ANTH 233 Ethnographic Studies
Winter 2019
I acknowledge that St FX is in Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq People.
News reporting and ethnography:
READ: Azeez, Walé and Sarah Marshall. 2013. “Why Newsrooms Need Anthropologists.” Journalism.co.uk. https://www.journalism.co.uk/news-commentary/-why-newsrooms-need-anthropologists-/s6/a554681/
Prasse-Freeman, Elliott. 2017. “The Rohingya and the World.” Jacobin.28 December 2017. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/12/myanmar-rohingya-ethnic-cleansing-aung-san-suu-kyi
- finish fiction section
- plagiarism quiz
- remember to keep in mind the different perspectives of Howell, Ingold and Kolshus
- how was the information gathered?
- is it descriptive? Theoretically informed? Comparative? Culturally relative?
- is it with or of the people?
- is the writing accessible?
- voice/authority/politics of representation
- engagement with literature
- how is the population described in terms of homogeneity/heterogeneity?
- is the society described as dynamic or static?
- what is the role of over-arching political, legal, economic,
cultural (etc.) structures within which this society is placed? How
isolated/separate is it from other societies?
- what is the relationship of this work with respect to policy?
- what is the positionality of the author?
- what is journalism?
- for example: American Press Institute’s view (https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/journalism-essentials/what-is-journalism/)
- what arguments do Azeez and Marshall present as to why newsrooms need anthropologists?
- examples such as Gillian Tett, Joris Luyendijk
- what does Prasse-Freeman tell readers about Myanmar and the Rohingya that other journalists might not be able to?
- what are the advantages of anthropologists doing news? What is lost from ethnography in a news report?
Charles Michio Turner on the relationship between news reporting and anthropology: https://medium.com/@charlesmichio/anthropology-in-journalism-breaks-rules-maybe-in-a-good-way-dc9914fa2f62
Debate: which is a better way of presenting ethnography: fiction or news reporting?