Lesson 2 - Article

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Concordia University *

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202EC

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Anthropology

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Oct 30, 2023

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What is ethnography? To your understanding, how does most ethnographic research proceed? 1. Ethnography : socially reflexive practice that privileges dialogue with co- researchers as the foundation of all aspects of the research, including the development and implementation of its ethical protocol - Most ethnographic research makes considerable use of participant observation , usually triangulated with interviews and/or ordinary "informal" conversations. - How would you define ‘reflexivity’ in anthropological research? What does self-reflexivity mean? Social reflexivity? 2. In anthropology, reflexivity has come to have two distinct meanings, one that refers to the researcher's awareness of an analytic focus on his or her relationship to the field of study , and the other that attends to the ways that cultural practices involve consciousness and commentary on themselves. - Social reflexivity: privileges dialogue with co-researchers as the foundation of all aspects of the research, including the development and implementation of its ethical protocols - Self-reflexivity: - What problems does Watson identify in the current ways anthropological methods are taught in most academic settings? 3. Classes are still classroom-based and designed around individualized projects. There is no 'collaborative' approaches to displace the central tropes of rapport, immersion and ethnographic authority as professional ideals - What is the ‘action turn’ in Anthropology? What values does this turn emphasize? 4. Lesson 2 - Article Monday, January 24, 2022 11:37 AM

Action Turn has revised the nature and purpose of social scientific enquiry, placing greater emphasis on the production of practical knowledge in research. It is a transformational social science is not primarily about action but about knowledge; more specifically, it is about the forging of an ‘epistemological break’ in how we know and interact with the world - Who coined the term ‘Action’ Anthropology? 5. Sol Tax - What are the reasons provided by Watson as to why conflating (or saying the two go hand in hand) PAR and Anthropology is counterintuitive? 6. Pursuing research within the context of action will change a project's methodological approach, most often in non-linear and unexpected ways, as much as the situation at hand. - PAR is a relational and pedagogical form of social praxis rather than an objective or instrumental tool of enquiry. Put simply, engaging in an action research project from an anthropological standpoint challenges one to continually negotiate, learn and adapt to what I will come to describe as an attitudinal shift in the aims, ideas and practice of ethnographic enquiry. - How does PAR seek to gain knowledge in the field? How is this similar and/or different to conventional ethnographic practice? What kind of knowledge do such methods produce and how can we think of their use-value (Who is this knowledge created for? How is this knowledge used?...)? 7. It emphasizes the inclusion and participation of all relevant stakeholders to both the setting of the collaborative agenda and to a repeated cycle of planning, action and reflexive evaluation that aims to help people transform their worlds. While the character of each PAR project is ultimately shaped by its local setting, what all such projects share is the ‘participatory intent’ of bringing researchers and community members together as co-participants in the dialogical production of practical knowledge of everyday benefit to those involved. -

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practical knowledge of everyday benefit to those involved. What challenges come with engaging in an action research project from an anthropological standpoint? Why? 8. It challenges one to continually negotiate, learn and adapt to what I will come to describe as an attitudinal shift in the aims, ideas and practice of ethnographic enquiry. - Can you explain what ‘participatory intent’ means as related to PAR? 9. Bringing researchers and community members together as co- participants in the dialogical production of practical knowledge of everyday benefit to those involved. - How does power come into play in PAR? (Hint: What does the term ‘expert’ imply in traditional anthropological fieldwork?) 10. To 'disclaim pure science’ and instead engage with a ‘clinical’ or ‘experimental’ method in the context of action that would help ‘a group of people to solve a problem’ and allow the anthropologist ‘to learn something in the process’ not from passive observation but from an informed and collaborative commitment to help make things happen - What is Watson referring to when identifying the “narcissistic conformity” of higher educational structures (James and Gordon 2006: 368) (p. 30)? 11. Being too self-centered; when one is disregarding everything around them - What are the two principles that differentiate Tax’s ‘Action’ Anthropology from ‘Applied’ Anthropology? 12. Value the capacity of marginalized and disadvantaged people to take control of their own situations and set in motion self-determined change - it initiated a different understanding of ‘action’ – that is, moving away from the intentional application of anthropological theory for practical and instrumental purposes to ‘action’ as an ethically informed anthropological practice which became validation of the research itself not at the expense of anthropological learning -

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What are Watson’s “four provisional pathways to help guide ethnographers” when conducting action projects and what do they mean? 13. Animate the future-forming potential of research: privilege the attainment of new skills, transformation of understandings, changing of practices 1) Commit to knowing as a participative process and to the co-management of a ‘communicative space’; remain responsive to boundary-making ------> a communicative space is ‘constituted as issues or problems are opened up for discussion, and when participants experience their interaction as fostering the democratic expression of diverse views 2) Engage with what is positive as well as the contradictions, criticism and uncertainty; actively work through relations of power and their effects 3) Embrace and come to terms with research as an unfinished process 4) Why do you think Watson sees Action Research projects as transformative? 14. Because it challenges one to continually negotiate, learn and adapt to what I will come to describe as an attitudinal shift in the aims, ideas and practice of ethnographic enquiry. - What is the significance of a ‘never-ending’ project? How does this change your understanding of anthropological work (if at all)? 15. Turning attention to the processes of unfolding change - As one aspect of the project may reach fruition, the consequences of it for interpersonal relations, decision-making processes or collective motivation unfold and affect, shape and define as well as foreclose and delimit emerging endeavors. - What does Watson mean by ‘presence’ as pedagogy? What would this look like? 16.