080036 SE M510 Methodology: (2024W)

In this course we will learn different methods for both digital and analog ethnographic research. As has been widely noted, ethnographic research today can hardly be carried out without employing digital tools and technologies or inhabiting digital spaces. Indeed, does it even make sense to speak of the digital as distinct from the (presumably analog) everyday?

Through classic readings of early ethnographies on the Internet (cf. Boellstorff, Turkle, etc.), as well as handbooks and critical texts on methodology, we trace the development of cultural anthropology's engagement with the expanding digitization of our lifeworlds while also attending to ways in which it has been resisted both in our fieldsites as within the discipline.

As part of the course, participants will carry out elements of short research projects through which they try out and experience the methods and problematics of ethnography that attends to both the digital and the analog. We will also experiment with a variety of digital and analog tools, devices, and applications. In this way, we will practice critical reflection on the possibilities of ethnographic research today and possibly gain new insights into the meaning and forms of the digital and the analog in everyday life.