From its inception in 2005, one of the core projects of the Center for Ethnography has been to experiment with how studio settings and design processes might be usefully built into the various phases of ethnographic inquiry, and tailored to its specificities. The staging of para-sites in the pedagogy of dissertation projects has been one such endeavor. Now, in a planned series of "ethnocharrettes", we address more explicitly the application of studio design settings to various phases of ethnography. We begin with the anthropological tradition of pedagogy in ethnographic research and what students can do collaboratively with their receptions of the still canonical form of the ethnographic text. In this initial series, we understand ourselves to be experimenting with a modality that might eventually have several different elaborations and functions within and alongside the development of ethnographic projects, from thinking through the idea for a project, to explicitly collaborative phases of fieldwork, to becoming a form of ethnographic production as a replacement for, or supplementary to, the standard genres of writing. We feel that the most effective way for a project of ethnographic research to be 'public' or relevant today is to open itself up to various constituencies in its different phases at the same granular, 'micro' scale at which it is produced. And that the design studio is the most appropriate forum, or theater, for this 'becoming' of ethnography at different phases of its 'doing.' http://ethnocharrette.wordpress.com/

 

MISSION STATEMENT

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