How Do Ethnographers Write?

This course is intended primarily for graduate students in Anthropology and related disciplines, and aims to critically examine and playfully practice that elusive yet vital thing we call ethnographic writing. We will approach ethnographic writing thoughtfully as a concrete set of practices, strategies, and debates within and around the discipline of anthropology, asking how different authors have responded to the challenges of the genre. The list of questions and challenges is long, and part of the work of the class will be to track them as they come up. From the role of the ethnographic vignette and the problem of the savage slot to the question of the ethnographer’s positionality; from ethnographic writing as (social) science to ethnographic writing as a form of fiction; from thick description to thin description, and across the awkward and socially constructed scales of the local and the global, ethnographers struggle to write about what they find, and find their writing choices to be deeply fraught and political. This course is not a comprehensive review of ethnographic writing nor a how-to. Rather, we will closely read a diverse set of ethnographic texts to try to get a sense of how each author has navigated these challenges. Alongside this project of reading ethnographic writing, we will also practice ethnographic writing, workshopping, and revising through written assignments.