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School of Archaeology and Anthropology · ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences
The focus of this course is the examination of issues in anthropology and the social sciences, and the development of research skills. Students will explore the characteristics of a problem in anthropology, and how one can relate theory to empirical material, theory to ethnography, and the investigation of social issues. Students will be introduced to a range of commonly deployed ethnographic methods and will be invited to consider the relationship to those methods to theory and the carriage of argument, relative to their own intended honours question and selected ethnographies.
Semester length delivery - 260 hours of total student learning time made up from: a) 48 hours of contact over 12 weeks: 24 hours of lectures and 24 hours of seminars and b) 212 hours of independent student research, reading and writing. Intensive delivery - 260 hours of total student learning time made up from: a) 48 hours of contact: lectures and seminars delivered intensively over 6 weeks; and b) 212 hours of independent student research, reading and writing.
(sample set of ethnographic readings for one semester; main course ethnographic texts will change from time to time): Kahn, Miriam. Tahiti Beyond the Postcard: Power, Place and Everyday Life. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011. Tengan, Ty P. Kawika 2008. Native Men Remade: Gender and Nation in Contemporary Hawaii. Cattelino, Jessica 2008. High Stakes: Florida Seminole Gaming and Sovereignty. Duke. Preliminary Reading Thornton 1985. `Imagine Yourself Set Down: Mach, Frazer, Conrad, Malinowski, and the Role of the Imagination in Ethnography’. Anthropology Today 1(5):7-14. Malinowski, B. 1953 [1922]. The Subject, Method and Scope of this Inquiry. Pp. 1-25 from Argonauts of the Western Pacific. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1940. Introductory. Pp. 1-15 and from `Interest in Cattle’, pp. 36-50 from The Nuer. Oxford: Clarendon. Hammersley, M. and P. Atkinson 2007. What is Ethnography? From Ethnography: Principles in Practice. Third edition. Routledge.