STS.360
Ethnographic Writing
See description under subject 21A.829[J] . Preference to HASTS students; open to others with permission of instructor.
Spring 2003 · Ethnography
Topics
- Introduction and Warm-up Exercises
- Interviewing, Transference/Countertransference
- Oral History Problematics
- Fieldwork Under Fire
- Knowledge Communities
- Ethnomethodology: From the Native’s Point of View
- Advocacy, Advertising, and Critique
- Translation
- Restudies
- Alternative Writing or Film Strategies
- Wrap Up and Review
Readings
- SES #: 1-2 · TOPICS: Introduction and Warm-up Exercises · READINGS: Fortun, Kim. “Ethnography In/Of/As Open Systems.” Reviews in Anthropology 32, 2 (2003): 171-190.
- Fischer, M. M. J. “Emergent Forms of Life: Anthropologies of Late and Post Modernities.” Annual Reviews in Anthropology (1999).
- SES #: 3 · TOPICS: Interviewing, Transference/Countertransference · READINGS: Crapanzano, Vincent. Tuhami: Portrait of a Moroccan . Chicago.
- Fischer, Michael M. J. “Ethnicity and the Postmodern Arts of Memory.” In Writing Culture . Edited by James Clifford, and George Marcus. California, 1986.
- Good, Byron, et al. “Reflexivity, Counter-Transference and Clinical Ethnography.” In Physicians of Western Medicine . Edited by R. Hahn, and A. Gaines. 1985.
- Lotfalian, Mazyar. “Working Through Psychologial Understandings of the Diasporic Condition.” Ethos 24, no. 1 (1996): 36-70.
- SES #: 4 · TOPICS: Oral History Problematics · READINGS: Bravo, Michael T. “The Anti-Anthropology of Highlanders & Islanders.” Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 29, no. 3 (1998): 369-89.
- [Bravo, M. and Sverker Sorlin, ed. Narrating the Arctic: A Cultural History of Nordic Scienfic Practices . SHP, 2002.]
- White, Luise, ed. Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa . California, 2000. Chapter.
- SES #: 5 · TOPICS: Fieldwork Under Fire · READINGS: Daniel, E. Valentine. Charred Lullabies: Chapters in an Anthropology of Volence . Princeton, 1996.
- Feldman, Regina. “Encountering the Trauma of the Holocaust: Dialogue and It’s Discontents in the Broszat-Friedlander Exchanges of Letters.” Ethos 28, no. 4 (2001): 551-74. [Dialogue via thirds.]
- SES #: 6 · TOPICS: Knowledge Communities · READINGS: Bohanan, Laura [Elenore Smith Bowen]. Return to Laughter . 1964.
- Goffman, Erving. Chapter 1 in Asylums . Doubleday, 1961.
- SES #: 7 · TOPICS: Ethnomethodology: From the Native’s Point of View · READINGS: Garfinkel, Harold. Chapter 5 in Studies in Ethnomethodology . 1967.
- SES #: 8 · TOPICS: Advocacy, Advertising, and Critique · READINGS: Fortun, Kim. Advocacy After Bhopal: Environmentalism, Disaster, New Global Orders. 2001.
- SES #: 9 · TOPICS: Translation · READINGS: Benjamin, Walter. “The Task of the Translator.”
- de Man, Paul. “The Task of the Translator.” Yale French Studies 69 (1985): 25-46.
- Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1940. The Nuer ; 1951.
- Hutchinson, Sharon. Nuer Dilemma: Coping with Money, War & the State . California, 1996.
- SES #: 11 · TOPICS: Alternative Writing or Film Strategies · READINGS: Chagnon, Napoleon A., Gary Seaman, and Peter Biella. Yanomamo Interactive: The Ax Fight. Harcourt-Brace College Publishers, May 1996.
- Clifford, James. “On Ethnographic Surrealism.” CSSH. repr Predicaments of Culture. 1981.
- Fischer, Michael M. J. “Filmic Judgment and Cultural Critique: The Work of Art, Ethics, and Religion in Iranian Cinema.” In Religion and Media. Edited by Hent de Vries, and Samuel Weber. Stanford University Press, 2001.
- Clifford, James. “On Ethnographic Surrealism.” Comparitive Studies in History & Society . repr. Predicaments of Culture . 1981.
- Clifford, J., and G. Marcus, eds. Writing Culture . California, 1896.
- Fischer, M. M. J. “Calling the Future(s): STS@the_Turn_[]000.mit.edu.” LE 8 (2000).
- ———. “In the Science Zone: The Yanomami and the Fight for Representation.” Anthropology Today (2001).
- Fischer, Michael M. J., and George E. Marcus. “Introduction to the 2nd Edition.” In Anthropology as Cultural Critique . Chicago: 1999.
- Goffman, Erving. Asylums . Doubleday, 1961. (On total institutions.)
- ———. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life . 1959. (Dramatugical frames in interaction.)
- Geertz, Clifford. “Deep Play,” and “Thick Description.” In The Interpretation of Cultures . Basic Books, 1973.
- Haraway, Donna. Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium.FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouse TM . Routledge, 1997.
- Latour, Bruno. Chapter 2 in We Have Never Been Modern. 1993. (On the coproduction of political and scientific authority.)
- Marcus, George, ed. Critical Anthropology Now . SAR, 1999.
- Recently Completed MIT - STS projects in Anthropology & Science Studies:
- Schwarz, Heinrich. “Techno-Territories: The Spatial, Technological and Social Reorganization of Office Work.” 2002.
- Rajan, Kaushik Sunder. “Biocaptial: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life.” 2002.
- Kelty, Chris. “Scale & Convention: Programmed Languages in a Regulated America”. 2000.
- Landecker, Hannah. “Technologies of Living Substance: Tissue Culture & Cellular Life in 20th c. Biomedicine.” 2000.
- Mnookin, Jenifer. “Images of Truth: Evidence, Expertise & Technologies of Knowledge in the American Courtroom.” 1999.
Prerequisites & course information
Same subject as 21A.829[J] Prereq: Permission of instructor Acad Year 2027-2028: G (Spring) Acad Year 2028-2029: Not offered 3-0-9 units
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Spring 2003
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- MIT OCW calendar ↗
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.