Ethnographic Methods for Global Health Research

GH 708 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

This course is intended as an introduction to ethnographic methods, for use in global health research. The course will provide guided experiences in ethnographic observation,participant observation, and writing of field notes, in anthropological interviewing, development of interview guides, the design of studies in global health research that include an ethnographic component, and analysis of ethnographic data and ethnographic writing. Special attention is given to interviewing as a tool of ethnographic research and theories of subjectivity that underlie our understandings of interviewing. The course will provide practical experiences in carrying out interviews, with class supervision and group reflection on interviewing experiences, along with readings aimed at providing students understanding of how data and theory are combined in ethnographic writing. But attention is also focused on ethnographic observation and the juxtaposition of interview and observational data. Students will be required to review ethnographic writing relevant to the topic and setting of their research. Because medical anthropology has been such a central component for many of the faculty in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, the course will provide an introduction to the meaning of ethnography and ethnographic research as used in diverse subfields of global health research. In particular, since global health research is conducted in settings in which local culture, forms of inequality, health care institutions, and ways of interpreting and experiencing illness are of critical importance to the development of health services, the course will focus on the use of ethnography to address these basic dimensions of local settings in which research is being conducted.