Teaching Ethnographic Methods for Cultural Anthropology: Current Practices and Needed Innovation

Abstract

Historically, ethnographic methods were learned by cultural anthropology students in individual research projects. This approach creates challenges for teaching in ways that respond to the next generation’s calls to decenter anthropology’s White, heteropatriarchal voices and engage in collaborative community-based research. Analyzing syllabi from 107 ethnographic methods training courses from the United States, we find the tradition of the “lone researcher” persists and is the basis of ethnographic training for the next generation. There is little evidence of either active reflection or team-based pedagogy, both identified as necessary to meet career opportunities and diversification goals for the wider field of cultural anthropology. However, we also find that, by centering the completion of largely individual research projects, most ethnographic methods courses otherwise adhere to best practices in regard to experiential and active learning. Based on the analysis of syllabi in combination with current pedagogical literature, we suggest how cultural anthropologists can revise their ethnographic methods courses to incorporate pedagogy that promotes methodologies and skills to align with the needs of today’s students and communities.

A Vertically Integrated Project Approach to Ethnographic Methods Training

“…First, the model of lone ethnographers (often white, male) (Gottlieb 1995) persists as the basis of ethnographic teaching and training for students, i.e. 'next generation' anthropologists (El Kotni et al 2020;Yates-Doerr 2020), and therefore has been self-sustaining (Galman 2007;Ruth et al 2022). However, the model has been facing increasing challenges both in research (Holmes and Marcus 2008;Yates-Doerr 2020;Thomsen 2022;Thomsen et al 2022) and student training (Brunson et al 2021;El Kotni et al 2020).…”

“…There have been calls and attempts to build collaborative norms in teaching and training for both academic research (El Kotni et al 2020;Gottlieb 1995;Holmes and Marcus 2008;Snodgrass 2016) and public or applied work (Brunson et al 2021;Lassiter 2005). While a discipline-wide revolution of anthropology pedagogy is not easy due to institutional and resources limitations (Brunson et al 2021;Ruth et al 2022), recent pioneering experimental attempts are inspiring, such as the Collaborative Event Ethnography (Weston and Djohari 2018), the community-engaged student-led applied anthropology course (Miller 2021) and the multi-course pedagogical experiment during the Covid-19 pandemic (Finnis et al 2023).…”

“…Anthropologists have acknowledged the often incomplete work and partial knowledge from anthropological research (Günel et al 2020;Yates-Doerr 2020), and further suggested to adjust the goal of science to making connections between the collaborators' different modes of knowing for collective production of better knowledge (Haraway 1988;Holms and Marcus 2008;Strathern 2004). This goal is especially urgent nowadays for faculty research and teaching to adapt to, and take advantage of, the increasingly diverse student body in anthropology (Ruth et al 2022) and other fields (Sonnenberg-Klein et al 2018). The co-authorship of this article is meant to acknowledge the students', including local undergraduates', contribution to the collective process of experiential learning and knowledge production.…”

“…Its project-based approach turns research and learning to true-to-life processes (Melkers et al 2012). Ethnographic methods teaching requires hands-on fieldwork training and practice as reaffirmed in a recent wide survey (Ruth et al 2022). Moreover, the collaborative team mode of work in the VIP model is urgently needed for ethnographic methods training (El Kotni et al 2020;Ruth et al 2022), especially in applied anthropology (Brunson et al 2021).…”

“…Ethnographic methods teaching requires hands-on fieldwork training and practice as reaffirmed in a recent wide survey (Ruth et al 2022). Moreover, the collaborative team mode of work in the VIP model is urgently needed for ethnographic methods training (El Kotni et al 2020;Ruth et al 2022), especially in applied anthropology (Brunson et al 2021). The VIP model was designed for applied training programs and courses that aid critical thinking and professional development with students (Amoo et al 2020).…”