Aims

POL 3056 Ethnographic Methods in the Political World aims to help students:
• Use ethnography to access the political world, including the experiences of elected leaders and their political parties, the dynamic life of elections and law-making, and the impact of grassroots and global activism
• Investigate different research techniques used by political ethnographers, including such methods as participant observation, interviews and the use of the camera
• Apply this methodological approach to their own study of political life and culture so they experience conducting research as a political ethnographer

Outline Of Syllabus

An ongoing pandemic. Inequality and violence leading to social uprisings. Major elections changing the leadership of several of the world’s most powerful nations. This course reflects on this extraordinary time in global politics to ask: how can political ethnographers help us make sense of political outcomes, structures and cultures? Providing foundational knowledge, rigorous debate and real-time examples of qualitative methods used in politics and across the social sciences, POL 3056 Ethnographic Research in the Political Field will facilitate rich conversations about contemporary political and popular culture and prepare final-year undergraduate students and postgraduate students to confidently employ ethnographic methods in their dissertation research and beyond.

Students enrolled on POL 3056 may explore topics such as (but not limited to):
• What is ethnography and how can it help us locate and explore the political world?
• An introduction to the ethnographic methods used by political researchers, including observation and participant observation, interviews and focus groups, and approaches using film, photography and sound
• Positionality and the relationship between researcher, the research subject and the research field
• “Doing” ethnographic fieldwork, including preparing a research plan, taking field notes, recruiting and interacting with informants, storing research data and preparing a field report
• The reflexive nature of ethnographic fieldwork and the ethical responsibilities of political researchers
• The growing role of cameras and smart phones in fieldwork, data analysis and presentation of findings
• How to communicate qualitative findings for academic and general audiences

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

The online lectures, in-person workshops and assigned weekly readings will offer students the chance to explore and critique the use of ethnography in political research from a number of expert perspectives, including their own. Maintaining a balance of theory with first-hand practical experience, POL 3056 will rely heavily on the weekly workshops as a creative and collaborative space within which students learns from their lecturer and each other about the practicalities of conducting research in the modern political landscape. As a course that’s responsive to the dynamics of “the political” as a vast fieldsite, POL 3056 provides students with the practical experience needed to not only successfully carry out their dissertation projects but will offer a chance to sharpen a wide range of marketable skills like communicating with a varied audience, problem solving, working with contemporary technology and conducting research in our current political and social climate. Online materials will present a foundation to each week’s topic that the in-person sessions build on through in a skills-based workshop format. Students will be offered a chance to conduct their own short fieldwork project, an opportunity to work with digital camera, and to prepare assessments that reflect important stages of the qualitative research process.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

Because this course relies heavily on the creative and collaborative weekly sessions, it is important that student learning is first measured through their preparedness and engagement in the workshops. Students will also be required to reflect on their fieldwork experiences, in conversation with the concepts, and assigned and supplemental texts from the semester, and will receive feedback on their work to help prepare for their final assessment. Finally, students will build on their knowledge and experiences of using the camera in fieldwork to formulate their own final essay that presents photography alongside written texts to discuss a political topic of their choice.