Ethnography in Creative Industries

Northeastern University

Semesters taught: Spring 2019, Spring 2018

Course description

Ethnography is a research methodology that includes participant/observation and other forms of collecting qualitative data. Social scientists (anthropologists, ethnomusicologists, sociologists, and others) use ethnography to learn about a specific social group and its culture; in this way scholars have introduced us to trade among the Trobriand people in New Guinea, children’s songs of the Venda people in South Africa, and the economic lives of gang members in Chicago, among others. But ethnography has broad applicability in our contemporary creative industries as well. Through ethnographic research, we can learn about institutions and organizations within creative industries: their particular corporate cultures, structures, priorities, market emphases, divisions of labor, and so on. Ethnographic data can inform corporate strategy and contribute to marketplace research. For creative producers—architects, choreographers, composers, designers, musicians, painters, performers, photographers, playwrights, poets, sculptors—ethnography can inform creative practice, enriching the artworks that form the core of the creative industries.

In this course, we consider the various roles that ethnography can play in creative industries. What do we learn from ethnography? For what purposes is ethnographic research best suited? How might ethnography contribute to strategic decision-making? What unique methodological issues might ethnographic research in creative industries pose? In what ways could ethnography enrich creative practice and artmaking? How have the social sciences reacted to the ethnography of creative industries? We will read ethnography, yes, but we will also do ethnography: a key component of this course is the experiential practice of ethnographic research in a focused setting. Students will develop and practice their own research skills, conduct individual ethnographic projects in multiple stages, and experiment with different forms of documenting and presenting ethnographic research.