Details

Advisor(s)

Ralph, Laurence [Browse]

Department

Princeton University. Department of Anthropology [Browse]

Class year

2024

Summary note

This thesis presents a narrative ethnography that details the service landscape at Princeton. It accomplishes this by placing ethnographically detailed lived experiences, in conversation with scholarly contributions, to analyze opportunities to serve others at Princeton. This thesis works to address systemic deficiencies within the service learning and civic engagement landscapes at Princeton, by offering a set of anthropological tools to help practitioners imagine a way forward. The method of this thesis relies on the anthropological method of research, ethnography—which centers subjective human experiences in conversations of larger cultural and societal implications. The analysis produced in this thesis identifies several areas where opportunities to serve others can be made more consistent and impactful. Upon these results, this thesis identifies the “key players” of service at the university, and recommends a series of contemporary methods for how practitioners should reflexively consider the positionality of those key players when imagining a way forward. Lastly, this thesis is not designed as a roadmap or a solution to how service at Princeton should be practiced, but rather offers a set of tools and considerations for service practitioners at the university who wish to improve its current landscape.

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