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| Semester | spring semester 2021 |
| Course frequency | Once only |
| Lecturers | Till Förster (till.foerster@unibas.ch, Assessor) |
| Content | Over the past two decades, more and more anthropologists have conducted and published autoethnographic accounts of their fieldwork. Today, some key presumptions of autoethnography are widely recognized as standards of good ethnography, for instance, reflecting on the anthropologist’s positionality. However, autoethnography is much more than a reflection on methods and the anthropologists’ personal relationship to the societal milieu they study. Autoethnography looks at the existential consequences of life-worldly experience for anthropologists, taking sensory experience as a starting point to trace and understand the encounter between anthropologists and others. Hence, the senses – seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching, and the bodily senses more generally – are seen as primary gateways to other human beings as contemporary actors who anthropologists as human beings want to meet and exchange with. As sensory experience of social life is recognised as the most basic dimension of ethnographic fieldwork, autoethnography asks how that existential experience is reflected and turns into a source of ethnographic writing. Autoethnography thus takes the anthropologist as a medium between self and other. Ethnographers turn into mirrors of how others have acted and act on them. As ethnographers experience the lives of others by situating themselves in other social contexts and making themselves the object of social interactions, they expose themselves to the messy, uncertain, and emotional dimensions of social life and eventually to possible existential changes that affect them as much as the people among whom they live. They can no longer remain distanced observers and hence have to leave the position that positivism has had for them as scholars. They rather become participants in social milieus that were not but increasingly become theirs. As ethnographic theory, autoethnography looks at how the two – self and other – are related and eventually constitute each other, and how that interaction has affected and affects the actors’ respective life-worldly experience. The research seminar offers all participants a forum where they can reflect on and discuss their own ethnographic experience with regard to the above mentioned existential dimensions. |
| Admission requirements | The number of participants is limited to 20 people. The places are assigned according to date of enrollment and subject of study. Priority will be given to the subjects listed under "modules". |
| Language of instruction | English |
| Use of digital media | No specific media used |
| Interval | Weekday | Time | Room |
|---|---|---|---|
| Block | See individual dates | ||
| Date | Time | Room |
|---|---|---|
| Friday 23.04.2021 | 08.30-18.00 | - Online Präsenz -, -- |
| Saturday 24.04.2021 | 08.30-18.00 | - Online Präsenz -, -- |
| Friday 07.05.2021 | 08.30-18.00 | - Online Präsenz -, -- |
| Saturday 08.05.2021 | 08.30-18.00 | - Online Präsenz -, -- |
| Modules |
Modul: Fields: Knowledge Production and Transfer (Master's degree program: African Studies) Modul: Interdisciplinary and Applied African Studies (Master's degree program: African Studies) Modul: Research Skills in Social and Cultural Anthropology (Master's degree subject: Anthropology) |
| Assessment format | continuous assessment |
| Assessment registration/deregistration | Reg.: course registration; dereg.: not required |
| Repeat examination | no repeat examination |
| Scale | Pass / Fail |
| Repeated registration | no repetition |
| Responsible faculty | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, studadmin-philhist@unibas.ch |
| Offered by | Fachbereich Ethnologie |