Type of course

Admission requirements

Course content

The course aims at giving the students basic research skills for utilising film and text as different means in the production and mediation of ethnographic research. During the course the students will produce a film and a written thesis for their final Master's Exam.

Returning from fieldwork, the students will start to prepare the writing of their exam paper and the editing of their exam film. In the analysis of their fieldwork material, the course aims at utilizing images and texts as different modalities for producing anthropological knowledge. The film footage will be utilized for ethnographic descriptions and analysis, where film and text mutually inform and inspire each other. During the autumn term, the students will work on systematising their empirical material for film and text purposes, and present a first draft of their thesis by the end of term. In the spring term the students will edit their exam film for 2.5 months, and finalize their written dissertation. Exam film and paper must be ready for evaluation by the end of May.

Objectives of the course

Students who have successfully completed the course should have the following learning outcomes:
Knowledge:

• To know how to plan and carry out a research process by use of audiovisual tools?
• To have knowledge of theoretical and methodological approaches within visual anthropology
• Basic research skills for utilizing film and text as different means for the production and mediation of ethnographic research
• To have knowledge of the theme and the geographic area of the chosen field of research

Analytical understanding:

• Be able to master social scientific analytical perspectives
• Be able to master an analysis of visual expressions
• Perform analysis on how film and text mutually inform, inspire and contradict each other
• Be able to develop a consistent analytical argument based on the fieldwork material

Skills and competences:

• Present an overview of fieldwork experiences through a field report and a sequence list
• Make an ethnographic film based on the fieldwork material
• Present a consistent analytical argument trough a written thesis
• Collaborative insights on how to present and receive feedback on own material, and equally to give critical and constructive feedback on fellow students? presentation in film & text seminars

Language of instruction and examination

Teaching methods

Part of the teaching is organised in 'Film and text seminars' (approx 40 hours), combined with lectures (approx. 35 hours) . The students present work-in-progress, both film and texts, in compulsory seminars. Students receive individual supervision throughout the film and text-making process.

Assessment

Course requirements:
Course attendance is compulsory, i.e. only valid absences will be approved. A minimum presence of 80 % is required. In the first semester you should deliver a sequence list, a field report, three papers exploring and expanding your ideas for your Master's Thesis and the final draft for the Master's Thesis.
The second semester you should deliver a written statement of the film idea.

The final exam consists of the following elements:
Film of maximun 30 minutes duration
Master's Thesis (50 pages +/-)
Oral examination (about 60 minutes)

The evaluation of the film and the thesis will count equally, and an oral exam will follow to adjust or confirm the evaluation.
The exam committee is composed of two persons, one external and one internal examiner.
Grading will be on the scale A to F, where F=Fail. It is possible to re-sit the examination. In case that the master`s exam is assessed as "failed", the thesis and the film can only be resubmitted for assessment in a reworked or supplemented form.

Recommended reading/syllabus

BOOKS (260 pages)
Robert M. Emerson, Rachel I. Fretz, Linda L. Shaw (eds.). 1995. Writing Ethnographic Field notes. Chapter 3 and chapter 4. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. 39-105.

You select 200 pages from one of the following monographs/books:

John Gledhill. 2000. Power and its Disguises. Anthropological Perspectives on Politics. Pluto Press, London. 242 pages.

Michael Herzfeld. 1992. The Social Production of Indifference. Exploring the symbolic Roots of Western Bureaucracy. 184 pages.

Peter Geschiere. 2009. The Perils of Belonging. Autochthony, Citizenship, and Exclusion in Africa and Europe.
The University of Chicago Press. 263 pages.

James Ferguson. 2006. Global Shadows. Africa in the Neoliberal World Order. Duke University Press. Durham and London. 227 pages.

ARTICLES (305pages)

Mitchell, Clyde, J. 1984. 'Case Studies' in Ellen, R.F., Ethnographic Research: A guide to General Conduct. ASA Research Methods in Social Anthropology 1. London: Academic Press, 137-241.

Boissevain, Jeremy. 1979. 'Network Analysis; A Reappraisal', in Current Anthropology, Volume 20, No. 2: 392-394.

Strathern, M. 1987. 'The limits of auto-anthropology'. In Antony Jackson (ed.) Anthropology at Home. ASA Monograph Series, Routledge. 16-37.

Robert Borofsky (ed.), 1994, Assessing Cultural Anthropology, McGraw-Hill:
- Marilyn Strathern, 'Parts and Wholes: Refiguring Relationships'. 204-216.
- Robert Borofsky, 'On the Knowledge and Knowing of cultural Activities'. 331-347.

Lyon, Margot L. 1995. 'Missing Emotion; the Limitations of Cultural Constructionism in the Study of Emotion'. Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 10 (2): 244-263.

Moore, Sally Falk. 2005. 'From Tribes and Traditions to Composites and Conjunctures.' Social Analysis, volume 49, issue 3; 254-272.

Gupta, Akhil & Ferguson, James. 1997. 'Discipline and Practice: The field as Site, Method and Location in Anthropology', in Gupta, Akhil and Ferguson, James (eds.), Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1-46.

Jackson, Michael. 2005. 'The course of an Event' in Existential Anthropology: Events, Exigencies and Effects, Methodology and History in Anthropology, Volume 11, New York: Berghahn Books, chapter 1, 1-14.

Birgit Meyer and Peter Geschiere. 1999. 'Globalization and Identity: Dialectics of Flow and Closure, Introduction' in Birgit Meyer and Peter Geschiere (eds.). Globalization and Identity: Dialectics of flow and closure, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford. 1-17.

Mahmood, Sabah. 2001. 'Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the docile Agent: some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival'. Cultural anthropology, 16 (2): 202-236.

Alberto Arce and Norman Long. 2000. Anthropology, Development and Modernities. Exploring discourses, counter-tendencies and violence. Routledge. N.Y.:
- Alberto Arce and Norman Long, Reconfiguring modernity and development from an anthropological perspective. 1-32.
- Norman Long, Exploring local/global transformations: a view from anthropology. 184-202.

T.M.S. Evens and Don Handelman. 2006. The Manchester School. Practice and Ethnographic praxis in Anthropology. Berghahn books.
- T.M.S. Evens and don Handelman, `Introduction: The Ethnographic Praxis of the Theory of Practice'. 1-13.
- Max Gluckman,'Ethnographic Data in British social Anthropology'. 13-23.

Henrietta Moore and Todd Sanders (eds.). 2010. Anthropology in Theory. Issues in Epistemology. Blackwell Publishing:
- Pierre Bourdieu, 'Objectification Objectified'. 169-179.
- Talal Asad, 'Anthropology and the Analysis of Ideology'. 244-258.
- Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, `Introduction to Of Revelation and Revolution'. 382-397.
- Pierre Bourdieu, 'Structures and the Habitus'. 407-417.
- Marilyn Strathern, 'Cutting the Network'. 480-493.
- Vivek Dharashwar, 'Valorizing the Present: Orientalism, Postcoloniality and the Human Sciences'. 546-552.
- Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, 'Beyond 'Culture': Space, Identity and the Politics of Difference'. 608-618.