Current Methodological Challenges in Anthropology

obligatory courses

During the course the students will be acquainted with the ways how anthropological knowledge is constructed, the strategies of showing (or hiding) authorial presence in texts, and different contexts and historical entanglement of anthropological knowledge.

Topics will include:

1. Ethnographic description - from field experience to ethnographic text.

2. Pre-reflective knowledge, experience and knowledge.

3. Redefinitions of field in anthropology.

4. Anthropology as cultural critic.

5. Reflexive anthropology.

6. Engaged/multi-sited anthropology.

7. New anthropology of material culture.

T. Csordas, Introduction: The Body as Representation an Being-in-the World [w:], Embodiment and Experience. The Existential Ground of Culture and Self, red. T. Csordas, Cambridge 2001.

K. Kaniowska. Opis a wiedza antropologa [w:] Opis. Klucz do rozumienia kultury, Łódź 1999.

Freedman D.C., Wife, Widow, Woman: Roles of an Anthropologist in a Transylvanian Village, 221 [w:] Women in the field. Anthropological experiences, red. P. Golde, Berkeley 1986.

G. Marcus, Użyteczność kategorii uczestnictwa w zmieniających się kontekstach antropologicznych badań terenowych [w:] Clifford Geertz. Lokalna lektura red. M Brocki, D. Wolska, Kraków 2000.

A. Gupta, J. Fergusson, Poza "kulturę": przestrzeń, tożsamość i polityka różnicy, [w:] Badanie kultury, t.2, red. M. Kempny, E. Nowicka, Warszawa 2006.

Having completed the course, students gain self-consciousness as researchers and writers in the field of cultural anthropology.

written exam