Teaching Anthropology

Facing the Consequences: The Case for Transformative Fieldwork in Undergraduate Curriculums

Ryan Hornbeck — 2024-05-03

In this paper I argue that transformative fieldwork can and should be a pillar of an undergraduate education in anthropology. By transformative fieldwork, I mean long- or medium-term immersive participant observation that challenges the investigator’s beliefs, bodily experience (embodiment), and/or ethics, prompting adaptive responses that, collectively over time, fundamentally alter their experience of the world. My proposal has two parts. First, I advance the “senior thesis” – an in-depth research project undertaken in the final year of undergraduate study – as a viable placeholder for substantive fieldwork in an undergraduate curriculum. Such fieldwork, carried out locally or online, has advantages in accessibility, affordability, and authenticity relative to the conventional undergraduate gateway to fieldwork experience: methodological “field school.” Second, addressing a significant challenge to doing fieldwork on local (culturally familiar) terrain, I argue that such fieldwork can be transformative, and not merely a replication of familiar experiences, if students and their advisors design participant observation projects that carry significant consequences for the student’s beliefs, bodily experience, and/or ethics. I outline strategies for designing such projects, illustrated by examples drawn from my own students’ senior theses. The concluding section addresses three potential reservations about undergraduates undertaking “consequential” research.

The Craft of Teaching. Cultivating Uncertainty and Moving in Playfulness as Pedagogical Strategy

Lydia Arantes — 2024-05-03

I have long tried to move away from teaching as “passing on knowledge” and moved towards practicing teaching as co-creating knowledge. I have come to regard teaching as a joint act of exploration, also taking into account students’ everyday life experiences. In the last academic year, I decided to expand my pedagogy by including playfulness. This required openness and vulnerability on behalf of me as the person developing the course as well as a new kind of engagement and involvement on behalf of my students. In doing so, the courses opened up space for making visible “epistemological journeys” (Arantes, 2021) and “liminal knowledges” (Burgos-Martinez, 2018). In this paper I give insights into some of the chosen approaches – of which a few involved playing with the idiom ‘business before pleasure’ – and reflect on their implications. I suggest that anthropology not only move within playfulness in the realm of research and representation but also on the level of teaching. Ultimately, I also reflect on what learning and teaching playfully and giving space to homo ludens (Huizinga, 1950) can teach us about the broader role of play for anthropology.

The TikTok of Teaching: The Pedagogical Possibilities of Collaborative Digital Ethnography

Elena Liber — 2023-11-17

Working collaboratively with students, lecturers, and others, to conduct digital ethnography enriches the ethnographies produced, expands pedagogical possibilities, and allows us to rethink how we teach and do research in anthropology. This Special Issue is an output of such a collaborative attempt. In this Editorial we introduce the TikTok Ethnography Collective and the collaborative mode of research and learning we established in September 2020. The articles we have collated demonstrate that collaborative ethnographic methods are the ideal tool for researching algorithmically shaped digital spaces. But more than this, by sharing our collective experience, we make the case for incorporating collaborative methods into anthropological teaching and learning in order to disrupt traditional, hierarchical models of education and research. We propose that inclusion of students in the research process is imperative for facilitating a safe, creative sandbox environment that allows staff and students to explore and formulate theories and reflections somewhat liberated from the expectations around who should and should not be the expert. We invite readers to join us in considering the broader implications of embracing collaborative research and teaching methods.

The Rambling Reflections of an Anthropologist: a Look Back at the Educational Journey and Research Development Through the Covid-19 Pandemic

Emily Lloyd-Evans — 2023-11-13

This piece provides the opportunity to reflect upon the period of my master’s studies, undertaken during the Covid-19 pandemic. In the first part, it highlights a project on ‘WitchTok’ that emerged through my engagement with the TikTok Ethnography Collective and through an exploration of my prior interest in Witches. In the second part, it reflects on my engagement with the TikTok Ethnography Collective and what it offered for my research.