Ethnography and Experience

Catalog description

How do we understand another culture? This course takes students to Los Angeles for an immersive experience. Ethnography, a method emphasizing firsthand experience, helps interpret social life by "standing in others' shoes". The class has two main goals. First, by exploring diverse LA settings, students will overcome shyness and inertia to uncover society's often-invisible aspects. We'll use neighborhoods and public spaces like the "Farmer's Market", The Grove, and Koreatown to practice key methodological skills. Second, students will learn to write an ethnographic paper, a skill applicable to larger projects like capstones. We'll cover topics like ethnographic writing, social theory, feminist methodologies, and ethnography's role in public policy. Finally, students will grasp difficult concepts: generalizability, reflexivity, variation, the ethnographic fallacy, triangulation, standpoint theory, and connecting field sites to broader structural factors (gender, class, citizenship, religion). Through projects, students will use ethnography to illuminate contemporary social forces, including labor markets, migrant exclusion, capitalism, and globalization. This course will be offered in January-Term 2026. This course will be taught at NYU Los Angeles and will count as an Away J-Term course.