Ethnographic Research
Looking Within, Looking Without
10-14 April, 2024
Note: This workshop is for anyone with prior experience in ethnographic research and methodology.
(Please fill out the Google form attached after the facilitator’s note to apply)
“The experience of my fieldwork in Vrindavan got me thinking of the commonly used stock phrase “participant observation” that anthropologists are taught to bandy about to tell the world what it is they do. It involves many practical stages like journeying to a distant place, finding a place to stay, making formal contacts, beginning with structured interviews, slowly creating enough rapport to break into the inner interstices of a society and finally getting to see things the way they do. So, the end-product of fieldwork – an ethnographic monograph or film – would tell the story of society not only as the fieldworker saw it, but as the research subjects, situated in their society, narrated itself. A close mirror-image of a society. Ethnography aimed at unpacking a point of view about points of view. The ethnographer constantly straddles the inside/outside boundaries of society, sometimes being a friend of the society, sometimes being an objective scholar.” (Majumder 2022: 8-9)
How is the world of another mediated through the eyes, ears, body, and consciousness of the ethnographer? In this workshop, spread over five days, we will unpack this question in some detail. We will use the following texts for our inquiry:
Day 1:
Bloch, Maurice. 2017. Anthropology is an odd subject: Studying from the outside and from the inside. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 7 (1): 33–43.
Ingold, Tim. Imagining for real: essays on creation, attention and correspondence. Abingdon: Routledge, 2022. Excerpt.
Day 2:
Borneman, John and Hammoudi, Abdellah. The Fieldwork Encounter, Experience, and the Making of Truth: An Introduction. In Being There: The Fieldwork Encounter and the Making of Truth. John Borneman and Abdellah Hammoudi, eds. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.
Biehl João. Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013. Excerpt.
Day 3:
Crapanzano, Vincent. Tuhami, portrait of a Moroccan. Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1980. Excerpt
Jackson, Michael D. Lifeworlds: Essays in Existential Anthropology. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2013. Excerpt.
Day 4:
Singh, Bhrigupati. An uncritical encounter between anthropology and psychiatry: AIIMS psychiatrists reading Affliction. Medicine Anthropology Theory 4.3 (2017): 153-165.
Pandolfo, Stefania. Knot of the Soul : Madness, Psychoanalysis, Islam. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019.
Day 5: Writing Workshop
Method:
- We will take detailed notes on the text of the day, the text will direct the conversation in the workshop space.
- We will watch a film on the first three evenings. The films will be notified later.
- The participant will choose one text, and write a 1000 word essay on it and submit before day 5.
Facilitator Bio: Atreyee Majumder is an anthropologist. She is currently Associate Professor (Social Sciences), National Law School of India University, Bengaluru. She earned her doctoral degree from Yale University (2014). She has been an Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Jackman Humanities Institute, University of Toronto (2016-18). Her doctoral work culminated in her first book Time, Space, and Capital in India: Longing and Belonging in an Urban-Industrial Hinterland (Routledge, 2018). Drawing on her facility in Bengali and Hindi, her research examines questions related to urbanism, print cultures, and religion. This empirical canvas allows her to engage in historically grounded theoretical inquiries – a kind of ear-to-the-ground philosophical practice – into the relationship between time and space, and more recently, inquiries of self and personhood. Her current research agenda is located at the intersection of anthropology, theology, and the philosophy of religion, specifically concerned with the devotional practice of Bhakti. Ethnographic research for this project is being conducted in the sacred city of Vrindavan and its surroundings, in northern India. She has published widely in academic and popular venues including the South Asian Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, Economic and Political Weekly, 3AM magazine, India Today, and LSE Review of Books. Her poems and short fiction have been featured in RIC Journal, Bombay Review, Bangalore Review, Gulmohur Quarterly, Nether Quarterly, Anthropology and Humanism, Sunflower Collective, Cafe Dissensus. Her collection of poems is forthcoming in 2024 from Red River Press with the title The Book of Blue.
Eligibility: Those who have some experience in research are eligible to participate in this workshop.
Dates and Venue: 10 -14 April, 2024, Sambhaavnaa Institute, VPO – Kandbari, Tehsil – Palampur, District – Kangra, PIN 176061, Himachal Pradesh
Contribution towards Program Costs: We hope that participants will contribute an amount of Rs.6000/- towards workshop expenses, including all on-site workshop costs: boarding, lodging, and all the materials used in the workshop. Need-based partial waivers are available; we have a very limited number of partial waivers, so, please apply for a waiver only if you really need it. Please do remember that there may be others who need it more than you.
Language: English (with Hindi translation)
How to reach: Please visit: Getting here
For any other info: WhatsApp or call : 889 422 7954 (between 10 am to 5 pm), and e-mail: programs@sambhaavnaa.org
(There is a sincere request we have to make. If you fill out the form and get a confirmation from our side for your participation, please do not make cancellations at the last moment, unless there are unforeseen circumstances. So, while filling out the form, please try to make sure you do not have anything else planned for the dates of the workshop. It takes some time to process the forms and begin our preparations for the workshop. If you back out after the confirmation, it sends our preparations for a toss, in addition to the time and effort we are expending. Also, many other people who are eager to attend miss out on the opportunity. We shall appreciate your consideration; and hope you understand the need for such a request.)
Please fill this form to register: