The Politics of Fieldwork

Catalog description

This course will give an overview of some of the main discussions in anthropology around the theories, methods, and politics of ethnographic fieldwork. Students will engage with critical perspectives on issues of positionality, reflexivity, representation, and embodiment, which are essential aspects in designing a research project, engaging in fieldwork, interpreting and analyzing data, and disseminating the research products. Throughout the course, we will analyze how each one of these issues and phases is enmeshed in interlocking power dynamics involving race, gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality, and nationality. We will interrogate the objectivity paradigm, learn about activist, collaborative, decolonizing, and Indigenous methodologies, their multiple challenges and critiques, and discuss anthropologists’ reflections on their own fieldwork experiences. The main goal of the course is to guide students in the process of developing a creative, ethical approach to fieldwork.