Ethnography and the University: Current Trends and Future Directions

• In Event: 34.040 - Reenvisioning the Potentials of Qualitative Research Approaches

Abstract

This paper examines the current state of ethnographic research in higher education, identifying two dominant trends—micro-level studies of student, staff, and faculty cultures and macro-level studies of political economic transformations. Noting the lack of meso- or institutional-level ethnographies, I argue that such studies could bridge and extend the insights generated by these two approaches. I offer a model for an ethnography of universities, drawing on the traditions of institutional, educational policy, and meeting ethnography. I then describe an ethnography of university diversity work that models this approach. My methodology allowed me to examine how students, staff, faculty, and administrators’ competing attempts at institutional transformation shaped the nature and outcomes of policy and practice at the university.

Author

• Kirk Anderson, Dickinson College