90453 - IL FIELDWORK NELLA RICERCA SOCIALE

Learning outcomes

The course introduces the students to the results of empirical research in the fields of migration and urban studies. At the end of the course the students will be able to critically analyze complex phenomena using some key analytical framework, including the intersectional approach.

Course contents

FIELDWORK

QUESTIONS OF METHOD

First, the course will focus on the ‘field’ as a site and as a practice. Students will learn that fieldwork data are not ‘collected’ but ‘produced’ within different historical, geographical, and political contexts and circumstances; they are the result of the relationship between the researcher and the informants. Students will also learn that relationships formed on the field are shaped by external elements such as the policies of funding institutions, and the researcher’s characteristics such as gender, age, and belonging.

The challenges of multi-situated fieldwork and the urge to connect the local with the global will also be debated.

MY FIELDWORK

Second, researchers with a rich field experience, together with the instructor, will present their fieldwork, highlighting its relational and critical aspects, and connecting it with the theoretical debate.

Below are the main fieldwork topics:

1. ETHNOGRAPHIES OF SURVIVAL, with a focus on ethnographic research in areas of war and post-war and on the limits of ethnographic knowledge production vis-à-vis migration as survival.
2. URBAN AND RURAL FIELDWORK focusing on:
   1. the ‘negotiation’ of ethnographic information and the complicity emerging from ‘ethnographic encounters’ with entrepreneurs in Romania and Italy while conducting research on processes of production delocalization and relocalization;
   2. the dilemma of transforming research ON vulnerable social groups – as for instance refugees and the institutions dealing with them – into a research FOR refugees, i.e. a research that transforms its research object into its main user;
   3. the vertical and horizontal conflicts and the ‘production of race and gender’ surfacing when the ethnographic field is conducted in the workplace and analyses the work process, with a focus on agriculture and meatpacking:
   4. the ethnographic field conducted among urban beekeepers in France and Singapore who promote urban biodiversity, aimed at investigating how a notion is transformed into measure;
   5. the issue of the territory's stigma – referred to the Neapolitan suburb of Scampia – both in terms of how the actors of a stigmatised territory deal with local problems, and in terms of the local actors producing themselves a stigmatised narrative of the territory.

Readings/Bibliography

ETHNOGRAPHY

√ Comaroff, J., & Comaroff, J. (2003) ‘Ethnography on a awkward scale’, Ethnography, 4(2), 147–179.

RESEARCH FOR AND WITH THE REFUGEES

√ Altin R, Mencacci E, Sanò G, Spada S., (a cura di) (2017) ‘Richiedenti asilo e sapere antropologico, Antropologia Pubblica, vol. 3, n. 1

√ Harrel-Bond, B.E. (1986) Imposing Aid; Emergency Assistance to Refugees. Oxford. Oxford University Press.

FIELDWORK AND PUBLIC SOCIOLOGY

√ Michael Burawoy (2009) "On public ethnography" in The extended case method".

√ Arribas Lozano (2018) "Reframing the public sociology debate: Towards a collaborative and decolonial praxis") Current Sociology, 66/1, 92-109.

WHEN THE ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELD IS THE WORKPLACE

B√ Andrea Bottalico e Valeria Piro (in stampa) ‘L’etnografia del lavoro e il lavoro dell’etnografia’, Etnografia e Ricerca Qualitativa.

√ Valeria Piro (2014) ‘Che cos’e’ la giusta paga? Negoziazioni sul prezzo del lavoro in una serra siciliana’, Etnografia e ricerca qualitativa, 2, pp. 219-243.

ETHNOGRAPHIES OF SURVIVAL

√ Gerhild Perl (2019) ‘Migration as Survival. Withheld Stories and the Limits of Ethnographic Knowability’, Migration and Society.

√ Luca Jourdan (2015) ‘Introduzione. Guerra, post-guerra e ricerca etnografica;, Antropologia

NEGOTIATION AND COMPLICITY IN FIELDWORK

√ George Marcus and Dick Cushman, 1982, ‘Ethnographies as Texts’, Ann. Rev. Anthropol., 11: 25-69.

√ George Marcus, 1999, ‘The uses of complicity in the changing mise-en-scène of anthropological fieldwork’, in S. Ortner, Ed., The Fate of Culture. Geertz and Beyond, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, University of California Press, pp. 86-109.

TERRITORIAL STIGMA

√ Carolina Mudan Marelli (2019) ‘The commodification of territorial stigma’, Urban Research & Practice, DOI: 10.1080/17535069.2019.1683600

Further reading

· Abu-Lughod, L. (2000) ‘Locating ethnography’ Ethnography, 1(2), 261–267.

· Pun Ngai et al., 2014, “Worker–intellectual unity: Trans-border sociological intervention in Foxconn”, Current Sociology, 62/2, 209, 222.

· Gupta, A., & Ferguson, J. (1997) ‘Discipline and practice: “The field” as site, method and location in anthropology’ In A. Gupta & J. Fergusson (Eds.), Anthropological locations. Boundaries and grounds of a field science (pp. 1–46). Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press.

· Low, S.M., Merry, S.E. (2010) ‘An Introduction to Supplement 2. Engaged Anthropology. Diversity and Dilemmas’ Current Anthropology, 51: 203-226.

· Sanò G; (2017) ‘Inside and outside the reception system. The case of unaccompanied minors in Eastern Sicily’, in Etnografia e Ricerca Qualitativa 1, pp. 121-141.

· Wacquant, L. (2002) ‘The curious eclipse of prison ethnography in the age of mass incarceration’ Ethnography, 3 (4): 371–397.

· Kalb, D., & Tak, H. (2005). Introduction. Critical junctions – Recapturing anthropology and history. In D. Kalb & H. Tak (Eds.), Critical junctions: Anthropology and history beyond the cultural turn (pp. 2–27). London: Berghahn.

· Biao Xiang (2013) ‘Multi-scalar ethnography: An approach for critical engagement with migration and social change’, Ethnography 14/3, pp. 282–299.

  

Teaching methods

Lectures and discussions in class, including watching and discussing images and videos. Students are strongly encouraged to participate in the discussion.

Assessment methods

Student initiative in articulating themes and connecting different presentations and articles, including visual materials, in the class will be positively evaluated.

Students will take an oral exam on the readings and presentations of the course. Questions will aim at testing the student ability to critically address the proposed issues and build an argument with an appropriate language.

The assessment will take into consideration:

1. Proper knowledge of the subjects
2. Ability to critically analyze and connect concepts and fieldwork experiences
3. Competences in the use of appropriate terminology

Alternatively, students attending classwork can conduct fieldwork on a topic and area agreed with the instructor, write a paper of around 1,500 words on their fieldwork and present it to the class.

Teaching tools

Readings and guest lecturers.

Office hours

See the website of Antonella Ceccagno