an
interdisciplinary
campus center
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
February 19, 2010
'Speak, Write, Paint
Colonial Scripts and Indegenous Literacies in Latin America'
Humanities Gateway 1010
10:00am-6:30pm
Free and Open to the Public
Co-sponsored by the International Center for Writing and Translation, the Center for Ethnography, the Office of Undergraduate Study, the Center in Law, Culture, and Society, and the History Department
March 17, 2010
Conversations on Collaboration Series
A lunch time conversation with Bill Mauer, Chair, Department of Anthropology and Director of IMTFI Institute
'The Entanglements and Politics of Ethnographic Projects in the Context of Social Philanthropic Projects: The Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion and the Gates Foundation"
Place: TBA
Time: 12:00noon-2:00 pm
More details coming soon
March 2010 (Tentative )
Shaozeng Zhang, Grad Student
Lunch time conversation
(Invitation only)
'Writing Challenges in Ethnographic Projects'
More details coming soon
Aprl 22-23, 2010
(Tentative)
Counter Insurgency Event
David Price, Ike Skelton and Sam Popkis, Christoph Zuercher
April 30, 2010
Culture and Theory Graduate Conference
'Quarantine'
Keynote Speaker
Michael Montoya
Assistant Professor
Dept of Anthropology
May 7, 2010
'Difference generations in the production of ethnography on Iran before and after the revolution'co-spnosored with Center for Persian Studies
June 2010
Visting Researchers from Univrsidad Autonoma de Yucatan, Merida
Dept of Anthropology
Gabriela Vargas-Cetina and Steffan Igor Ayora Daz
Past Events