Activist Ethnography I

Catalog description

This course will explore various approaches to activist ethnography and the complications presented by observant participation. Our goal will be to interrogate the tension between quantitative and qualitative methodologies by taking advantage of subaltern strategies of knowledge production. We will interrogate activist ethnography by examining more traditional approaches to participant observation and constructing fieldnotes against alternative, collective approaches to engaged knowledge production. Through critical review of selected secondary literature on ethnography and locally grounded fieldwork, we will examine critical ethnography, autoethnography, testimonio, and drifts, just to name a few, paying close attention to dilemmas in the field, the complications around representation, and more recent innovations in collective strategies of knowledge production.