301273 Oral history and ethnographic research tools (S) (WiSe 2022/2023)

Objectives of the course:

Dimension the social research as a process of encounters with others that has ethical implications that researchers should consider in their methodological designs.
Explore the oral history and ethnographic tools to propose methodological approaches that privilege the biographical dimension to analyze sociohistorical problems.
Analyze and create methodological research strategies using oral history and ethnographic tools.
Propose ways to share research process and results based on oral history and ethnographic perspectives.

Requirements for participation, required level

Social research has a crucial intersubjective dimension, essential to consider in our methodological approaches. The tools we use to approach others and create questions, hypotheses, and data are affective encounters determined by the connections between our questions, abilities, and the trajectories and interests of others. As researchers, we facilitate these encounters as part of the research process and moreover are embedded in them.

The seminar is based in discussion and workshop sessions to reflect about the intersubjective dimension of social research and the importance of using tools that cultivate ethically guided research encounters. We explore the oral history and ethnographic tools to respond to this dimension regarding the way we access to certain information, the way we create with others, and the use we give to the information, in addition to the ways in which we reciprocally feedback the process or the encounter.

For examination / Prüfungsleistung (Modulprüfung) students present three practical exercises at the end of each module.

Bibliography

Thompson, Paul. The Voice of the Past: Oral History. New York, 1988.
Ricoeur, Paul. Memory, History, Forgetting, The University of Chicago Press, 2004.
Ritchie, Donald. The Oxford Handbook of Oral History, 2011.
Aceves, Jorge. Historia oral. Ensayos y aportes de investigación, CIESAS, 2000.
De León, Jason. The Land of open graves. Duke University Press. 2015