Unit convenor and teaching staff |
Unit convenor and teaching staff
Associate Professor and Convenor
Dr Lisa Wynn
Contact via by e-mail
Australian Hearing Hub
by appointment (please e-mail)
Timothy Lynch
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Credit points |
Credit points
3
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Prerequisites |
Prerequisites
(39cp at 100 level or above including (9cp from ANTH units including 3cp from ANTH units at 300 level)) or admission to GDipArts
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Corequisites |
Corequisites
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Co-badged status |
Co-badged status
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Unit description |
Unit description
What tools do cultural anthropologists use to observe humans and make sense of their actions in the world? This unit provides an introduction to the practical, methodological, and ethical dimensions of ethnographic research. As the primary goal of the unit is to teach students how to conduct ethnographic fieldwork, over the semester students engage in first-hand research projects where they regularly participate in and observe a cultural scene of their own choosing. Weekly meetings frame the fieldwork process as students learn anthropological research methods under the guidance of an experienced staff member, and then apply this knowledge to their ethnographic study. These meetings provide students an opportunity to share their fieldwork experiences with each other, discuss the methodological issues, and workshop concerns raised by their own studies. Simultaneously students will read several classic ethnographies to develop an understanding of the relationship between ethnographic research and ethnographic writing. The program culminates in a report (or mini ethnography) due at the close of the semester.
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Information about important academic dates including deadlines for withdrawing from units are available at https://www.mq.edu.au/study/calendar-of-dates
On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
Threshold requirements: mandatory seminar attendance and final papers
Late submissions
Exceeding the word limit
You will receive a penalty for exceeding the word limits for the research proposal and mini-ethnography. You will be deducted 1 percentage point for each 10 words you exceed the word limit. Please take the word limit very seriously and try to make your argument concisely and clearly. It is unfair to fellow students if one person has much more space to argue their case while another student sticks firmly to the length guidelines. The word limit is designed to level the essay-writing field, so to speak. You should provide a word count on the cover page when you submit your work.
No consideration for lost work
It is the student’s responsibility to keep a copy of all written work submitted for each unit. No consideration will be given to claims of ‘lost work’, no matter what the circumstances.
Returning assignments
Student work will usually be marked and returned within three weeks of receipt. Ethnographic journals will be returned within two weeks. Students who hand their work in before the due date will not have it returned early. Students who hand in work late can expect to receive feedback and marks late.
Plagiarism
The University defines plagiarism in its rules: "Plagiarism involves using the work of another person and presenting it as one's own." Plagiarism is a serious breach of the University's rules and carries significant penalties. You must read the University's definition of plagiarism and its academic integrity policy. These can be found in the Handbook of Undergraduate studies or on the web at https://staff.mq.edu.au/work/strategy-planning-and-governance/university-policies-and-procedures/policies/academic-integrity. The policies and procedures explain what plagiarism is, how to avoid it, the procedures that will be taken in cases of suspected plagiarism, and the penalties if you are found guilty. If plagiarism is suspected, I am required to refer this to the Faculty Discipline Committee for adjudication. Penalties may include a deduction of marks, failure in an assignment, or failure in the unit.
The availability of online materials has made plagiarism easier for students, but it has also made discovery of plagiarism even easier for convenors of units. We now have specialized databases that can quickly identify the source of particular phrases in a student’s work, if not original, and evaluate how much is taken from sources in inappropriate ways. My best advice to you is to become familiar with the guidelines about plagiarism and then ‘quarantine’ the files that you are actually planning on turning in; that is, do not cut and paste materials directly into any work file that you plan to submit, because it is too easy to later on forget which is your original writing and which has come from other sources.
Assessment Rubric
Please see iLearn for the Assessment Rubric for this course. This assessment rubric is tailored specifically for the ethnographic research paper. The research proposal will also be assessed using a similar rubric, only without the category “use of ethnographic research evidence,” since obviously you can’t bring ethnographic evidence to bear on a proposal for research that you haven’t yet completed. Rubrics for the other assessment tasks are found in the assessment information in the Unit Guide and on iLearn where they take the format of clear guidelines structuring the expectations for that assessment task (but I have only provided a grid-style rubric for the ethnographic research paper).
Name | Weighting | Hurdle | Due |
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Ethics Quiz | 0% | Yes | 13 August 2018 |
Seminar Participation | 20% | Yes | Weekly |
Research proposal, peer eval | 20% | No | 3 September 2018 |
Ethnographic Research Journal | 20% | No | 8 October 2018 |
Ethnographic Research Paper | 30% | Yes | 29 October 2018, 11am |
Oral Presentation of Research | 10% | No | 29 October / 5 November, 2018 |
Due: 13 August 2018
Weighting: 0%
This is a hurdle assessment task (see assessment policy for more information on hurdle assessment tasks)
Students will take the online ethics module for social science research developed by Wynn, Mason, and Everett (http://www.mq.edu.au/ethics_training/) and the online quiz at the end of the module.
The online ethics module should be done as homework in the second week of the class. Upon completion of the quiz, print the certificate of completion and bring to class in Week 3 or e-mail it to the convenor. The module takes about 3-4 hours to complete.
Warning: start the quiz well in advance because if you fail any section of the quiz, it will not allow you to proceed to the next section of the quiz until 24 hours have passed, so it’s not a good thing to do at the last minute.
While this isn't a weighted assessment task, it is a threshold requirement: you cannot proceed to do your ethnographic research project and paper until you complete ethics training.
Due: Weekly
Weighting: 20%
This is a hurdle assessment task (see assessment policy for more information on hurdle assessment tasks)
Each week, you must fill out a Discussion Preparation Guide and bring it to class. This will help prepare you to participate in seminar discussions. Each student will take turns leading a discussion of the week’s readings.
A sample Discussion Preparation Guide (DPG) is available on iLearn. You should print and fill one out each week. When you first come to class, show it to the convenor. You can use it to take additional notes during the seminar discussion. At the end of the day, you will hand in your DPG to the unit convenor. They will be returned the following week in class.
Each week, we will break up into smaller discussion groups for a portion of the class, and each person in those groups will take a turn being discussion leader. Discussion leaders follow the guide provided on iLearn for leading discussions. The responsibilities of being a discussion leader should rotate. The unit convenor will roam from group to group, listening and contributing to discussions.
In your verbal contributions to class discussions, we will be looking for remarks that engage thoughtfully with the readings and with the theoretical issues raised by the methods you are trialling in your ongoing research projects. It is also important that you engage respectfully with your peers. If you don’t understand or agree with something someone says, ask them to clarify, or explain respectfully why you disagree. Everyone should feel free to speak up in class. Please do not drown out quieter voices, interrupt, or otherwise dominate seminar discussion.
If you are having trouble speaking up in class discussion, please come to speak with the unit convenor privately and together we can strategise ways to facilitate your contribution to the seminars.
Because this unit is run as a seminar and because learning in this unit relies so heavily on class participation and discussion, it is not recorded on iLecture, so it is not possible to make up non-attendance or non-participation in this class unless you have applied for and received “special consideration” for illness or misadventure under MQ’s Disruption to Studies Policy. In order to pass this unit, you need to attend a minimum of two-thirds of all seminar sessions. This is a threshold unit requirement. Failure to do so will result in a failing mark, regardless of your performance in other aspects of the unit.
Due: 3 September 2018
Weighting: 20%
Research proposals will be original project designs for ethnographic research projects. Your research proposal should be a formal description of the ongoing project of ethnographic description that you are engaged in for this class. You will use your proposal, plus the feedback you get on it, as the basis for crafting your ethnographic research paper.
Details: The ~1000-word proposal should include the following sections:
You will submit both electronically through Turnitin on a link available in iLearn, and bring 2 hard (paper) copies of your research proposal to seminar, so that your research proposals can be peer-evaluated. Each student will read 2 other research proposals, randomly distributed. One week after proposals are submitted, students will return their comments in class to the convenor, who will provide a grade. Your grade on this assignment will be based on a combination of the research proposal you submit (10%) AND the feedback you give to your peers (10%).
Comments on your peers’ research proposals should focus on:
Try to give constructive criticism: don’t just tell them what you think is wrong, but also what they could do to fix it, and be sure to provide positive feedback, too.
Due: 8 October 2018
Weighting: 20%
From the third week of class (after you have completed the online ethics module and taken the quiz), you will be asked to keep a research journal that documents your own life ethnographically in a series of dated fieldnotes.
Obviously, you can’t document your entire life in a journal, or you’d be writing all day. You will be picking a narrow area of your daily experience to focus on. Will it be your school life and encounters with other students? Encounters with teaching staff and uni bureaucracy? Will it be your work life? Will you document your personal grooming practices and aesthetic choices – how you dress, shop, style your hair, wear makeup? Will you document your experiences on public transportation? Will you document a particular sport or hobby – surfing, softball, music performances, World of Warcraft, canyoneering, snake catching?
This should be a participant-observation record of your own experiences, but you should also document the advantages and disadvantages posed by the key method you’ll be using: what can participant observation tell you that you can’t discover from a quantitative survey? What can a quantitative survey or a formal interview tell you that you wouldn’t find out through participant observation? You may also collect and index materials related to your project (texts, music, video, pop culture ephemera, etc). The research journal may be digital or paper in format, or both (if digital, please include materials on a CD and submit along with any paper materials in one folder). These fieldnotes will form the basis of your mini-ethnography research paper.
From the beginning of this project, you will be expected to adhere to the highest ethical standards of research, data collection, and data storage. Although you are essentially documenting your everyday life in writing and even though the unit convenor is the only person to whom you will submit your mini-ethnography, you still interact in your everyday life with lots of other people, and it’s essential to protect their privacy, so you should not write about anyone else’s private life without their explicit oral consent. Be mindful of the difference between public interactions and private conversations. It’s one thing to describe how you interact with the salesperson in a shop when you’re buying jeans, and it’s another thing to write about a private conversation with a friend (whether that conversation takes place in person or on Facebook). Protect the identities and privacy of your informants by using pseudonyms in your fieldnotes, storing your data in a locked filing cabinet and/or in password-protected computer files, and, if necessary, changing identifying details in the final written mini-ethnography research paper. Do not document any illegal activity in your field notes or your final paper. Do not pressure anyone into participating in your research. Consult with the course convenor before you write about anyone who is in a relationship of social hierarchy with you (i.e. a child, employee, etc). Document your life, but do not experiment with it: do not indulge in idle social experiments on other people for the sake of your research! Above all, be respectful and kind in all that you do (and not just in your research!).
Please see “talking about your research project with your informants” protocol on iLearn for more detailed guidelines on how to ethically approach this process of writing about your everyday interactions with others, and give everyone you wish to write about an information sheet (on iLearn).
You will be assessed based on both frequency of journal entries (*you should make journal entries at least twice weekly) and the thoughtfulness with which you analyse the experiences documented. Several entries will be selected randomly to assess the journal, but the entire journal will not be read by the course convenor. If there’s are any particular entries that you do not want me to read, please mark this by noting “private” at the top of the entry next to the date, and I will not read it. You will receive a grade with a brief assessment of the overall journal, but you will not be assessed on any particulars of the journal assignment (i.e. I will not be making notes in the margins!), because this project is primarily about writing for yourself, not about writing for the course convenor.
All of your journal materials should be placed in a sealed envelope (so that only the convenor will read them) and submitted to the convenor. If you have kept a digital journal, you can copy it onto a flash drive and submit that. Your journals will be returned to you in seminar the following week.
Due: 29 October 2018, 11am
Weighting: 30%
This is a hurdle assessment task (see assessment policy for more information on hurdle assessment tasks)
You will write an ethnographic research paper of approximately 2,500 words based on the data that you have collected in your ethnographic research journal. You are encouraged to model your ethnographic writing on the style of one of the ethnographic articles or ethnographies we have read over the semester, to learn anthropological writing conventions.
Details: There is no self-evident logical progression between method and writing. Margery Wolf’s book, A Thrice Told Tale, demonstrates how the ethnographer’s theoretical approach and stylistic writing decisions radically shape the presentation of ethnographic data.
Over the semester, we will be reading large excerpts from a couple of classic ethnographies (both old and new). We’ll also be reading shorter ethnographic excerpts from other ethnographers, as well as other forms of writing including journalistic accounts and ethnographic fiction. During seminars, we will be discussing these authors’ stylistic choices in writing ethnography. How do they describe and analyse? How is description linked with method? What are the rhetorical techniques that they use to persuade the reader of the validity of their analysis or method? What political and ethical positions lie behind the writing decisions they make? These discussions should inform the decisions you make when you write your own ethnographic research paper.
What this entails, first and foremost, is carefully analysing their writing techniques. Will you write a detached yet sympathetic account of belief and practice like Evans-Pritchard, using the language of scientific rigour and generalisations (e.g. “the Azande believe this...”)? Will you write an etic account of your own life as Horace Miner did for the Nacirema? Will you write ethnographic fiction like Wolf? Will you write in the literary style of an analytical memoir like journalist Julian Dibbell? Will you write a humanistic account that emically portrays the emotional worlds and individual idiosyncrasies behind cultural rules and norms like Abu-Lughod?
In addition to writing the mini-ethnography, you must also include an appendix (up to 500 words) detailing how you ensured ethical research practice. This appendix should outline the steps you took to ensure (a) informed consent, (b) informant privacy and confidentiality, and (c) secure data collection and storage.
(Please see “talking about your research project with your informants” protocol at the end of this unit outline for more detailed guidelines on what key areas of ethical research practice should be included in this appendix.)
You will be assessed based on a number of elements (see assessment rubric for details), but what I will be principally looking for is clear writing, rigorous ethnographic analysis situated within a body of academic scholarship, creativity, and ethical research practice.
There is a strict word limit of 3,000 words MAXIMUM for the ethnography part of this assignment. See “exceeding the word limit” in this unit outline for details. An additional 500 words is allocated for the ethical research appendix (i.e. the appendix is not included in the word limit for the ethnography).
Please note that, in order to pass this unit, you must submit a final paper (“ethnographic research paper”). Failure to do so will result in a failing mark, regardless of your performance in other aspects of the unit. It is a threshold requirement.
Due: 29 October / 5 November, 2018
Weighting: 10%
The last 2 weeks of class will be devoted to in-class presentations of your research projects this semester.
Details: You will have precisely 10 minutes to present and you will be strictly timed and cut off at 10 minutes, so please plan your presentation very carefully. The presentation should touch on the following: your area of interest, your research question, what research techniques you used and what kind of data you were and were not able to gather using the method of participant-observation. Please also discuss the stylistic approach you decided to take in writing up your research for your mini-ethnography and how your methods of ethnography connected (or disconnected!) with your writing of ethnography. You will be assessed based on how well you cover the above points and on your clarity of presentation.
In your presentation, it is imperative that you do not use the real names of your research informants or any identifying details. You will lose marks if there is any sign that you have failed to protect the confidentiality of your informants in this presentation.
iLearn
The material in this unit outline is all available on the iLearn page for this unit. In addition, you'll find other useful links and resources there. You should check the announcements page on iLearn regularly for any updates or changes to the schedule.
Library eReserve
Most of the required readings (except for some key texts -- see below) are available digitally on eReserve. Go to library.mq.edu.au, click on the "unit readings" tab, and enter "ANTH324" to find the required readings. (You can search within the large list of readings to find exactly what you need.)
Texts
We will be reading from several ethnographies in this class. The amount we will be reading from each book is substantial enough that copyright law prevents us from making full excerpts available in the course reader. One chapter of each ethnography will be available on eReserve. The books will be available for short-term loan from the library reserve desk. You may also purchase the books; the books we are reading are extremely popular texts and can often be found very cheaply (often used) from online sources or used bookstores, so I have not ordered copies from the Coop. (Try bookdepository.com or betterworldbooks.com.)
Abbreviated Outline of Weekly Topics (and due dates)
Week Date Topic
1 30 July Introduction: Studying Culture
2 6 Aug The Ethics of Ethnography
3 13 Aug Participant Observation and Taking Field Notes
13 August: Ethics Quiz Certificates Due in Class
4 20 Aug Unobtrusive Observation and Time Allocation Surveys
5 27 Aug Interviewing
6 3 Sep Writing Ethnography
3 Sept: Research Proposals due in class
7 10 Sep Cultural Domain Analysis
10 Sept: Peer Feedback of Research Proposals due in class
Mid-semester Recess (17 – 30 October)
8 1 Oct Labour Day (no class!)
9 8 Oct Emic vs Etic Description
8 Oct: Ethnographic Research Journals Due
10 15 Oct Guest Lecture: Doing Ethnography
15 Oct: Ethnographic Research Journals Returned
11 22 Oct Rhetorical styles: Ethnography vs Creative Nonfiction Journalism
29 Oct, 11am: Ethnographic Research Papers Due Online
12 29 Oct Student In-Class Presentations
13 5 Nov Student In-Class Presentations, continued
See iLearn for a detailed account of the weekly seminar topics and readings.
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Undergraduate students seeking more policy resources can visit the Student Policy Gateway (https://students.mq.edu.au/support/study/student-policy-gateway). It is your one-stop-shop for the key policies you need to know about throughout your undergraduate student journey.
If you would like to see all the policies relevant to Learning and Teaching visit Policy Central (https://staff.mq.edu.au/work/strategy-planning-and-governance/university-policies-and-procedures/policy-central).
Macquarie University students have a responsibility to be familiar with the Student Code of Conduct: https://students.mq.edu.au/study/getting-started/student-conduct
Results shown in iLearn, or released directly by your Unit Convenor, are not confirmed as they are subject to final approval by the University. Once approved, final results will be sent to your student email address and will be made available in eStudent. For more information visit ask.mq.edu.au.
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