Topics in Anthropology (490-0-28)

Topic

Scales of Ethnography, Ethnographies of Scale

Instructors

Emrah Yildiz
847/467-6254
2001 Sheridan Rd, Room 5130
Office Hours: Tuesdays, 1-3pm

Meeting Info

2001 Sheridan GPC 2109: Wed 5:00PM - 7:50PM

Overview of class

This course interrogates "scale" not simply as level, size, or volume but rather as a historically contingent, geographically contested, and socially emergent relation. Moving beyond compartmentalized notions of space, the seminar showcases how everyday transactions and actions, administrative categories, and regimes of human mobility help produce "scale" across temporal and spatial horizons. With readings drawn from anthropology, geography, and history—ranging from spatial theories of state power to multi-scalar ethnography and border-crossing fugitives of such powers—seminar participants will examine scale both a means of ethnographic analysis, and a site of social praxis, asking how cross-border mobility, migration, diasporic and transregional connections actively shape geography, history, and category for their interlocutors. The seminar will then offer participants the conceptual space to experiment with scale as a crucial method and analytic in their own ethnographic research and writing in ways that can capture scalar actions in their complex cross-locations.

Learning Objectives

By the end of the course, participants will be able to
• Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of social science theories related to the influence of culture and power on the behavior of individuals, interpersonal relationships, and/or group dynamics in prevalent interpretations of scale, power, and mobility in anthropology and allied disciplines.
• Develop the ability to critique theories, claims, and policies in the social and behavioral sciences that deal with scale and ethnography as well as their objects and subjects of practice through careful evaluation of scholarly arguments including their major assertions, assumptions, evidential basis, and explanatory utility.
• Reflect, in a global and comparative framework, upon the ways in which theories and research about scale and mobility across time and space from the social and behavioral sciences help elucidate the factors underlying contemporary social issues, social problems, and/or ethical dilemmas in ethnographic research and analysis.

Class Materials (Required)

All required texts, with the exception of the book-length manuscripts given below, can be found under files on the course website or on the Northwestern library database, unless already hyperlinked to an open source below. Mahajan, Nidhi. 2024. Moorings: Voyages of Capital across the Indian Ocean. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN-13: 978-0520413511. Rubaii, Kali. 2026. Resurgency: Outlasting the War on Terror in Iraq. Durham: Duke University Press. ISBN-13: 978-1478038726.

Class Notes

Students will be evaluated on the basis of two writing assignments (50%) and class participation (50%). The writing assignments include one American Anthropologist style book review of an ethnographic monograph (20%) and one 12-page paper recasting own research project in light of seminar readings (30%). Class participation includes (1) Regular attendance (10%) in seminar meetings and contribution to discussions; (2) 8 Reading responses (25%); and (3) Co-leading seminar discussion in one session (15%).