Following Carole McGranahan's "What Makes Something Ethnographic?" (2012, Savage Minds), Bell discusses how she and her students created an ethnography of experiences of living and growing up in the Rust Belt. This project not only helped her students work through what we mean by ethnography, but also some of what she calls the dilemmas of ethnography: asking anthropological questions, the issue of 'ideal' data, recursivity, and representation.
Bell's posts are interesting for what they can tell us about teaching ethnography, what it means for students to learn and 'do' ethnography. In addition to recounting her experiences of this assignment, she also offers tips and advice to instructors who may want to take on a similar project in their classes.
Quick links & additional links:
- Bell's posts for Teaching Culture (2016): Part 1: Life in America, Part 2: Podcast Pedagogy
- Carole McGranahan's "What Makes Something Ethnographic?" (2012, Savage Minds)
- The ethnographic podcast produced by Bell's students: "Life in the Rust Belt" (2016)
- Podcasts via The Sociological Imagination