This course introduces students to ethnography as a powerful method exploring social life. Rather than relying on abstract models or distant analyses, ethnography offers grounded, immersive methods for exploring how people create, negotiate, and contest the norms, practices, and knowledge that shape their lives across different cultural worlds. This case-study based course is designed for students across disciplines-including sociology, criminology, and media and cultural studies-who are interested in applying ethnographic perspectives to contemporary social challenges ranging from gender, race, global health, migration, climate, religion, and crime. Emphasis is placed on the practical, ethical, and emotional dimensions of research, equipping students with tools to analyse social life from the ground up and to interrogate processes of knowledge production through fine-grained, critical engagement with ethnographic texts.

10 x 2 hour in-person weekly classes which combine lecture and seminar activities. Where relevant, this may also include guest speakers and visits.

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Summative Assessment: one 4000 word Book review

The aim of this course is to introduce students to key debates surrounding the practice and value of ethnography in understanding social life cross-culturally. By the end of the course, students will be able to appreciate the theoretical foundations of ethnographic inquiry and the unique insights generated through immersive research. Students will be prepared to apply this knowledge to the critical analysis of pressing contemporary issues at the centre of social and academic debates. Through using ethnographic approaches, they will examine how social actors navigate and reshape shifting political, economic, and cultural conditions. Finally, students will be equipped to engage with the practical, ethical, and emotional dimensions of conducting ethnographic research, as well as broader questions of knowledge production, through fine-grained analyses of case studies.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

1. Critically analyse how ethnographic research produces distinctive forms of knowledge about social life, and how this differs from knowledge generated through other methods.

2. Identify and evaluate the practical, ethical, and emotional challenges of doing ethnographic research, demonstrating a nuanced understanding of positionality and reflexivity.

3. Assess selected case-studies and discuss what their findings reveal about the processes of knowledge production in ethnographic research and writing.

4. Demonstrate a comparative understanding of how ethnography can be used to analyse global phenomena across highly diverse socio-cultural contexts

Critically reflect on the risks posed by ethnocentric assumptions and representations.