Every minute of every day is a collaborative experiment in real-time ethnography between Goldsmiths College and Richard House Children’s Hospice (Newham) http://richardhouse.org.uk/about and St Joseph’s Hospice (Hackney)http://www.stjh.org.uk/About-stjosephshospice. The aim of our project is to capture something of the local areas and communities that… Read More ›
Ethnographic Methods: ethics, practice and theory 12.00-17.00, Thursday, 23 May 2013 The University of Warwick At its best, ethnography – often glossed as ‘participant observation’ – has provided sociology and other social researchers with a valuable tool for apprehending a… Read More ›
In this interview I talk to Alex Smith (right) about the New Ethnographies book series he edits. I was interested in this series because of its deliberate intention to embrace and ferment the extension and productive growth of this most traditional… Read More ›
In this interview Mark Carrigan talks to Alex Smith (right) about his recent fieldwork in Kansas City, part of the larger Making Science Public project, exploring the role that debates about the status of science are having in the unfolding of the… Read More ›
For me, good urban sociology reminds us that cities are small, intimate things that won’t be around forever. They might seem vast and tall and solid and permanent, but they’re not. Cities are living, breathing organic matter, like a flower… Read More ›
Note: This list was written as a quick response to Oprah Winfrey’s visit to and report on South Asia in the Summer of 2012. 1) Yes, it is customary in (most parts) of South Asia for people to eat with… Read More ›
One Story High is a collection of very short sociological biographies I curated and edited for the on-line journal Fast Capitalism late in 2009, featuring the work of novelist and literary critic Amitava Kumar, anthropologist Katie Stewart and filmmaker John Cohen… Read More ›
* In my Introductory Sociology course, It’s Not Rocket Science, students create faux Facebook profiles of people who are their exact social opposite, then interact with one another for ten weeks, (as well as observe and analyze these interactions), finally… Read More ›
Apply for this summer school at your own peril! Euro-Balkan Institute for Social and Humanities Research, Skopje, Republic of Macedonia 15th OHRID SUMMER UNIVERSITY 2012 Summer School “Vampires and Vampirism: Between Anthropology, Folklore and Popular Culture” to be… Read More ›
The very best sociological biography I ever read was Kate Moses’ Wintering. In it, she takes Sylvia Plath’s collection of poetry Ariel and then re-orders each poem so they are laid out in the way Plath left them with/as her… Read More ›
For years I wrote about small communities of people who were not famous, but were, at least, breathing, that is, alive. Now I mostly write about one famous, (or, perhaps to some, infamous), man, who, though an internationally recognized, (not… Read More ›
I couldn’t have invented an ethnographic field site more perfect than the Winnipeg River. With Clark’s Corner at its center, it was every bit as iconic as William Foote Whyte’s Cornerville, Elliott Liebow’s Tally’s corner or Elijah Anderson’s a place… Read More ›
There’s an episode of the American television show Seinfeld where Elaine has to hide from everyone the fact that she hated the Academy Award winning movie The English Patient. You can watch a clip from this episode here. For me,… Read More ›
Note: All the names in this story have been changed. But the photograph above gives a clue to the identity of one of the towns mentioned. No matter how hard we labor to make our homes more permanent, more stable,… Read More ›
After he became heralded as one of the greatest pianists to ever play, Glenn Gould stopped performing live. Doing so just didn’t allow him to perfect the way he wanted to play like performing in a studio did, where he… Read More ›
Note: I went looking for Bombay in New York City last night inspired by Bombay V. New York, a brilliant on-going photo essay by Nisha Sondhe. An earlier It’s Not Rocket Science post on India is right here.
For a year I lived above a pizza parlor, just like the sociologist William Foote Whyte did in 1936, the year he was doing field research for what would later become his famous urban ethnography, Street Corner Society. And every… Read More ›
I was never really very good at that game Three Truths and a Lie, the one where (when you’re a slumber party or living in a dorm) you’re supposed to tell four things about yourself, three true, one untrue and… Read More ›
Traditional anthropology and ethnography are all about daring researchers originating from civilised Western European countries venturing into unknown territories to spend half their lives living with fascinating, backward tribes. They defy the comfy practice of armchair theorising and instead theorise… Read More ›