethics What should the fieldworker do if drawn into a conflict in the field? Who has the right to use the fieldworker's findings? Should informants have the right to veto publication of information which is secret or embarrassing? Does the anthropologist's theoretical position perpetuate an unequal power relation between the researcher and the subject community? (a) Case studies Appell, G.N. (ed.) 1978 Ethical dilemmas in anthropological enquiry. Crossroads. Choose one or more case studies and be ready to discuss them. Hobbs, D. and T. May (eds.) Interpreting the field: accounts of ethnography. Oxford, Oxford Univ. Press. Pick one or more from chapters written by Green (Ch.4), Norris (Ch 5) and Fountain (Ch 6). Zulacka, J. 1995 The Anthropologist as Terrorist, In Nordstrom, C. and A. Robben (eds.) Fieldwork under Fire, California Univ. Press. Kohn, T. 1987 Field Residence and Textual Responsibility: A Scottish Case Study, Proceedings of the Association for Scottish Ethnography, Vol.2. pp 50-54. Rose, D. 1987 Black American Street Life, Univ. of Pennsylvania Press. Chapter 1. Week 11 (b) General Asad, T. 1972 Anthropology and the colonial encounter. London: Ithica Press. Introduction. Christensen, G. 1992 Sensitive information: collecting data on livestock and informal credit. In Devereux, S. and J. Hoddinott (eds.) Fieldwork in developing countries. London: Harvester-Wheatsheaf. Chapter 8. Hymes, D. 1974 The uses of anthropology: critical, political, personal. In D. Hymes (ed.) Reinventing anthropology. New York: Random House, pp. 3-79. Hastrup, K. 1993 Hunger and the hardness of facts, Man, Vol. 28 (4): 727-739. Scheper-Hughes, N. 1995 The Primacy of the Ethical: propositions for a militant anthropology, Current Anthropology, Vol. 36(3): 409-440. (c) A particular case study David Stoll 1999: Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of all Poor Guatemalans. Westview Peter Canby(1999): The Truth about Rigoberta Menchu. New York Review of Books, April 8, 1999. Vol XLVI, No 6 , pp28-33 Week 12: Writing up: theses and reports (a) Practical aspects: What style is appropriate (compare readings for the first session of the course)? If you are writing a report, who is it intended for: what do they want to know, and what do they already understand? How will you organise data and analysis in your thesis? How can the patterns you detect in your data best be documented and how can you cross-check your findings? Barley, N. 1983 The innocent anthropologist. London: British Museum Publications, especially chs. 1-4. Chagnon, N. 1974 Studying the Yanomamo. NY: Holt Rinehart. Chapter 3. Conlin, S. 1985 Anthropological advice in a government context. In Grillo, R. and A. Rew (eds.) Social anthropology and development policy. London: Tavistock. Chapter 4. Emerson, R.M., R.I.Fretz, and L.L. Shaw 1995 Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chapter 7. Hammersly, M. and P. Atkinson 1983 Ethnography: principles in practice, London: Tavistock. Chapter 9 Layton, R. 1983. Pitjantjatjara processes and the structure of the land rights act. In Peterson, N. and M. Langton (eds.) Aborigines, land and land rights. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, pp. 226-237. Lockwood, M. 1992 Facts or fictions? Fieldwork relationships and the nature of data. In Devereux, S. and J. Hoddinott (eds.) Fieldwork in developing countries. London: Harvester-Wheatsheaf. Chapter 11. Week 13 (b) Philosophical aspects: translating culture Carrithers, M. 1990 Is anthropology art or science? Current Anthropology, 31: 263-282. Narayan, K. 1988 How native is a 'native' anthropologist. In Thapan, M (ed) Anthropological journeys: reflections on fieldwork, pp. 163-187. Rosaldo, R. 1986 From the door of his tent. In Clifford, J. and G. Marcus (eds) Writing culture: the poetics and politics of ethnography. Berkeley, Univ. California Press, pp. 77-97. Spencer, J. 1989 Anthropology as a kind of writing. Man 24: 145-164. Week 14 Presentations. |
||||||||||||
| ADDITIONAL NOTES | Pre-requisite Qualifications: Admission to p/g studies in Anthropology (BA Hons/ MA Qualifying). | ||||||||||||
| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Seminar | ||||||||||||
| METHOD OF ASSESSMENT |
|
||||||||||||
| LECTURER/S | Ranier Fsadni |
||||||||||||
|
The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2023/4. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
|||||||||||||