Short Bio
Dvora Yanow is a policy/political/organizational ethnographer and interpretive methodologist. Her research and teaching are shaped by an interest in the generation and communication of knowing and meaning in organizational and policy settings. Research includes state-created categories for ‘race-ethnic’ identities, immigrant integration policies and citizen-making, research regulation and ethics policies, practice theory, and science museums and the idea of science. Her most recent authored book is Interpretive Research Design: Concepts and Processes (Routledge 2012), with Peregrine Schwartz-Shea. She received the 2012 Cora Maas teaching award for this ethnography course.
http://wu.academia.edu/DvoraYanow
Prerequisite knowledge
Note from the Academic Convenors to prospective participants: by registering for this course, you certify that you possess the prerequisite knowledge that is requested to be able to follow it. The instructor will not review these prerequisite items. If you doubt whether you possess that knowledge to a sufficient extent, we suggest you contact the instructor before you register for the course.
This course is designed as an ‘intermediate’ course in interpretive-qualitative research methods. It is intended for students who are past the research proposal stage – whether just starting, in the middle of, or just after their field research. Students should have already taken at least one course that introduced them to the methodological underpinnings of interpretive-qualitative research, ideally including some readings in the philosophy of social science. Prior experience conducting conversational interviews and with observational research, with whatever degree of participation, along with some readings in that literature, is desirable. Students who wish to brush up on the methodological background will find suggested readings at #10, below.
Short course outline
This course will focus on several of the concepts and issues central to current debates about political, policy, and organizational ethnography, among them the relational turn, reflexivity and positionality, as well as writing and reading as method, looking at one’s knowledge claims from the perspective of a reader. Throughout the course, we will also be engaging questions connected with research ethics, in light of growing formal attention to this topic in the form of institutionalized ethics review committees and ensuing requirements on the part of journal publishers.
Instructor Bio
Dvora Yanow is a political/policy/organisational ethnographer and interpretive methodologist. Her research and teaching are shaped by an overall interest in the generation and communication of knowing and meaning in organisational and policy settings.
Current research engages state-created categories for immigrant groups, citizen-making, and race-ethnic identity; research regulation (ethics board) policies; practice studies; science/technology museums and the idea of science; and built space/place analysis.
Her most recent book, Interpretive Research Design: Concepts and Processes (Routledge 2012), written with Peregrine Schwartz-Shea, is the first volume in their co-edited Routledge Series on Interpretive Methods. A second edition of their co-edited Interpretation and Method was published by ME Sharpe/Routledge in 2014.
As part of a new podcast series,
New Books in Interpretive Social Science, hosted by Nick Cheesman (Australian National University), Dvora and Peri talk about their book and discuss what interpretive methods are and why they matter. Listen to the podcast
here.
