an
interdisciplinary
campus center
NOW AVAILABLE
DVD of Jamer Hunt Event
Please contact Sandy Cushman at scushman@uci.edu for a copy of this DVD
June 1 and 2, 2009
Jamer Hunt
Parsons School of Design
at the New School
Ethnography by Design
Anne Burdick: Dicussant
Chair of the Media Design Program at Art Center, Pasadena
SSPB 4250
12:00-2:30
Light Refreshments
NOW AVAILABLE
DVD of Para-Site Workshop
Please contact Sandy Cushman at scushman@uci.edu for a copy of this DVD
May 14, 2009
Center Para-Site Workshop
Question/Answer Session
Anthropology Library SSPB 4250
12:00-2:00 pm
By Invitation only
May 21, 2009
Studio Series Event
Militarizing Critical Theory/Militarizing Society
"Warring Societies"
Remarks by
Ghassan Hage
Univeristy of Melbourne
and
W.J.T. Mitchell
University of Chicago
and
Editor of Critical Inquiry
Thursday 1:00-3:30pm
UCHRI Conference Room
338
Aldrich Hall
April 24-25, 2009
At the Juncture of Social Theory and Ethnography:
Two Days of Conversations
Co-Sponsored by the Center for
Ethnography, University of
California, Irvine, and the Department of Anthropology, Rice University.
These conversations, held at Rice University, were intended
to examine how social theory is used to contextualize and give shape to projects of ethnographic research today. Ethnographies have become
more theoretical since the 1980s, but how theory 'works' in relation to ethnographic inquiry is one of the most vexing and interesting questions about method, the forms of research practice, the identity
and authority of ethnography, and the imaginaries of those who produce and participate in it.
Participants included Dominic Boyer (Rice), James Faubion (Rice), Rebecca Lemov (Harvard), Andreas Glaeser (Chicago), George Marcus (UCI), Kaushik Sunder Rajan (UCI), Kim Fortun (RPI), and Phil Grant (UCI). Abstracts of the stimulus papers are available and reflections on the event will be forthcoming.
ABSTRACTS
Report from January 24, 2009
Para-site event now available
THE CENTER AS PARA-SITE IN ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH PROJECTS
Phil Grant
'Ethnographic Research on Iranian Activists, Intellectuals, and Secularism'
Upcoming for 2009-2010
Past Events
Ethnography is perhaps the most important and most widely used qualitative mode of inquiry into social and cultural conditions, not only in the academic social sciences, but also increasingly in organizations and activities outside the university as well, from PARC to the Federal Reserve. There is no single definition of ethnography or uniform practice of ethnographic method, nor should there be: ethnographic practice responds and adapts to the field situation. As Marilyn Strathern has written, ethnography, through participant-observation, interviewing, and other qualitative techniques, is a "deliberate attempt to generate more data than the researcher is aware of at the time of collection," and is thus eminently suited to the study of unpredictable outcomes, complex emerging social formations, and technological and market change.
Established in 2006, the Center for Ethnography will work to develop at the University of California, Irvine a series of sustained theoretical and methodological conversations about ethnographic research practices across the disciplines that will have a broadly transformative effect on ethnographic research methodologies and theoretical developments. The Center will support innovative collaborative ethnographic research as well as research on the theoretical and methodological refunctioning of ethnography for contemporary cultural, social and technological transformations. One aim of the Center is to foster methodological innovation in ethnography across the campus. More broadly, however, its goal is to situate the University of California Irvine at the center of such innovations internationally.
NEW FEATURE
INNOVATIONS IN ETHNOGRAPHIC INQUIRY FROM ELSEWHERE
In this space we collect new ideas, practices, and technologies for pursuing ethnography. Please submit contributions to us.
Photo-Ethnography submitted by Bob Wilkus, World-Link Group, Inc. (world-linkgroup.com)
CONTINUING THEMES FOR CENTER EVENTS THAT DEFINE MULTI-EVENT OR EVEN MULTI-YEAR PROJECTS
CRITIQUE IS OUT THERE: THE ETHNOGRAPHY OF REFLEXIVE KNOWLEDGE
ETHNOGRAPHY OF/AS COLLABORATION
THE CENTER AS PARA-SITE IN ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH PROJECTS
Report by Philip Grant - Para-site event on January 24, 2009
'Ethnographic Research on Iranian Activists, Intellectuals, and Secularism'
Report from Jesse Cheng - Para-site event on November 4, 2006
'Methods of Humanization: Death Penatly Mitigation and Ethnography as Anti-Discipline'
RETHINKING ETHNOGRAPHY AS A DESIGN PROCESS