3rd ECPR Winter School in Methods and Techniques, February 2014 University of Vienna, Austria Course Description Form [1-week course, 15 hours]

Transcription

1 3rd ECPR Winter School in Methods and Techniques, February 2014 University of Vienna, Austria Course Description Form [1-week course, 15 hours] Course title B09. Methods in Political Anthropology Instructor details First name, last name: Murat Erdal Ilican Department/Unit: Senior Research Consultant Institution: MEI Consulting Full postal address for ECPR correspondence: Apt. No: 401, 9 Al. Rangavi Street Pallourtiotissa, 1020 Nicosia, Cyprus. Phone: Fax: murat.erdal.ilican@gmail.com Short Bio Murat Erdal Ilican holds a DPhil in Human Geography from the University of Oxford (2011), an MSc in Accounting and Finance from the LSE (1997) and a BA in Mathematics and Economics from Macalester College, USA (1995). He has lived and worked as a financial consultant in the US, Switzerland, the UK, Turkey, Greece and Cyprus. He currently works on the making and remaking of property and sovereignty in Cyprus, from the Ottoman Tanzimat through the British colonial period to today. His most recent research covers the contestations of these notions on the ground, along with ideologies of ownership and social justice, through an ethnographic study of the Occupy Movement in Cyprus. He has published in the Encyclopaedia of Ethnic Groups in Europe (2011) and is currently working on a book manuscript. Prerequisite knowledge Note from the Academic Convenors to prospective participants: by registering to this course, you certify that you possess the prerequisite knowledge that is requested to be able to follow this course. The instructor will not teach again these prerequisite items. If you doubt whether you possess that knowledge to a sufficient extent, we suggest you contact the instructor before you proceed to your registration. No prerequisites. Short course outline The course is intended for non-anthropologists seeking to apply ethnographic methods in data collection and analysis. It integrates methodological questions into questions of analysis and interpretation, from an anthropological perspective. During the course, students will be introduced to anthropological approaches to the political sphere and methods of studying its impact on daily life. Issues of focus will include specific approaches to political ethnography (oral history collection and the analysis of space and place). These will be complemented by in-class comparative discussion of different approaches to political ethnography (textual representation, visual documentation and film, etc). The course will also include an ethnographic assignment to be developed in consultation with students interests and needs. Finally, students will be asked to reflect on specific ethical and methodological questions arising from anthropological and ethnographic practice.

2 Long course outline The course provides an overview of ethnographic methods that may be used in the course of research on politics and the political sphere. It is primarily intended for students of political science / IR, but does not assume prior knowledge of any theoretical or analytical approach. Instead, methodological questions are explored as part of the analysis of the political domain, understood from the point of view of anthropology. Thus the course tackles questions such as: How do people experience the state and its institutions in different cultural contexts? How are we, as researchers, to approach this experience? What is entailed in the application of participant observation in political research? How does political anthropology differ from bottom-up political analysis? What are the ethical stakes in political ethnography? The course will provide students an opportunity to explore these questions in class discussions, through familiarization with different types of political ethnography, and through practical application of ethnographic methods to a specially-designed research project. During the course, the everyday, and daily life, will be explored not merely as descriptions of social phenomena, but as analytic devices illuminating specific aspects of those phenomena. One issue of concern is the political aspect of people s identities, ranging from particular experiences of citizenship, and use of ideology (including views about law, the state, and ethnic difference), to instances of contact with state apparatuses, and the relationship to documents. These will be examined as instances in the processes that render individuals political subjects. Students will be asked to study ethnographies from Europe and elsewhere and to compare those analyses with their own reflexive understandings of relating to the political. Examples of ethnographic methods that will be explored in-depth include oral history and the analysis of space and place. Oral history is traditionally approached in contra-distinction to officiallysanctioned, written history and within a frame that opposes state rhetoric to people s narratives. In the process of re-thinking this framing, questions of memory-formation will be probed to illuminate the ways in which the level of individual, collective and state co-exist and are interwoven in the oral history account. The possibilities of oral history as a political device (e.g. through oral history projects ) can thus be better understood from this perspective as an aspect of bottom-up intervention. Similarly, the anthropological examination of the political uses of space in the process of rendering it socially-meaningful place are instructive of the processes through which particular types of political subjects are created. From museums, to memorials, to the management of heritage, and to the deliberate or unintended ruination or erasure of place, the insertion of the political into the everyday and into our experience of emplacement and belonging, is ever-present. The use, abuse, re-use, and claims to space (especially public space but not only) are integral parts of the political process that may often go unnoticed by political analyses. Yet increasingly, the need to study these processes is coming to the fore as an important aspect of understanding protest (among other phenomena). In examining ethnographic methodologies, the question of documentation and presentation is a major concern. This will be addressed in the course through a comparative examination of different ways of documenting ethnographic data and their combination. Ethnographic film-making will be given attention, through documentaries assigned as part of students preparation. The ethics of writing ethnography including the role of the author, reflexivity, power, and consent will also be reviewed. Before the end of the course students will have an opportunity to apply the research methods they have been taught to a suitable research field of their choice. In consultation with the instructor, they will be encouraged to design a small project, develop it, and present preliminary results. Following the collection of data, they will also be asked to reflect on their ethnographic experience and consider the relevance of anthropological questions previously encountered within the course to this experience. Throughout the course, students will be asked to consider the ethical implications of different methodological approaches to ethnographic fieldwork (participant-observation, action research, collaborative methods, use of equipment, etc). The project work is meant to enhance this understanding and improve researcher s foresight in designing projects that include ethnography. By the end of the course, participants can expect to gain: an understanding of the issues at stake in ethnographic research a grasp of anthropological analysis of political phenomena

3 the ability to integrate small-scale ethnographic investigation into their research design the ability to critically assess the interpretation of data secured from the ground level Classes will follow a seminar form, i.e. will be divided into a lecture session followed by class discussion. The discussions will be based on the assigned readings and/or films and on the students own experiences, which they will be asked to submit to reflexive scrutiny. Day-to-day schedule (Monday 17 February to Friday 22 February) 3 contact hours, split in two 90 sessions Topic(s) Day 1 Introduction and course outline Anthropology and politics lecture General discussion Day 2 Ethnographic methods I: Studying history Introduction (ethnographic interviewing) Oral history Ethnographies and comparisons Discussion and assignment Students test oral history interviewing methods within class Day 3 Ethnographic methods II: Studying space Space-Place and its uses from a political analysis perspective Objects and environments Discussion and assignment Students exhibit and discuss an object of autobiographical significance Day 4 Field projects Possible location examples include: Public venue (observation of negotiation of power relations) Selected museums (analysis of presentations of difference and otherness) Web (participant-observation in Day 5 discussion groups / blogs) Silencing and Repression Marginality and minorities, State repression, Representing violence Discussion Student critically discuss cultural representation in a postcard of their choice Details [NB : incl. timing of lecture v/s lab or fieldwork etc. hours] Discussion of findings Presentations of findings by students / groups followed by questions from fellow students

4 Day-to-day reading list Readings (please list at least the compulsory reading for the scheduled day) Day 1 Constantinou, Costas M "On Homo-diplomacy." Space and Culture no. 9 (4): Day 2 Constantinou, Costas M., and Giorgos Kykkou Skordis The Third Motherland. Cyprus. Biehl, J. G "A Life: Between Psychiatric Drugs and Social Abandonment." In Subjectivity: Ethnographic Investigations, edited by J. G. Biehl, B. Good and A. Kleinman, Berkeley: University of California Press. Bringa, Tone and Debbie Christie We Are All Neighbours. United Kingdom Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Select an autobiographical object to present to class Demetriou, Olga "The Militarization of Opulence: Engendering a Conflict Heritage Site." International Feminist Journal of Politics no. 14 (1): Navaro-Yashin, Yael "Affective Spaces, Melancholic Objects: Ruination and the Production of Anthropological Knowledge." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute no. 15 (1):1-18. Herzfeld, Michael Monti Moments. USA Assignments: Prepare project for day 4, choose postcard to discuss for Day 5 Complete project and prepare presentation Altınay, Ayşe Gül, and Yektan Türkyılmaz "Unraveling layers of gendered silencing: converted Armenian survivors of the 1915 catastrophe." In Untold Histories of the Middle East: Recovering Voices from the 19th and 20th Centuries, edited by Amy Singer, Christoph K. Neumann and Selçuk Akşin Somel, London: Routledge. Demetriou, Elias and Yiannis Papadakis Living Together Separately. Cyprus Software and hardware requirements 9.1. Software programme R (free from WinBUGS (free from Hardware requirements None Literature Day 1: Altınay, Ayşe Gül The Myth of the Military-Nation: Militarism, Gender, and Education in Turkey. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Mazower, Mark No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations.Princeton: Princeton University Press. Day 2:

5 Stoler, Ann Laura Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Sense. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Foucault, Michel [1961]. Madness and Civilization. London: Routledge Day 3: Aretxaga, Begona Shattering Silence: Women, Nationalism and Political Subjectivity in Northern Ireland. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Donnan, Hastings, and Thomas M. Wilson Borders: Frontiers of Identity, Nation and State. Oxford: Berg. Day 4: Cohn, Bernard S Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Legg, Stephen Spaces of Colonialism: Delhi s Urban Governmentalities. Oxford: Blackwell. Day 5: Panourgiá, Neni Dangerous Citizens: The Greek Left and the Terror of the State. New York: Fordham University Press. Lecture room requirement Seminar-style set-up to include projection and DVD equipment arrangement for film screenings to be finalised. Preferred time slots 13:00-16:00