SYD-6901 Graduate Seminar: Representing Ethnography

Spring 2004/Tuesdays Dr. Laura Ogden

9:30 – 12:15 Office: DM 336B

Room: PC - 441 Phone: 348-2249

Office Hours: MW 9- 10am

& by appointment

Course Description and Objectives

Using the Oxford English Dictionary we can trace two uses of the word representation:

1. “An image, likeness, or reproduction in some manner of a thing,” and

2. “The action of placing a fact, etc., before another or others by means of discourse; a statement of account, esp. one intended to convey a particular view or impression of a matter in order to influence opinion or action.”

The first definition appears neutral, while the second suggests an argumentative strategy. In this course, we explore how ethnographic representational techniques (while often appearing like neutral renderings of reality) are in fact textual strategies for conveying theory.

In this course, we take for granted that research methods and writing (as well as other strategies of representation) are not neutral. Instead, we assume that each choice we make has important theoretical implications about the limitations and boundaries of anthropological knowledge (as well as other disciplinary territories).

In a nutshell . . . we are going to be rethinking the POWER dynamics of ethnographic research. . .

asking who gets to author? . . who gets to theorize? . . . and who decides what all this looks like?

We will be analyzing ethnographic writing and film, with particular emphasis on contemporary experimental ethnography.

Required Texts (available at FIU Bookstore)

Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1968. The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People. Clarendon Press.

Taussig, Michael. 1987. Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Behar, Ruth. 1993. Translated Woman: Crossing the Border with Esperanza’s Story. Boston: Beacon Press.

Achille Mbembe. 2001. On the Postcolony. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Coursepak, available at Department of Sociology/Anthropology, DM 3^rd Floor

Requirements and Grading

Course Participation: This course will follow a seminar format. Course participants are expected to engage in close reading and to contribute to class discussions. We will take turns bringing in a discussion question (based upon the assigned readings) for each meeting. Please provide other participants with copies of your discussion question (20%).

Discussion Papers: Two “discussion papers” are assigned for February 10 and March 9. Discussion papers should be five pages long and engage the subject matter from the previous section of the course. Participants should choose three ideas from the readings and discussion from the previous section and relate them to your own research interests. These discussion papers should be treated with the same gravity as a publishable research paper. (20% each).

Final Paper: For the final assignment, we will write an “experimental” ethnography. For this assignment, we will show the linkage between our theoretical orientation, our research topic, and the representation of this knowledge (40%)

COURSE SCHEDULE

January 6, 2004: Course Introduction

Film: Nanook Revisited

January 13, 2004: What is Ethnography?

Film: The Nuer (1971)

Marcus and Fisher “A Crisis of Representation in the Social Sciences” and “Ethnography and Interpretive Anthropology” (coursepak)

PART ONE: THE COLONIAL AND THE POST COLONIAL

January 20, 2004: Colonial Situations

Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer

January 27, 2004:

Pratt, Mary Louise “Fieldwork in Common Places” (coursepak)

Taussig, Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man (Part I)

February 3, 2004

Mbembe, Achille On the Postcolony (to pg. 101)

Torgovnick, Marianna “Defining the Primitive/Reimagining Modernity”

February 10, 2004

Mbembe, Achille On the Postcolony (finish book)

Discussion Paper One Due

PART TWO: ETHNOGRAPHY AND POWER

February 17, 2004: On Ethnographic Authority

Clifford, James “On Ethnographic Authority”

Trinh, “The Language of Nativism: Anthropology a Scientific Conversation of Man with Man” (coursepak)

Film: Reassemblage (1982)

February 24, 2004: Women’s Voices

Behar, Translated Woman (pg. xi – 164)

Harraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective” (coursepak)

Visweswaran, “Defining Feminist Ethnography” (coursepak)

March 2, 2004: Subaltern Ethnography

Behar, Translated Woman (Part II)

Collins, “Toward an Afrocentric Feminist Epistemology” (coursepak)

Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (coursepak)

March 9, 2004: The Ethnographic Gaze

Behar, Translated Woman (Part III and IV)

Hansen, Needham, and Nichols, “Pornography, Ethnography, and the Discourses of Power” (coursepak)

Film: The Ax Fight

Discussion Paper Two Due

POST-STRUCTURALIST CRITIQUE

March 16, 2004: Essentialism and Play

Ramos, “Reflecting on the Yanomami: Ethnographic Images and the Pursuit of the Exotic” (coursepak)

Derrida, “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” (coursepak)

March 23, 2004: Interpretation

Geertz, “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight” (coursepak)

Crapanzano, “Hermes’ Dilemma: The Masking of Subversion in Ethnographic Description” (coursepak)

March 30, 2004

No class – Spring Break

April 6, 2004: Representing Reflexivity

Dwyer, selections from Morrocan Dialogues: Anthropology in Question (coursepak)

Rosaldo, Renalto “Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage” (coursepak)

April 13, 2004: Anthropological Poetics

Ogden “The Bill Ashley Jungles: A Landscape Poetics”

April 20, 2004

Final Paper Due