Teachers: Prof. Laura Ogden and Prof. Wenzel Geissler
(This course is registered as SOSANT9100A/B for Spring 2024. See semester page for schedule: Semester page for SOSANT9100A – – University of Oslo (uio.no)
Ethnographic research, premised upon presence and participation (however defined), is inherently grounded in place. In most cases, this is still one particular site or area, and a place and area that the ethnographer, and her reader, are unfamiliar with.
As such, anthropological PhD theses and monographs are commonly expected to include a section or chapter that introduces readers to a place that they know little about, the significance of the central theme or question of the thesis in relation to that place, and the evolution of ideas and knowledge about the area, within the discipline, as well as in related disciplines. While this conventional "study area chapter" a generation ago was expected to include everything ever written about a place – or at least everything anthropological ever published - the amount of published scholarship, the mounting importance of interdiciplinary conversations, the growing awareness of biases and exclusions inherent to the disciplinary canon, and, not least, the narrowing thematic focus of anthropological enquiry, have made this totalising expectation more complicated. However, there still tends to be the expectation that a thesis contains a chapter that tells the readers everything the author might want them to know about their place(s).
This course aims to make the participants familiar with different genres and forms of "place-chapters", drawing on a range of published work, and to work on their own readings, reflections and writing about the place they are going to, or have, studied. Specifically, we will spend time on discussing the changing role of place in ethnography, and expectations to regional authority in anthropology; to reflect on the different qualities and status of published material on given places, and how to include these into ethnographic text; and not least, to think about the place of the author-ethnographer in relation to place and to their text about place.
The programme will be as follows:
Day one: Place in fieldwork, genre conventions, structure and limits of writing about place - how to build up an introduction to a place, how to delimit the "region of interest" and to balance general information (the bigger picture) and specific thematic interests, and what to do about expectations of regional authority and anthropological comparison? (Laura Ogden)
Day two: Engaging diverse forms of regional writing – what texts about a place should be included in one’s thesis (old/new texts, regional/international scholarship, different disciplinary knowledges (e.g., historical, scientific, medical), textual and visual representations, literary and non-academic texts) and how should these be contextualised, translated or even re-written for the reader of an ethnography? (Wenzel Geissler)
Day three: Writing yourself into place – how visible do you want yourself to be in the text, as person, as voice or textual style, how do you render and reflect upon your position in a given place, and how do you establish your expertise (and its limitations) concerning a given site or region? (Laura Ogden & Wenzel Geissler)
The teaching will be structured by a short lectures and discussions, with the overall aim of helping all participants to reflect upon the virtues and challenges of place-based writing, to enable critical reflection on different genres of writing, as well as diverse forms of knowledge to be drawn upon, and thus to enable participants to successfully push their preparation regional reading (including the obligatory "regional essay" at SAI/UiO) or the writing of the chapter – tentatively labelled "study area" - that will draw their readers into their place of ethnographic research, and provide them with the necessary knowledge, to understand the thesis’ material and arguments, as well as to appreciate the existing scholarship about place (or about particular issues or themes within it).
The input expected from participants, apart from the readings below, is a short, lose draft for a regional/site chapter, and the hoped for outcome of the course is an extended draft for the same future chapter. As such, the course will have tangible outcomes, in addition to new things learned, of relevance to the thesis progression.
Requirements:
All participants are expected to submit a draft regional essay/chapter of 2000-3000 words, including regional literature as well as (for post-fieldwork participants) descriptions or reflection. This draft chapter is aimed to introduce potential readers to a place that they are otherwise ignoring about, reflecting the cumulative nature of humanities knowledge, and teasing out what is particularly important to know about the place and its wider region, bearing in mind the thematic focus of the thesis – and balancing general background and specific thematic facts.
Examination:
Submission of a 3-4000 word regional essay/chapter, covering a range of regional literature (citing at least 20 relevant references), within two months after the course.
Admissions:
This course is for PhD students of anthropology, either before or after their fieldwork. PhD candidates in related disciplines may be considered for admission on a case-by-case basis.
For PhD candidates from the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo: apply by using Studentweb.
Other PhD candidates: apply by sending an e-mail to this address: post@sai.uio.no. Application deadline: 1 April 2024
Please include:
1. a short CV
2. Institutional affiliation
3. abstract of thesis or chapter (300 Words)
Readings (total 420 pages):
Bessire, Lucas. 2021. “Lines,” in Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 1 – 38 (38 pages).
Candea, M. (2007). "Arbitrary locations: in defence of the bounded field-site" Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 13(1): 167-184.
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1940. “Introductory”, in The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 1 – 15 (15 pages)
Geissler PW & Prince RJ (2010) “Chapter 1: Introduction & Chapter 2: Landscapes and Histories”, in The land is dying. Contingency, creativity and conflict in 1990s Western Kenya. Oxford/New York: Berghahn, p.1-68 (67 pages).
Gordillo, Gastón. (2004). “Introduction” & “Landmarks of Memory,” in Landscapes of Devils: Tensions of Place and Memory in the Argentinean Chaco. Durham: Duke Univ. Press, pp. 1 – 39 (39 pages).
Gupta, A. and J. Ferguson (1997). “Discipline and Practice”, in Anthropological Locations. Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, University of California Press, pp.1-46 (46 pages).
Malinowski, B. (1922). Introduction : “The subject, method and scope of this enquiry” & “Chapter 1: The country and inhabitants of the Kula District”, in Argonauts of the Western Pacific. London, Routledge: 1-46.
Marcus, G. 2009. “Introduction: Notes towards an ethnographic memoir of supervising graduate research through anthropology's decades of transformation”, in Fieldwork is not what it used to be. Ithaka, Cornell University Press, pp.1-36.
Moran-Thomas, A (2019) “Approach” & “Past is Prologue”, in Travelling with sugar. Chronicles of a global epidemic. Berkeley: University of California press, pp.1-53 (53 pages).
Ogden, Laura A. 2011. “Introduction,” in Swamplife: People, Gators, and Mangroves Entangled in the Everglades. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, pp 1 -22 (22 pages).
Raffles, Hugh. 2002. “In Amazonia,” in In Amazonia: A Natural History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 1 – 15 (15 pages).
Simpson, Audra. 2014. “Indigenous Interruptions: Mohawk Nationhood, Citizenship, and the State,” in Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States. Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 1- 35 (35 pages).