Learning about Culture: Introduction to Ethnography

Learning Outcomes

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• present a coherent argument and use appropriate evidence as necessary
• interrogate your data
• pose interesting and innovative questions
• evaluate a project proposal
• identify and explore problems
• communicate effectively with others

Subject Specific Practical Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• to record interviews (if appropriate) and transcribe them
• to carry out ethnographic conversations and (if appropriate) interviews
• to collect data required for your assignments
• to apply anthropological concepts in order to interpret the data you collected for your projects
• to verify your interpretations of your project data through comparison with other evidence.
• to index the data collected for your projects to evaluate evidence
• to conduct some field observations and take notes in a field diary.

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• realise own role as a reflexive cultural learner
• reflect on the links between language learning cultural learning;
• respond in an informed way to questions of cultural difference;

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• key concepts as used by social anthropologists in power and language
• important ideas central to social anthropology such as: the social nature of apparent individualism
• key concepts as used by social anthropologists in roles and relationships
• key concepts as used by social anthropologists in family and gender relations
• key concepts as used by social anthropologists in rituals and symbolic meanings
• important ideas central to social anthropology such as: the social construction of perceived reality
• important ideas central to social anthropology such as: the cultural construction of beliefs, attitudes, actions
• important ideas central to social anthropology such as: the patterns and regularities under the surface of life

The course will introduce you to anthropological concepts, e.g. what is meant by cultural knowledge, values and beliefs, the way these are expressed through language, and how cultural knowledge relates to behaviour and social structures.

The course will also introduce you to ethnographic methods, i.e. ways of observing and understanding one's own and other cultural practices from an insider's point of view. As a result, the course should help you to make the most of your present and future experience of living and working in multicultural environments in terms of understanding the people around you, their cultural practices, including their beliefs and values and your own response to them and the social world which they inhabit.

Teaching methods include

• one lecture and one seminar (in workshop format) per week

Learning activities include

• pair- and group-work
• preparing and delivering individual presentations
• devising a project and conducting fieldwork

Innovative or special features of this unit

• doing fieldwork in a local context as a way of practical cultural learning

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.