SSSWARM Seminar Series:

Doing Ethnography

Speaker: Nicolas Peterson, ANU

A02, Room 441 and Zoom: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/82404800115

This event will not be recorded.

A guest speaker event hosted by SSSWARM (Sydney Staff and Student Workshops on Anthropological Research Methods)

NICOLAS PETERSON is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences. His research investigates social organisation, economic anthropology, ritual and symbolism, land and sea tenure, fourth world people and the state, social change and applied anthropology, the anthropology of photography, ethnographic film, the history of Australian Anthropology, and the anthropology of native title. Peterson’s research projects include “Vitality and change in Warlpiri songs at Yuendumu,” “Heritage in the limelight: the magic lantern in Australia and the world,” and “The long-term dynamics of higher order social organisations in Aboriginal Australia.” Peterson is author of Donald Thomson in Arnhem Land (Melbourne University Press, 2018) and co-editor with Fred Myers of Experiments in Self-Determination: Histories of the outstation movement in Australia (ANU Press, 2016). Click here for more information.

Prof. Peterson’s talk will explore the practice of “doing ethnography” from a broad perspective in order to stimulate ideas and conversation across field sites and settings. This talk will lay empirical grounds for ensuing conversations on particular research techniques –from household survey, interviewing, and mapping to on-line research, computer programs for notes, and more.

Suggested readings:

1. Hannerz, Ulf. 2006. “Studying Down, Up, Sideways, Through, Backwards, Forwards, Away and at Home: Reflections on the Field Worries of an Expansive Discipline.” In Locating the Field. New York: Routledge. Available here.
2. Ingold, Tim. 2017. “Anthropology Contra Ethnography.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 7(1): 21 –26. Available here.
3. Günel, Gökçe, SaibaVarma, and Chika Watanabe. 2020. “A Manifesto for Patchwork Ethnography.” Member Voices, Fieldsights, June 9. Available here.

Please contact Sophie Chao for further information: sophie.chao@sydney.edu.au