Ethnography and Cultural Studies Research Focus Group

Ethnography and Cultural Studies Research Focus Group

Conveners
Mary Hancock, Anthropology and History
hancock@anth.ucsb.edu

David Novak, Music
dnovak@music.ucsb.edu

The Research Focus Group in Ethnography and Cultural Studies aims to take stock of the ways that ethnographic practice has diversified in response to the challenges of contemporary culture. Our central questions are these: How does contemporary ethnography work? What claims does it make about the world, and what kinds of research questions come into focus through its practice? The work of our RFG is to bring ethnography into dialogue with a range of different disciplinary expressions of cultural studies to investigate and expand the range of possible tools to study contemporary culture, and to highlight its continuing importance in opening up new areas of research.