Anthropology @ UTSC

Research Methods in Anthropology is the standard textbook for methods classes in anthropology. Written in Russ Bernard's unmistakable conversational style, his guide has launched tens of thousands of students into the fieldwork enterprise with a combination of rigorous methodology, wry humor, and commonsense advice.

Doing Anthropological Research provides a practical toolkit for carrying out research. It works through the process chapter by chapter, from the planning and proposal stage to methodologies, secondary research, ethnographic fieldwork, ethical concerns, and writing strategies. Case study examples are provided throughout to illustrate the particular issues and dilemmas that may be encountered.

What makes this book unique is its attempt to integrate theory and method within a single work. Starting with anthropology's foundations in the late nineteenth century, Stanley R. Barrett brings the reader up to date on such topics as the influence of postmodern and feminist criticism, changes in ethnographic style, and the shift from scientific to humanistic discourse. He discusses the power relationships between anthropologists and their subjects, from the era of colonialism through that of contemporary cultural pluralism. Barrett shows that, in recent decades, a serious gap has emerged between theory and method - a gap that will untimately have to be addressed by today's students.

This methods book offers a theoretically informed guide to ethnographic methods that is also practical in approach, and reflects the challenge and concerns of contemporary ethnography. Students draw from North American vignettes to learn how various methods work in the real world. Each chapter offers an overview of a particular method, methodological issue, or research trend, followed by an extended ethnographic vignette, written explicitly for this volume, from a contemporary anthropologist about their fieldwork experiences.

How to Read Ethnography is an essential guide to approaching anthropological texts. It helps students to cultivate the skills they need to critically examine and understand how ethnographies are built up, as well as to think anthropologically and develop an anthropological imagination of their own. In addition to concerns with argument, authority, and the relationship between theory and data, the book engages with the purpose, value, and accountability of ethnographic texts, as well as with their reception and usage.

The Teaching Writing series publishes user-friendly writing guides penned by authors with publishing records in their subject matter. While ethnographers inevitably write up their findings from the field, many ethnography textbooks focus more on the ‘ethno’ portion of our craft, and less on developing our ‘graph’ skills. Gullion fills that gap, helping ethnographers write compelling, authentic stories about their fieldwork.

In Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes, the authors present a series of guidelines, suggestions, and practical advice for creating useful fieldnotes in a variety of settings, demystifying a process that is often assumed to be intuitive and impossible to teach. Using actual unfinished notes as examples, the authors illustrate options for composing, reviewing, and working fieldnotes into finished texts.

Unlike many hypothesis-driven ethnographic texts, this book is designed with the specific needs of the anthropology student and field researcher in mind, with particular emphasis on the core anthropological method: long term participant observation. Anthropological Practice explores fieldwork experiences unique to anthropology, and provides the context by which to explain and develop practice-based and open-ended methodology.