Ethnographic Field School Research Articles

Expanding student access to field experiences: Virtual ethnographic field schools

AbstractNew and newly widespread communications technologies make it possible for students to enjoy many of the benefits of an ethnographic field school with less commitment of money and time, thereby expanding access to a valuable cross‐cultural research experience. This article reflects on the challenges, successes, limitations, and lessons learned from Wayne State University's Virtual Ethnographic Field School in Highland Ecuador, considers an alternative model, and sketches various field school pedagogical and design options.

Drops of diplomacy: Questioning the scale of hydro-diplomacy through fog-harvesting

Hydro-diplomacy conversations have up till now been generally state- and basin-centric, focused on formal international relations and transboundary rivers. This paper applies the notion of water diplomacy to a project in rural Southwest Morocco in order to interrogate the scalar potential of water-based environmental peacebuilding.In the Aït Baamrane region of the Anti-Atlas Mountains, a local non-profit oversees the world’s largest operational fog-harvesting system, piping potable water collected from the mountains’ extensive fog cover to 13 Amazigh villages. Dar Si Hmad’s related Ethnographic Field School leverages the fog project’s uniqueness to attract scholars to an underrepresented region, where research programming questions mainstream narratives of Morocco and sustainable development while exploring how traditional knowledges can be integrated in scientific innovation.This paper argues that, by intentionally using fog to facilitate collaborative exchange, Dar Si Hmad is engaging in a form of hydro-diplomacy. Drawing from ethnographic data and building on international relations theories of Track Diplomacy, this paper demonstrates how fog water is being used to lay the groundwork for durable peace, intercultural understanding, and symbiotic growth. Such local iterations of hydro-diplomacy should be better understood and integrated with the emerging literature on state-to-state water cooperation in order to develop holistic expertise, share best practices, and promote positive policy interventions.

Intersecting race, space, and place through community gardens

AbstractIn this article, we examine the structure and meaning of community gardens in Florida's most cohesive and oldest African American community of Frenchtown in Tallahassee. Here, residents reclaim and transform empty spaces into places of engagement and empowerment, effectively resisting systemic racism. Using a mixed methods approach during a 5‐week NSF‐funded ethnographic field school with the Health Equity Alliance of Tallahassee, we counter the prevailing stigma of Frenchtown that perpetuates its continued marginalization. We argue that community gardens are expressions of social resistance. Through garden activities, residents transcend race, culture, income, and neighborhoods, while also promoting health, heritage, place‐making, and economic opportunities. Place is constituted by spatial politics in a cultural milieu, evident in the community's ability to intersect diverse institutional boundaries via gardens. This research contextualizes how a community‐based participatory research project successfully resists violent environments through spatial transformation.

Statecraft and study abroad: Imagining, narrating and reproducing the state

Study abroad in higher education is on the rise, marketed as an effective way to produce global citizens and undermine international boundaries. In practice, however, programmes frequently reify rather than challenge states: participants 'study Morocco' rather than 'exploring Marrakech'. This framing reproduces real and imagined realities of the nation-state, presented as externally distinct and internally homogeneous. This article considers how study abroad discourses and practices in North America and Europe 'sell' developing states as abstract 'goods' embodying an authentic 'other'. A case study from Dar Si Hmad's Ethnographic Field School in southwest Morocco considers how various stakeholders reinforce and challenge this approach. The paper concludes by calling for a more nuanced conversation about the utility and impact of states as the predominant lens of overseas study.

Ethnographic Field School Teaching and Learning in the Face of Societal Transformation: An Example from Rio de Janeiro

“Come to the street!” (“Vem pra rua!”) This has been one of the most powerful slogans of protest since Brazilians in large numbers have begun to take to the streets in 2013 to make a variety of statements about corruption and government policies. The beginning of this recent protest movement, which has extended to all corners of Brazil, coincided almost exactly with the start of an ethnographic field school the first author directed and in which the co-authors participated in Rio de Janeiro. In this paper, we will discuss some of the unanticipated teaching and learning opportunities for anthropology students that came about as a result of these events. We will also discuss the implications for a model of experiential learning and student anthropological fieldwork in study abroad.

Collaboration of Community and University Scholars: Training in the Transformation of Research for Community Development

Community-based Participatory Research (CBPR) provides a methodology that creates mutually beneficial and equitable partnerships between researchers and community people involved in positive change. Participatory Action Research (PAR) is rooted in trust, connectivity, and reciprocity to address issues and actions that remedy inequitable social, economic, and environmental problems arising from racism rooted in structural/political imbalances. In this paper, we discuss the Health Equity Alliance of Tallahassee (HEAT) and its affiliated six week Ethnographic Field School that trains graduate students in CBPR methodology by bringing faculty, local community activists and stakeholders, and students together for mutual learning in dynamic classroom, community, and social settings. The paper offers reflections on the experience by a student, HEAT activist, local and visiting faculty, and demonstrate how a model field school based on PAR offers an empirical approach to building capacity to address power inequities in local settings and beyond.

Introduction to the Special Issue

This issue of Practicing Anthropology presents work that emerged from the 2013 season of the Health Equity Alliance of Tallahassee (HEAT) Ethnographic Field School (EFS), an ongoing NSF-supported program and community-academic partnership in Tallahassee, Florida. Most of the papers in this special issue directly examine field school experiences; others represent the broader reach of community-academic partnerships. The HEAT Field School plays a unique role in the discipline as a structured learning center where Ph.D. students from a range of graduate departments can come year after year to receive formal training in field methods of data collection. Graduate students, university faculty, and local experts and activists in Tallahassee continue to be committed to projects related to community empowerment, health equity, and building upon community strengths to advance social justice.

Integrating Methods Training and Community-based Participatory Research: The NSF-Supported Ethnographic Field School in Tallahassee, Florida

The Health Equity Alliance of Tallahassee (HEAT) Ethnographic Field School (EFS) uses a community-based participatory research (CBPR) framework to provide intensive, hands-on training in methods of collecting and analyzing qualitative and quantitative ethnographic data. In this article, we describe (1) how the field school addresses a disciplinary need for more rigorous training in research methods, (2) the value of grounding field training in a participatory framework, and (3) the structure and aims of the field school training program. Our efforts promote mutual learning in a collaborative environment and the integration of teaching, research, and action.

Community-based Participatory Research: Challenging “Lone Ethnographer” Anthropology in the Community and the Classroom

Despite a rich history of collaborative and engaged scholarship and the recent “participatory turn” in anthropology few anthropology departments train students in the philosophy or methods of collaboration. Graduate training is typically characterized by conventional classroom-based lectures and individualized projects, while participatory research is thought of as something scholars can do later in their careers. The 2013 Health Equity Alliance of Tallahassee (HEAT) Ethnographic Field School disrupted this paradigm. The Field School used a community-based participatory research (CBPR) framework to train graduate students and community stakeholders in applied research methods through participation in an established community/university research partnership, examining race, racism, and health outcomes. The Field School was comprised of a racially, economically, and educationally diverse, intergenerational, multicultural, and multiethnic group of participants. Reflecting on this experience, we challenge the myth of the “lone ethnographer” and argue for a reorientation in anthropological methods training towards transdisciplinary, participatory, and collaborative ethnographic methods.

The Undergraduate Ethnographic Field School as a Research Method

The undergraduate ethnographic field school can and should be a frequently used field research method. The key to transforming a field school from an excellent pedagogy into a viable research instrument requires the fusion of the field school with intensive postfield coauthored collaboration between field school directors and students. Engaging the field school as a full-round research process—to include writing to peer-reviewed standards—can overcome the opportunity cost of time spent in managing a field school. That could catalyze a much needed expansion in the availability of field schools as a best-practices pedagogy embedded in a community of practice centered on research. To some, these propositions will seem both daunting and controversial. But those who implement the conditions of a research- and publication-oriented field school will find that research, publication, and teaching synergies fully reward the additional investment that transforms the teaching field school into a productive research method.

Expandiendo la tradición de Ángel Palerm: estaciones de campo, etnografía, reclutamiento y retención de estudiantes latinos.

El artículo habla de la Casa “Ángel Palerm”, un modelo de estación de campo etnográfica que establecimos en Dallas, Texas, para reclutar y retener a estudiantes latinos en la Universidad de Texas en Dallas. Abrió sus puertas en Oak Cliff, uno de los barrios latinos más grandes de Dallas y operó del año 2000 hasta el 2004. Se describe el enfoque, la pedagogía utilizada y su aplicación para llevar a cabo esta misión. La discusión incluye la tradición intelectual detrás de este esfuerzo: la “escuela de antropología” de Ángel Palerm. También se describen las colaboraciones desarrolladas con los colegios comunitarios del condado de Dallas y otras instituciones. La Casa “Ángel Palerm” fue un proyecto financiado por el Departamento de Educación de Estados Unidos, diseñado para preparar, reclutar y retener a estudiantes latinos en las universidades.

“I care more about this place, because I fought for it”: exploring the political ecology of fracking in an ethnographic field school

This paper draws from data provided by the Indiana University of Pennsylvania 2012 Ethnographic Field School to accomplish two goals: to open questions about the impacts of hydraulic fracturing on people’s relationships to the environment in western PA and to explore the pedagogical possibilities and limitations of teaching through publically engaged projects rooted in political ecology. The history of local land use, whether coal mining and its consequences or the creation of conservation zones, captures the imagination of differing publics and influences their interpretation of energy extraction, particularly its acceptability and risks. At the same time, the encounter with Marcellus Shale has prompted people to explore, question, and redefine their relationships to place and to the legacy of coal in the community. This paper details the possibilities and pitfalls encountered in ethnographic projects by student researchers designed to explore and prompt public dialogue about people’s changing relationships to land and water. Despite theoretical and methodological challenges, this paper argues for the value of community-based ethnographic field schools and publically engaged political ecology research in creating a context for productive dialogue between stakeholders on a controversial issue.

Apprentice Ethnography and Service Learning Programs: Are They Compatible?

Apprentice Ethnography and Service Learning Programs:Are They Compatible? Tim Wallace (bio) A Response to the Gitxaała Nation Program Led by Charles Menzies and Caroline Butler Charles Menzies and Caroline Butler title their contribution to this journal "Collaborative Service Learning and Anthropology with the Gitxaała Nation," yet they make a reference to "early ethnographic field schools [using] indigenous communities as a laboratory," seeming to imply that their program is not an ethnographic program. However, they next suggest that today's UBC schools (presumably they mean ethnographic field schools) are based on principles of collaboration and service learning. It seems that Menzies and Butler are trying to say that "early" ethnographic field school programs were a touch misguided but that theirs is not, because their goal is a collaborative partnership between the program leaders and the community, on the one hand, and the students, on the other. Nevertheless, in my opinion, their program is a hybrid ethnographic field school-community service learning program. Although I commend their success in producing a collaboration with the community that would host the students, in my opinion it has come at a cost—the deemphasis of critical ethnographic training needed for apprentice ethnographers. In what follows I would like to share a few points from my reading of this interesting program. My own curiosity with field schools emanates from my eighteen-year experience (1994-present) designing and leading ethnographic field schools in Hungary, Costa Rica, and Guatemala. I am always searching for ways to improve what I do, and I was hoping to find some new ideas here for my own program (Wallace 2004). [End Page 252] As a collaboration model, I think the Gitxaała program works fairly well, but as an ethnographic training model I have some concerns. Before elaborating, first I should explain what I mean by an "ethnographic field school," because there is a range of programmatic types that can fall under the category of field school, but in my opinion not all programs that are field schools are ethnographic training programs. Ethnographic field schools, in my definition, are those in which there is a combination of ethnographic field method instruction combined with research practice in independent projects, participation in a group research project, or completing research "practice exercises." Completing an ethnographic field school within less than five to six weeks and emphasizing this kind of training program is a challenge. The Menzies and Butler program is only four weeks long and might perhaps better be classified as a community service learning program, where the research assignment activities are directly related to facilitating positive benefits for a local community in which the participants are working or studying. In this kind of program the emphasis is on collaborative assistance rather than ethnographic training. My experience as a program director leads me to conclude that it is difficult to combine ethnographic training and community service learning. Volunteer work and ethnographic work are quite different, and often students really need the latter first to be able to negotiate the former successfully. For me, the Menzies and Butler program seems to confirm this lesson. A third type of field program is cultural immersion. Students have an intense experience living in another culture, receiving formal classroom coursework that is combined with field trips within the region or country where the program takes place. The program director teaches at least one of the courses and may recruit other local experts to teach. Frequently students are housed together in hotels or other indoor or outdoor facilities. The Gitxaała program does not seem to fit this model, nor does it fit a fourth type—a language training field school, such as the Tulane University Kaqchikel Summer language training program led by Judith Maxwell. Students combine cultural immersion with intensive language training in one main locale throughout the stay and have a few field trips. The program director is a director of residence life and makes sure the student experience is appropriate and on target, smoothing over any rough spots for students during the program. [End Page 253] A final one I would mention here, again probably not applicable to the Gitxaała Nation program, is the...

Butterflies, Anthropologies, and Ethnographic Field Schools: A Reply to Wallace and Hyatt

Butterflies, Anthropologies, and Ethnographic Field Schools: A Reply to Wallace and Hyatt

Juramentos and Mandas: Traditional Catholic Practices and Substance Abuse in Mexican Communities of Southeastern Pennsylvania.

This article describes the use of traditional Catholic beliefs and practices by Mexican sojourners in southeastern Pennsylvania to deal with and overcome substance abuse. Two practices in particular are the focus: juramentos and mandas. Juramentos are ritual promises to a saint, made by a drinker or drug user, to abstain from drinking or using drugs; whereas mandas are requests or pleas for divine intervention in protecting a loved one from dangers, including from substance abuse, made by the wives and mothers of the substance users. These religious practices were observed and studied while conducting alcohol and drug abuse research in southeastern Pennsylvania and teaching an ethnographic field school in Mexican sending communities to this region of the United States.

Commentary: Can You Take Undergraduates to the Field? A Field School Example

We are in a Rarámuri rancho in the Sierra Madre of Chihuahua, Mexico when one of the eight undergraduate students participating in the ethnographic field school starts whooping with joy. He has just spoken a Rarámuri word/concept he learned in my ethnography class to one of the Tarahumara children following us around, and the youth has responded. The anthropology major, a junior, has an intellectual epiphany as he sees how his classroom experience holds meaning here. The geology-archaeology major has admitted earlier that her only goal in attending the field school was to go down into Canyon de Chelly instead of looking at it from above. She says she is not really interested in indigenous people- she prefers rocks. She spends the next day with an older Hopi woman. During their time together the young geologist and the older basket maker share life stories and so begins a meaningful and ongoing cross cultural friendship.

ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELD SCHOOLS, COMMUNITY SERVICE LEARNING, AND THE HOMESTAY EXPERIENCE

Our experience in training undergraduate and graduate anthropology students during ten consecutive summers of ethnographic field schools in diverse settings (Hungary, Lowland Costa Rica, Highland Guatemala) leads us to believe that students, both graduate and undergraduate need a strong, basic experience in designing and conducting their own field research projects. At the same time, we believe that the ethnographic field school experience is also a type of service learning experience. The ethnographic field school helps students develop analytic and conceptual skills that can be linked with applied experiences. Eventually, both the participants and the members of the local community enter into a mutually reinforcing relationship in which the guests come to appreciate their role as students of the local culture, and as anthropologists (framed within a professional sense of ethical responsibility) and in which the hosts come to understand what research is and how that research can be put to use. Some programs emphasize a more active model of community service with frequent, direct, community involvement and collaboration, while others use a more passive model whose benefits for the local community come through the information generated from research projects and from the homestay experience. This chapter gives several examples of each kind of model.

APPRENTICE ETHNOGRAPHERS AND THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF TOURISM IN COSTA RICA

This chapter discusses the structure of North Carolina State University ethnographic field school program held in Costa Rica from 1995–2001 (and now in Guatemala since 2002), in addition to explaining how the program is run and its focus on the anthropology of tourism. It is argued that not all field schools are ethnographic but that ethnographic field schools are essential for apprentice anthropologists who want to understand what anthropology is all about. It explains what makes the NCSU program an ethnographic field school and why it seems to be a successful model. Former program participants also discuss how they have benefited from their experiences.

FOREWORD

NAPA BulletinVolume 22, Issue 1 p. 1-7 FOREWORD Oswald Werner, Oswald Werner Professor Emeritus, Northwestern UniversitySearch for more papers by this author Oswald Werner, Oswald Werner Professor Emeritus, Northwestern UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: 08 January 2008 https://doi.org/10.1525/napa.2004.22.1.001AboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume22, Issue1Special Issue: Passages: The Ethnographic Field School and First FieldworkJanuary 2004Pages 1-7 RelatedInformation

MENTORSHIP AND THE FIELD SCHOOL EXPERIENCE

This chapter discusses the benefits to both students and faculty program directors who participate in ethnographic field schools. Mentoring is a productive way to teach students that enables them to learn by doing. Although there are many stresses and strains in conducting mentor‐structured programs, the payoffs are great as the directors gently lead their students into developing deeper understanding of anthropology and ethnography. This approach often provides the best way for students to decide if they have the “right stuff” to be anthropologists, and their mentors provide them with the encouragement and support necessary to find out for themselves.