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Ethnography is a core methodology in anthropology and other disciplines. Yet, there is currently no scholarly consensus on how to teach ethnographic methods—or even what methods belong in the ethnographic toolkit. We report on a systematic analysis of syllabi to gauge how ethnographic methods are taught in the United States. We analyze 107 methods syllabi from a nationally elicited sample of university faculty who teach ethnography. Systematic coding shows that ethics, research design, participant observation, interviewing, and analysis are central to ethnographic instruction. But many key components of ethical, quality ethnographic practice (like preparing an IRB application, reflexivity, positionality, taking field notes, accurate transcription, theme identification, and coding) are only taught rarely. We suggest that, without inclusion of such elements in its basic training, the fields that prioritize this methodology are at risk of inadvertently perpetuating uneven, erratic, and extractive fieldwork practices. 

Abstract American anthropology is engaged in significant self‐reckonings that call for big changes to how anthropology is practiced. These include (1) recognizing and taking seriously the demands to decolonize the ways research is done, (2) addressing precarious employment in academic anthropology, and (3) creating a discipline better positioned to respond to urgent societal needs. A central role for ethnographic methods training is a thread that runs through each of these three reckonings. This article, written by a team of cultural, biocultural, and linguistic anthropologists, outlines key connections between ethnographic methods training and the challenges facing anthropology. We draw on insights from a large‐scale survey of American Anthropological Association members to examine current ethnographic methods capabilities and training practices. Study findings are presented and explored to answer three guiding questions: To what extent do our current anthropological practices in ethnographic methods training serve to advance or undermine current calls for disciplinary change? To what extent do instructors themselves identify disconnects between their own practices and the need for innovation? And, finally, what can be done, and at what scale, to leverage ethnographic methods training to meet calls for disciplinary change? 

Abstract We extend the conceptualization of the social and health burdens of household water insecurity on children beyond the traditional narrow lens of microbiological pathogens and diarrhea. The global burden of disease associated with water insecurity has traditionally focused on diarrheal disease as the most significant driver of infant and child mortality. However, there are many other pathways through which children experience adverse health and social consequences from inadequate or unsafe household water. We synthesize evidence of a broad range of health impacts, affecting children from infancy to late adolescence, across four domains: exposure to unsafe water; interruptions to growth and development through poor nutrition and hydration; negative social effects such as school absenteeism and interpersonal violence; and other non‐communicable health issues such as mental health, injuries, and reproductive health. The growing burden and urgency of these issues is implicated by forecasted increases in climate‐ and conflict‐induced water scarcity, human displacement, and environmental contamination in the decades ahead. This article is categorized under:Engineering Water > Water, Health, and SanitationHuman Water > Rights to Water 

The goal of assessing psychosocial stress as a process and outcome in naturalistic (i.e., field) settings is applicable across the social, biological, and health sciences. Meaningful measurement of biology-in-context is, however, far from simple or straightforward. In this brief methods review, we introduce theoretical framings, methodological conventions, and ethical concerns around field-collection of markers of psychosocial stress that have emerged from 50 years of research at the intersection of anthropology and human biology. Highlighting measures of psychosocial stress outcomes most often used in biocultural studies, we identify the circumstances under which varied measures are most appropriately applied and provide examples of the types of cutting-edge research questions these measures can address. We explain that field-based psychosocial stress measures embedded in different body systems are neither equivalent nor interchangeable, but this recognition strengthens the study of stress as always simultaneously cultural and biological, situated in local ecologies, social–political structures, and time.