Syracuse University
Anthropology 481/781
Ethnographic Research Methods:
Collaborative and Action-Oriented Approaches
Spring 2013
T and Th 2:00-3:20 pm
Crouse Hinds 020
Professor John Burdick
209 Maxwell Hall
443-3822
E-mail:
Office hrs: Mondays and Wednesdays, 3-5 pm, by appointment
By guiding you through field projects conducted in collaboration with local community-based groups, this course will refine your skills as a qualitative researcher with a special emphasis on ethnographic methods, and enhance your ability to conduct research that is useful for and contributes to action. By the end of the course, you will be able to
ü design research projects that are useful to organizations dedicated to community and social change;
ü conduct high-quality ethnographic interviews, participant observation, focus groups, and oral history;
ü assess the risks of research to informants and be acquainted with Institutional Review Board procedures;
ü analyze qualitative data;
ü prepare research reports for different audiences.
This is a Blackboard course. We have no textbook. If you are interested in following along with a text, here are several that I recommend.
On the design and techniques of qualitative and ethnographic research
Agar, Michael, Speaking of Ethnography
Bernard, Russell and Gery Ryan, Analyzing Qualitative Data
Emerson, Robert, et al., Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes
Gibbs, Graham, Analyzing Qualitative Data
Hesse-Biber, Sharlene, The Practice of Qualitative Research
Mason, Jennifer, Qualitative Researching
Maxwell, Joseph, Qualitative Research Design
O’Leary, Zina, The Essential Guide to Doing Your Research Project
O’Reilley, Karen, Key Concepts in Ethnography
Schensul, Jean et al, The Ethnographer’s Toolkit
On collaborative and action-oriented research:
Davydd Greenwood and Levin, Action Research
Charles Hale, ed., Engaging Contradictions
Danny Murphy et al, Doing Community-Based Research
Sanford, Victoria and Asale Angel-Ajani, eds. Engaged Observer: Anthropology, Advocacy and Activism
Richard Sclove, ed, Community-Based Research in the United States
Stoecker, Randy, Research Methods for Community Change
Kerry Strand et al, Community-Based Research and Higher education
Wali, Alaka. 2006. Collaborative Research: A Practical Guide, http://archive.fieldmuseum.org/par/
Williamson, Andy and Ruth De Souza, Researching with Communities
THE FIRST 4 WEEKS
Your work in this course depends on you connecting with an organization. Your research will be a contribution to this group; hence the need to move promptly to choose which group this will be, and enter soon into contact with it. Here is the timetable.
1) Friday, January 18. By this coming Friday I expect you to have decided which three (3) projects you are most interested in. Please e-mail me by 9 pm Friday, January 18 to tell me what they are. Please rank the three projects. For each project, write a few lines explaining what in your background, values, experience, skill-set, major, etc. has led you to be interested in the project. Please note: you may undertake a project with a group or organization that is not on this list, but only according to the rules stated under item #10 on the list of projects.
2) Sunday, January 20: By the end of the day I will have reviewed and collated everyone’s preferences and will send you a message letting you know which project you’ll be working on. It is important to have all of you engaged evenly across projects. If there is another student working with you, or on a closely related project, I will tell you who that student is.
3) Tuesday, January 22 By the end of the day you must have contacted the group’s contact person (identified on the project list) and set up a meeting. That meeting must take place no later than Wednesday, January 30 (the sooner the better). It is very important that you do not rely on e-mail alone to arrange this meeting. Lesson #1 of working with community-based groups is that you need to accompany any and all e-mail communication with a phone call -- usually more than one!
4) Wednesday, January 30. By this date you must have met face-to-face with your contact person for at least 40-60 minutes. If you are working on a project with another student, the two of you should attend the meeting together. In this meeting, you must accomplish the following:
a. Gather basic information about the organization (history, member-base, key struggles, etc.), orally and/or through brochures and other materials;
b. Get clearer what you will be investigating. You should think through ways of making the questions more concrete, as per the readings and discussions in class. Engage your contact person in a conversation about how the questions might be made more concrete.
c. Clarify to the community contact your overall work calendar/schedule, and the weekly time commitment you are making (average 4-5 hours/wk);
d. Discuss the kind of support you hope to receive from the organization (e.g., having someone to introduce you to key informants, someone to take you around the neighborhood, share data with you, etc.);
e. Explain that you will provide the organization with a 5-6 page work plan no later than Tuesday, February 12th. That plan will be informed by coursework, preliminary site visits and conversations. It may also be refined afterward by feedback from your field contact person. If your contact person wishes to see a preliminary work plan before February 12th, you may send one but emphasize that the plan is provisional until you complete the full-fledged plan by February 12th.
5) February 5. On this date an ungraded 4-page “pre-design” is due in class. This report is NOT a research design; it is your initial proposal for research. In this paper you
a. describe the group you will be working with (brief history, number of people involved, objectives);
b. describe the problem faced by the group which has generated issues to be investigated;
c. describe in as operational a way as you can the research question(s) you will be investigating, and distinguish the core question from the sub-questions.
d. comment on possible issues/tensions having to do with your role as action-oriented researcher, and what biases may be active on the side of the organization.
6) February 12th. By this date you must have completed your research design & proposal. This is a 5-6-page paper (given both to me and the organization) in which you
a) Compress the information conveyed in assignment #1 about objective, question and sub-questions;
b) Identify the key populations you plan to investigate and why -- in terms of the characteristics they possess that are relevant to the research questions;
c) Explain how these populations are bounded by geography, group or organizational membership, etc., and any limits on feasibility or access you may face;
d) Identify and explain the procedures you intend to follow to draw samples from these populations;
e) Articulate in the form of one or more preliminary hunches what would constitute data relevant to your research question;
f) Identify and explain the function and appropriateness of the different data collection methods you intend to use (you should have at least two methods);
g) Set forth a data collection schedule and, if appropriate, include a statement of a division of labor among individuals collaborating on the project.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
1. Class participation…………………...…………………………….…….…10%
This is a practice-oriented course designed to help you acquire, develop, and refine your skills as a researcher. Class time is devoted to a mix of practical exercises (in-class observations, interviews, focus groups, auto-ethnographic writing exercises, etc.) and discussion of readings. Some days we will spend more time on exercises; some more on readings. You need to come to class ready to participate both in classroom exercises and discussion. I pay close attention to the frequency and quality of your participation.
2. Reading responses………………………..………………………………….10%
You will post a response to readings once per week on the Blackboard site. On the second day of class (Jan 17), I will divide you into two groups. Group A will be responsible throughout the semester for sending posts by 10:00 pm Monday nights about the readings assigned for Tuesday; group B will be responsible throughout the semester for sending posts by 10:00 pm on Wednesday nights, about the readings assigned for Thursday. Although you only post once per week, I expect you to read all of both sets of assigned readings every week. When you post, you will send to the Blackboard Discussion site a message of at least 200 words (run a word count please) in which you respond to the reading. This will focus you on key issues in advance, prime the pump for class discussion, allow you to see how your classmates think, and give me a feel for what is, and is not, making sense to you. Although I do not always respond to your posts, I read them all carefully.
What is a reading response?
By 10:00 pm the night before class, I expect you to post to the Blackboard Discussion a message of at least 200 words in which you do (at least) the following:
1) Comment on how the reading was significant/useful – state one or two things, for example, that you learned from it; for example, you may want to draw a connection between the reading and something we have done in class, or something you are experiencing in the field;
2) If you found anything puzzling or confusing in the reading, say what it was;
3) This is important: state a question (or questions) the reading leaves you with, and that you think might be useful for the class to discuss. We cannot always get to all questions in class discussions, but I want to know what your questions are.
Note: In each post, you must comment on at least two of the assigned readings. You may comment on them one by one, and/or by commenting on points of overlap or difference between them. Also; I occasionally substitute new readings for those on the syllabus. The readings posted on Blackboard take precedence over what appears on the syllabus. You are responsible for reading posted articles, even when they differ from what appears on the syllabus.
How will my responses be evaluated?
I do not grade individual posts. I expect you to post 11 times over the course of the semester. Your grade on the posts will be determined as follows: to be counted as a “post”, the text you send should be about 250 -300 words (run a Word count)
11 posts...... A
10 posts...... A-
9 posts...... B+
8 posts...... B
7 posts...... B-
6 posts...... C+
5 posts ...... C
4 posts….………………………………..…………………… ………………………...C-
3 posts…….……………………………………………………………………………..D
Fewer than 3 posts………………………………………………………………………F
3. Field journal…………………………………...……………………………..15%
I expect you to spend about 4 hours of field time every week and I expect you to write an average of at least two (2) pages of double-spaced field notes for every week you are in the field. (Graduate students must write at least three (3) pages per week). Please write your field notes digitally, for ease of access, and to facilitate coding and analysis later on. I expect you to write these notes every week between February 11th and April 16th (with one week off for spring break) for a minimum of 16-18 pages of notes overall. Students often find that they end up writing more than this; indeed, it is usually a good idea to do so. I will look at your field journal three times over the course of the term, to make sure you are keeping up with it. I will not grade individual entries in the journal; however, I will grade the overall journal at the end of the term based upon the care, seriousness, up-to-datedness, and volume of writing that the journal exhibits. For example, a journal will be graded down if its writer did not keep it up to date, did not write enough, etc. The check-in dates are Feb 26, March 26, and April 16.
What should you write in my field journal?
Field notes are generally of three kinds: primarily descriptive notes, analytical memos, and extended personal reflections. Certainly these can merge into each other, but you will discover that it is useful for purposes of method and later analysis to distinguish them as you write. Thus, as you begin an entry, it makes sense to pause for a moment, and give the note a heading, or otherwise identify it for yourself as belonging to one of these types of notes. (You may also discover other categories of notes; that is fine, but please let me know what they are). For this course, I am not asking you to keep three separate field journals, though some researchers do this—that is, they keep a separate journal for the three types of notes. I am just asking for a single Word document, in which you identify what kind of note you are writing. We will talk more in class about the three kinds of notes, but briefly, they are:
Descriptive notes: Overall, at least 50-60% of your notes should be of this kind. In this kind of entry, your main goal is to provide yourself with detailed, sensory, experience-near descriptions of stuff you experienced, saw, witnessed, heard, and talked about that is pertinent to your research question and project. While these entries are naturally filtered through various interpretive lenses, it is important for you to develop the skill of providing yourself with notes that are not themselves already “fully figured out,” fully digested, analyzed and interpreted. We will be engaging in classroom exercises to refine your skill in writing descriptive field notes, but your main development of this skill will come from keeping up your field journal on regular basis. The key for this kind of note is that you don’t have to “understand” everything you are writing. It is important not to let more than 1 day transpire between the time you are in the field, and the time you write your notes. Indeed, it is ideal that you write them on the same day (though I know this is sometimes hard to do).
Analytical memos: What you seek to do in an analytical memo is to reflect in a more focused way on possible connections, patterns, and interpretations you are having of the stuff you are registering in your descriptive notes. Roughly 20% of your notes may be of this kind, but you do not have to do this kind of writing every time. Analytical memos get you into the groove of generating ideas for how to code your material later on, when you turn to more systematic analysis. While it is a good idea to start writing analytical memos while still in the field, it is also important to wait a few weeks before you plunge into writing them – let yourself get “marinated” first for a while in the field, before trying to analyze it. Once you do start writing analytical memos, it is crucial not to get carried away and let them crowd out your descriptive notes. You can easily get swept away by the beauty and symmetry of your analytical memos. Beware of becoming overcommitted to your own analyses at this stage. This kind of note must be in the spirit of brainstorming, trying out ideas, developing hunches, playing with possibilities.