auto ethnographies

I really enjoyed these articles, and appreciate the analytical approach to validate their findings. I think this kind of work can make reasearch much more accessible to people outside of academia, which I also see as beneficial. I think it will be a long time though, before the empiricists and funders will give credibility to these methods.

A Visual Ethnogrphy Class/Technique Workshop

I must say that I really enjoyed this week’s readings on auto-ethnography and visual ethnography, especially the article by Pink. I can't wait to read the rest of the book. Having another really good reference about the benefits of using multimedia ethnography methods in our research is wonderful. I wish I had read this before I wrote my most recent paper, in which I ended up citing Harper (1998) and Collier and Collier (1986)’ although they are good references, they are also explained in the Pink chapter.

I, too, agree with Eric that we should have a workshop or some day set aside in the college where everyone (regardless of discipline, background, and research interests) can learn about how to use some of the multimedia equipment, editing programs, etc. I am working with the Teacher Education Program (TEP) right now to help better implement the arts into the TEP program. My specific domain is to better teach the teachers some of the fundamentals of visual documentation and technology, and how to teach elements of visual ethnography in their classes.

Perhaps a larger program could and should be designed for everyone in the college to attend. Perhaps faculty and others with backgrounds in these fields or current PhD and master's students who are working and using these methods could share some tips or tricks of the trade. I really feel something like this would be very beneficial to all graduate students because, unless you already have learned it or are learning it through your research position, there seems to be little place where actual techniques are demonstrated, programs explored, and equipment explained to anyone. While courses explain methods and the theory behind this work, such as this ethnography course or even the Qualitative Methods course, no single course explains how to use a video camera, what is the best format to film in, how to use lights, audio, tripods, video editing software such as iMovie, Quick Time, Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, etc.

I believe we all could learn a lot from one another. Is there any way we could try to set something like this up for College of Ed students?

Therese

Visual Analyses/Ethnography Info

Did we ever decide whether our class would have a "how to" day to learn to use audio & video equipment for ethnographic work? I would love to see that happen.

Pink's introduction makes the use of visual media sources for social science research seem so powerful. Pink (2001) points to McQuire's notion that "the ambiguity of the meaning of images not only questions the modern notion of truth, but destabilizes the basic premises of modernity", and McQuire's assersion that there is power in the camera "as an agent of change that overturns the realist paradigm" (p. 13). Whao! I like this argument. I think that I agree with it, because one can write words about any social interaction, and try to be as objective in description as possible, but the words will always be reflections of the information processed through that researchers' subjectivity. A visual representation, whether pictures or video, presents data that are removed, to some degree, from that researcher-originated filtering process, and can therefore be something closer to the subjectivity, or at least the social reality, of the observed participants. Here follow wise warnings to use a disciplined, systematic approach (Becker, in Pink, p. 7) when engaging visual media as ethnographic materials for analysis.

Multi-media seems to be a methodological direction in which much social science research is heading, or that various research methodologies will increasingly adopt. A link to Van Leeuwen's Visual Analysis book. I'd love to see more links to information about the whys and how-tos for involving and adapting multiple media formats for educational research.

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=8Bdb-L3D1I0C&oi=fnd&pg=PP17&dq=video+analysis+education&ots=mhn7LnunOU&sig=vic0SmzkTODrNpCcBk9YHOldxxs#PPT1,M1

Ellis/Bochner Literature Review

Summary of Main Points and Key Concepts:

• We must open our eyes and ears to the necessity of exposing how the complex contingencies of race, class, sexuality, disability, and ethnicity are woven into the fabric of concrete, personal lived experiences, championing the cause of reflexive, experimental, autobiographical, and vulnerable texts.
• One of the goals of autoethnography is to enter and document the moment-to-moment, concrete details of a life, as well as to use that life experience to generalize back to a larger group or culture.
• There are several things that hinder good autoethnographies, especially from social scientists:
• They don’t write well enough to carry it off
• They’re not sufficiently introspective about their feelings or motives
• They don’t understand the contradictions they experience
• They have a difficult time with self-questioning
• They have a difficult time confronting things about themselves that are less than flattering
• They can’t be vulnerable
• The original use of the term autoethnography was limited to referring to cultural-level studies by anthropologists of their “own people,” in which the researcher is a full insider by virtue of being “native,” acquiring an intimate familiarity with the group, or achieving full membership in the group being studied.  The term has now evolved in a manner that makes precise definition and application difficult.
• Autoethnographers vary in their emphasis on the research process (graphy), on culture (ethnos), and on self (auto).  Different exemplars of autoethnography fall at different places along the continuum or each of these three axes.
• Narrative truth seeks to keep the past alive in the present.  Stories show us that the meanings and significance of the past are incomplete, tentative, and revisable according to contingencies of our present life circumstances, the present from which we narrate.
• Stories run the risk of distorting the past.  They rearrange, redescribe, invent, omit, and revise.  But that’s okay because a story is not a neutral attempt to mirror the facts of one’s life; it does not seek to recover already constituted meanings.  We should be more concerned with what consequences the story produces rather than historical accuracy

Ideas and Terminology Used:

• Autoethnography: an autobiographical genre of writing and research that displays multiple layers of consciousness, connecting the personal to the cultural.  Back and forth autoethnographers gaze, first through An ethnographic wide-angle lens, focusing outward on social and cultural aspects of their personal experience; then, they look inward, exposing a vulnerable self that is moved by and may move through, refract, and resist cultural interpretations.

•  “Crisis of Confidence” in Social Science:  work in the 1970’s and 1980’s that changed the modernist conception of “author.”  The interpretive space available to the reader was broadened, encouraging multiple perspectives, unsettled meanings, plural voices, and local and illegitimate knowledges that transgress against the claims of a unitary body of theory.
• Systematic Sociological Introspection:  paying attention to ones personal life, physical feelings, thoughts, and emotions.  Using emotional recall to try to understand an experience.  Exploring a particular life to understand a way of life.
• Reflexive Ethnographies:  the researcher’s personal experience becomes important primarily in how it illuminates the culture under study.  Reflexive ethnographies primarily focus on a culture or subculture, and authors use their own experiences in the culture reflexively to bend back on self and look more deeply at self-other interactions.
• Native Ethnographies:  researchers who are natives of cultures that have been marginalized or exoticized by others write about and interpret their own cultures for others.
• Complete-Member Researchers:  researchers who explore groups of which they already are members or in which, during the research process, became full members with complete identification and acceptance.
• Radical Empiricism:  the process that includes the ethnographer’s experiences and interaction with other participants as vital parts of what is being studied.
• Narrative Truth:  narrative truth seeks to keep the past alive in the present through stories.

 

Linkages to other class readings:

The Vulnerable Observer touches on a lot of the same points that this article does.  The main point, and most poignant in my opinion, is that the intellectual mission of ethnography is deeply paradoxical: get the “native point of view,” without actually “going native.” The term we like to use is “participant observation” which is an oxymoron in itself.

 

The other point that I find especially intriguing is the idea of getting involved in the observation in an emotional and/or physical way.  When the subject of the research is autoethnography the researcher is naturally involved, but must figure out how to limit or increase his or her involvement in the story.  As The Vulnerable Observer points out, even a researcher who is not doing his or her own story still can become emotionally and/or physically involved if the safety or emotional well-being of the subjects comes into question.

 

Possible class discussion questions or topics:

• Do you have a particular experience in your life that you think would lend itself to autoethnography?  What is this experience, and how would you look at it from both a personal view and an ethnographic view?
• How do you protect against your own biases if you are doing an autoethnography?  Or is it even necessary to worry about such biases?

 

Response

I enjoyed reading this article because I felt like it addressed questions that had come up to me throughout this quarter.  One of my major questions all along was whether an ethnographer needs to be somewhat involved in the culture he or she is researching, or if a member of a culture can give a true view of what is being researched.  The answer is yes, and it may in fact be more profound and more useful to the community (not necessarily the academic community, but to the researcher’s cultural community) as a whole.

I am glad there is a branch of ethnography that acknowledges personal experience and personal insights into a culture as a legitimate resource.  This is the direction I want to go for my final paper.

Quotes to Ponder:

• “Well, that’s clever.  Although you started with the ‘I,’ you quickly fell into using the handbook genre to argue against writing in the handbook genre….Reminds me of how so many of our texts argue in postmodern abstract jargon for greater accessibility and experimental forms.”
• “What good would my research be if it doesn’t help others who are going through this experience, especially my subjects?”

disability discussion from 2 weeks ago

Hey, a short discussion we had 2 weeks ago is still churning around in my mind. The chapter in Jessor that used the example of the deaf community to make an argument for demonstrating that disability can be seen as socially defined didn't seem, in my mind, to preclude application to more severe disabilities. The three models summarized to one word are deficit, difference, and culture. It was suggested in class essentially that the culture model would break down in the cases of severe disability. My personal take is that any disability can still be seen as culturally defined. It seems like the culture model must also recognize “difference.” If there is no “difference” then it seems that disability is an illusion.

The value of the cultural model is that differences understood in cultural terms (through ethnographic research, of course) can more clearly define the lived experience of individuals with disabilities.

If I were to make my own models based on some of these ideas, there would be two, not three. The first would be difference as deficit; the second would be difference as defined by culture. It seems to me that difference is a given, otherwise it reminds me of the old “colorblind” push which tried to pretend that race is an illusion.

I’d love comments on this, but I know the end of the quarter is on us!!!

Cheers,

-Kyle

Creating Educational Field Stations: A Remedy And A Model For Diversity And Access In Higher Education

Hi everyone: Here's the paper / project I was referring to in class yesterday: Creating Educational Field Stations: A Remedy And A Model For Diversity And Access In Higher Education. It is work that is part of the Center for Research on Educational Equity, Assessment, and Teaching Excellence (CREATE) at UCSD directed by Bud Mehan.

The Wire

Hey everyone... as I was talking in class today about The Wire. I thought I would send a link of an overview about the show. The show is in it's fifth season right now but season four especially examines the life and times of several boys attending an inner city Baltimore middle school.

Its a fascinating and very creative and character driven show... check it out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wire_(TV_series)

According to the The Wire website on HBO:
"The first season of 'The Wire' (2002) concentrated on the often-futile efforts of police to infiltrate a West Baltimore drug ring headed by Avon Barksdale and his lieutenant, Stringer Bell. In Seasons Two and Three, as the Barksdale investigation escalated, new storylines involving pressures on the working class and the city's political leadership were introduced. Season Four focused on the stories of several young boys in the public school system, struggling with problems at home and the lure of the corner - set against the rise of a new drug empire in West Baltimore and a new Mayor in City Hall...the fifth and final season of 'The Wire' centers on the media's role in addressing - or failing to address - the fundamental political, economic and social realities depicted over the course of the series, while also resolving storylines of the numerous characters woven throughout the narrative arc of the show."

http://www.hbo.com/thewire/

Seasons 1-4 are available on DVD at most any video store!

What the F**%

Got your attention!

As I read the Katz article I am struck by the stresses he puts on Warranting what we do as ethnographers. I wonder if it is sometimes that our view that something is warranted may not be that way by others or even more telling by the group? Who would you use to guide your warrants to research something? 

John

Burton Reading Question

- How would you develop a research model that would adress some of the issues that this chapter raises

- Given what we know and how long we have know it why does the problem persist?

- Does this and other ethnographies (Macleod, Sullivan) work give us a problem but leaves the social change to the "system" that perpetuates the problem?

- How do we use Ethnographic research to force change? 

Thoughts on Reading for Week 8

I realized I never finished my thoughts/posting from last week's readings, so here are some of my ideas about the articles "Ethnographic Insights on Social Contect and Adolescent Development among Inner-City African-American Teens" (Linda Burton et al) and "For Whom? Qualitative Reserach, Representations, and Social Responsibilities" (Michelle Fine et al):

1. I really appreciated Burton's discussion of the inadequacies of a "normative development" framework ... in much of the social science research I've come across, there does seem to be a "right" way and a "wrong" way to develop as human beings; this article has helped me clarify (and give vioce to) some of the discomfort I've had in the past with analyzing individuals within a "normative framework" -

2. I also thought it interesting, however, that Burton et al seemed to define inner city African American development in relation to "normative development - for example, suggesting that because many inner city teens seem to have "adult" experiences early (ie: pregnancy and parenting), they may be skipping adolescence and moving right into adulthood... however, I'm wondering if, eventhough thay are not having a "normative" adolescence, they are still going through some undefined stages of development that preface full-fledged adulthood (I'm thinking in particular of a group of teenage African American inner city teens with whom I worked - I was often struck by the juxtaposition of their ability to responsibly care for their children and their habit of sucking their own thumbs when they got stuck on a math problem....)


3. Lastly, I thought reading Burton et al's article with Fine at al's article was very powerful - although I realize that the authors of "Development among Inner-City Teens..." were trying to make particular points with their descriptions of individuals and choices of interviews to include, I thought these often sounded like 'sound-bites" from a news report...(ie: "....teens who are struggling to survive in challenging environments” (Buton et al, p.405)...in just discussing the extremes in teens' lives, are the authors recognizing all the parts that - according to Fine at al - "constitute much of life in poverty" ?

“…these mundane rituals of daily living – obviously made much more difficult in the presence of poverty and discrimintion, but mundane nonetheless – are typically left out of ethnographic descriptions of life in poverty. They don't make very good reading, and yet they are the stuff of daily life. We recognize how careful we need to be so that we do not construct life narratives spiked only with hot spots" (Fine et al, p.118)." (Fine at al, p.118)

Looking forward to our discussion of these pieces this afternoon.

-Sasha

What is the purpose of ethnography – Are we guessing what people do?

I think I’ve mentioned this a few times in the class, but I’m often afraid that my understanding of American culture (including race, ethnicity, gender, class, etc., since those are very different from Japanese ones). After I read Becker’s article, I started thinking, “what if I’m merely guessing what American culture is, and what if I’m guessing wrong?”

As Becker says, some “descriptions of drug use are pure fantasy on the part of the researchers who publish them” (p. 59). Another example he mentions in his article was that college students looked at letter carriers from a “stratification point of view” (p.63) which is far from what the letter carriers opinion about their preference for towns they work. Considering these two examples, do you think we tend to fantasize what we want to see as researchers?

I have been reading about the Naturalistic Inquiry, which I already mentioned it in the previous blog post. I had a chance to read more about it last week and I would like to share how the Naturalistic inquirers see qualitative research methodology and how they ensure the credibility of such research outcomes. Researchers, Lincoln & Guba (1985) and Wolf & Tymitz (1979) talk about the trustworthiness/dependability of qualitative methods in their articles. Especially, Lincoln and Guba (1985) use four categories: credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability.

Here are the descriptions of the categories:

• Credibility: The credibility standard requires a naturalistic study to be believable to critical and to be approved by the persons who provided the information gathered during the study. The credibility of the NI can be tested by prolonged engagement, persistent observation, triangulation, peer debriefing, negative case analysis, progressive subjectivity checks, and member checking (Lincoln & Guba, 1985).

• Transferability: This criterion refers to the applicability of findings in one context to other contexts or settings. The target context must be compared to the research context to identify similarities. The transferability analysis is facilitated by clear descriptions of the time and context in which working hypotheses are developed by the naturalistic inquirer (e.g. Thick description by C. Geertz).

• Dependability: A researcher looks to see if the researcher has been careless or made mistakes in conceptualizations the study, collecting the data, interpreting the finding and reporting results. A major technique for assessing dependability is the dependability audit in which an independent auditor reviews the activities of the researcher (as recorded in an audit trail in fieldnotes, archives, and reports) to see how well the techniques for meeting the credibility and transferability standards have been followed.

• Confirmability: It refers to the quality of the results produced by an inquiry in terms of how well they are supported by informants who are involved in the study and by events that are independent of the inquirer. Reference to literature and findings by other authors can strengthen confirmability of the study as well as information and interpretation by people other than inquirer from the research site itself. The comfirmability audit is a way to as if the data and interpretations made by the inquirer are supported by material in the audit trail, are internally coherent, and represent more than “figments of the inquirer’s imagination” (Lincoln & Guba, 1989).

In the Credibility part, Lincoln & Guba mentioned the importance of member checking: data collected during the research are reviewed by the participants and members who provided the data. I’m sure some people do not like to share the data with the participants, but I think this is better than guessing without confidence or guessing wrong. Becker touched on this issued at the end of his article and this is something that we, researchers, need to think about. I think that we should not interpret or infer what we research. Rather, I think that we need to leave our data open-ended and let the readers interpret in their ways.

http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/katz/

I checked out Jack Katz's webpage, and found he has drafts of some of his work-in-progress posted under journal articles. While I found this intriguing on its own, I found the "Underground Ethnographers" article of potential practical use.

Becker's points about distinguishing between quantitative and qualitative practies seem straightforward, the 2nd being about the quantity of data collected, and the first, and one I think would be useful for us to discuss in more depth in class, the notion of unit of analysis at which research is describing social characteristics and practices. While Becker suggests we shouldn't give up talking about "variables", abstract and discreet characterizations of people and practices, altogether, his desciption of the distinct practice of qualitative work is strong, "fieldwork makes you aware of the constructed character of "variables"" (p. 56).

I helped with the Brain Awareness Week event yesterday, for which a number of hundreds of kids from area schools came to the HUB to learn about the brain and learning. It was so fun to talk with kids, and teachers and parents, about learning and research on learning. Afterward,
one of the neuroscience grad students I was chatting with talked about a learning sciences in education conference where the motto was "Learning Sciences: Keeping Learning Complex". The group, quanitative experimentalists to the core, thought that sounded ridiculous. "Like, confuse kids more than they already are?" Then we talked about the "construction" of learning in schools, in terms of over-simplifying curricula, born largely out of over-simplified assessment mandates, and their notions of making thinking and learning complex seemed better situated in the realities of young learners. They seemed to like the idea of getting, specifically, very strategic about how to make kids' learning more complex, pretty much in the same sorts of "long, wide, and deep" sorts of learning principles that Phil suggested the LIFE Center is working toward. The point, I think, is that these grad students' perspective on learning was pretty narrowly focused in one sort of learning orientation, until they engaged in a discourse about alternative, or ground-level in a sense, epistemologies of research on learning.

Fine, Weis, Weseen, & Wong

Holly Kenan
Feb. 26, 2008
EDPSY582
Fine, Weis, Weseen, & Wong
Response
In general I agree with these authors, but was a little uncomfortable with the strong language about Right Wing white men, and the strong emphasis on conservative politics using research data against the people it was meant to help. Though I personally tend to be fairly liberal, the sweeping generalizations that cause problems for the very people they are researching are being utilized. This feels like a double standard to me, though I’m sure their experience has justified their fears on this topic.
I am also very excited about the use of social construction as a model to look at oppression. I find it a useful way to frame social injustice, as it allows for problems to be identified outside of the oppressed, and then leaves them available for improvement.
Main Points
Summarizes the book “The Unknown City”, which is an ethnography of urban poor and working class people, who make up a group of people who are unknown, unheard, and blamed for the ills of society.
Purpose of research was to examine commonalities among Americans and the fractured nature of US society, focusing on low-income people, and placing their voices at the center of national debates about social policy rather than at the margin.
Class-based story is still delineated through lines of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Very different stories coming from people in the same working class but different race, ethnicity, and gender. This complicates defining a specific community.
Trying to define someone to fit into a certain category is very complex, and the lines move. The roots of the idea of race are inherently racist. Though race is a social construction, it is so deeply confounded with racism that it bears enormous power in people’s lives and communities.
Though many argued that race shouldn’t make a difference, the narratives of the people in the study were given in such a way that it would be obvious to the reader, which racial group the informant identified with. In addition, in looking for a sample of “equally poor” or “equally working class” people among different racial groups the spread and depth of poverty among white people was nowhere near as severe in as the African American sample.
Informed consent form, though a procedural requirement, was just a form the respondents would sign without reading in order to move on with the interview. It also highlighted the differences between the researchers and the respondents. Everything that comprises the live of an individual represents just another data set to the researcher. However, informants also took advantage of the situation, knowing the researchers had access to policy makers and the public in ways they did not. “We traded on class and race privilege to get a couternarrative out.”
Ethical considerations: To ignore information about drug use and other illegal activities is to den the effects of poverty, racism, and abuse. But to report these stories is to risk their more likely misuse, all the while not studying the tax evasion, drug use, and neglect of children perpetrated by elites. Researchers are compared to voyeurs.
There are many challenges associated with presenting data in a way that is not taken for granted, that doesn’t romanticize the situation of the respondents, and is not taken advantage of in a way that further compromises the quality of the lives of the people involved in the study. This research left out some data on the premise that it would reinforce oppressive beliefs and attitudes that are already so strongly entrenched in our society.
Researchers also need to make sure not to just highlight that which is dramatic. Even though day to day getting by does not necessarily make for exciting reading, it is still an important component of life that should be included in a representation of someone’s life.
Different methodologies are likely to illuminate different versions of people’s understanding of various aspects of their lives. Using multiple methods for “triangulation” in qualitative data analysis serves the function of seeing the same scenario from different angles and increasing the depth of understanding. In quantitative research, the purpose is to ensure validity.
There was a trend in the research to contextualize voices differently, based on who was talking. For example, working class white women were presented on their own terms, while traditional (probably middle to upper middle class) white men were framed very negatively. Is this a double standard that should be remedied or is it just a way to create space to hear from those who have had very little voice?
The role of critical ethnographers is important in identifying who they are and what biases they may bring to their research. This blends into a sense of responsibility in improving the situation for the populations represented in their research through involvement in policy reform and work in the local communities. A distinct movement from science to advocacy.
There is debate on characterizing oppressed people as victimized and damaged, compared to resilient and strong. Must it be one or the other?

Questions to ask yourself as a researcher:
· Have I connected the voices and stories of individuals back to the setting in which they are situated?
· Have I developed multiple methods?
· Have I described the mundane?
· Have some of the informants reviewed my materials and been given a chance to dissent or challenge it?
· How far do I want to go on theorizing the words of informants?
· Have I considered how my data may be used to benefit repressive policies?
· Where is my authority behind narrations of the informants?
· Am I afraid of anyone seeing these analyses?
· Am I over or underplaying any important factors?
· To what degree has my analyses offered an alternative to the dominant discourse, and what challenges might be presented?
Final words recommending writing across genres when possible, even though this may be challenging in light of requirements by research institutions.
Key Concepts & Terminology
Reflexivity: “. . . the tendency for the self-absorbed Self to lose sight altogether of the culturally different Other.”

Race: “. . . both a floating unstable fiction and a fundamental unerasable aspect of biography and social experience.”

“Great Stories”: Allegories that shed light on both the level and content and the implications of that content.
Linkages to Other Readings
With the multiple references to policy and use of data for various agendas, this article reminds me most of another article for this week from McDermott. It’s the parallel with the social construction model that I see so strongly, both having such a huge influence on maintaining oppressive circumstances for people who are devalued in our society.
Discussion Questions
How do we address issues with race in the context of a race-bound audience?
How do we use a category in a generalized manner, and also address the complexities involved?
Can we use a generalized category like race, without (re)inscribing its fixed, essentialist positionality?
How do you ethically deal with information about “bad stories” (i.e. mothers willing to get beaten by the fathers of their children if it means they can get some money for child support)?
What are the best ways to present data so that it is not misused in ways to create more problems?
What are the specific experiences of people that keep them from being able to break out of cycles of generational poverty?
Is it ethical to intentionally leave out important parts of the data based on the researcher’s opinions about links with oppression? Is it possible to do a thorough analysis if all of the information is not presented?
Additional Readings
Constructions of Disabilit,y by Claire Tregaskis. This is the book I’m reviewing next week, and is an ethnography that goes into great detail about the social construction model, though it is focused on disabilities rather than racism. The same theories apply, and there is also a parallel concern by the researcher of research data being used for someone else’s purposes

Definitions?

Reading Response – Blog Post Week 9

As I was about to write up my reading response for this week’s readings, I read Melissa's post and realized I was about to write the very same thing.

So, I decided to do something a bit different. I tried a small, very unscientific experiment with Google to see what comes up first when you look up ethnography, visual ethnography, and critical ethnography. I am interested because there is so much information and interpretation out there, I am curious what are the top sites people are visiting to learn about these ideas and definitions, and how the content of those sites might relate or not relate to what we've been reading in class thus far.

Ethnography - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnography
The first link here leads us to the wikipedia entry. "Ethnography (ἔθνος ethnos = people and γράφειν graphein = writing) is the genre of writing that presents varying degrees of qualitative and quantitative descriptions of human social phenomena, based on fieldwork. Ethnography presents the results of a holistic research method founded on the idea that a system's properties cannot necessarily be accurately understood independently of each other. The genre has both formal and historical connections to travel writing and colonial office reports. Several academic traditions, in particular the constructivist and relativist paradigms, employ ethnographic research as a crucial research method. Many cultural anthropologists consider ethnography the essence of the discipline."

Needless to say, this would not be my definition, although when I try to come up with a definition I struggle to create one that I like. What are some of your definitions? Is ethnography definable or is its constantly changing and evolving due to its use in contexts that make it too hard to define?

Visual Ethnography - http://www.amazon.com/Doing-Visual-Ethnography-Representation-Research/dp/0761960546
The first link leads us to a book available on Amazon.com about how to do visual ethnography. The editorial review states, "Doing Visual Ethnography explores the use and potential of photography, video, and hypermedia in ethnographic and social research. It offers a reflexive approach to theoretical, methodological, practical and ethical issues of using these media `in the field' and `in the academy'. The book follows the research process from project design planning and implementing and practicing fieldwork to analysis and representation suggesting how visual images and technologies can be combined to form an integrated process throughout the different stages of research."

Interesting, but there was hardly a definition to be found unless you search a bit. But this book seems like something we might want to check out.

Critical Ethnography -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Ethnography Critical Ethnography: “According to Thomas (2003), critical ethnography is not a theory but a perspective through which a qualitative researcher can frame questions and promote action. Its purpose is emancipation of cultural members from ideologies that are not to their benefit and not of their creation--an important concept in critical theory. Because critical ethnography is borne out of the theoretical underpinnings of critical theory, it is premised upon the assumption that cultural institutions can produce a false consciousness in which power and oppression become taken-for-granted ‘realities’ or ideologies. In this way, critical ethnography goes beyond a description of the culture to action for change, by challenging the false consciousness and ideologies exposed through the research.”

What does everyone think about this definition? I think this fits more closely with what I think than the ethnography definition above, but again this definition still seems limiting. How would you define critical ethnography? How does the ability for anyone to define something on sites like Wikipedia make you feel, given what we have read and given than a lot of the definitions we have found do not seem to fit?

Therese

Balancing researcher's inference and member's meanings

Earlier in the quarter we spent a week or two on the idea of pursuing member's meanings and recently we've read a bit about the idea of using ethnographic writing as a way of expressing ideas in participant's own voices. This week our readings addressed an issue that I'm dealing with in my own research -- how much (or little) can a researcher infer about member's meanings?

In particular, Katz's article "From how to why ..." struck a chord with me because it made explicit a feature of ethnographic writing that has been puzzling me for years. Generally we hear about ethnography as being descriptive -- telling us what people are doing and saying and maybe telling us how some aspect of social activity progresses. Rarely do ethnography methods texts delve into the idea of ethnographic research offering explanations -- telling why people are doing/saying whatever it is that they are doing/saying. However, when I read book-length ethnographies I see numerous ways in which the author is making the transition from description to explanation.

This week Becker warns us not to do too much inferring and challenges us to try to stick with what participants are really saying and doing, but at the same time Katz tells us that ethnographers do, in fact, make inferences from their data and those inferences are often attempts to craft explanations. My puzzle at this point is how to find a balance between two things that seem paradoxical to me. How do I craft explanations based on inferences without overstepping myself, and how do I make sure that I am representing member's meanings when, as Katz points out, the members themselves may not be able to fully explain their own words or actions?

~~Melissa

An interesting book review

An interesting review of an interesting new book [Gang Leader for Day] by a sociologist who spent 7 years studying a gang running drugs [and also oddly organizing] out of a Chicago housing project. Touches on some of the issues we're grappling with in class: informants, getting in and getting out, balancing your research agenda with informants' agendas, colleagues' agendas, and larger, political agendas, and the possibility of disillusionment with people, groups, and institutions as a result of what you've learned during your time in the field. If this link won't take you there, the Salon article is called "the unlikeliest gangbanger".

sarah 

Rabbit Proof Fence

Hi,

I saw a film a few months ago that links into some of the concepts in Colonizing Knowledges. I would recommend.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0252444/


-Kyle

Looking at looking at people, through a more critical lens

I found the readings this week, while not necessarily more technically demanding, certainly more emotionally draining to consider. Although I’ve had some reservations building about the classification and categorization of peoples through quantitative research methods, Linda Smith’s portrayal of Western societies’ colonization and “collecting” of knowledges left me with a bad feeling about the historical development of ethnographic research.
That said, I liked how Smith situated her critical analysis of the development of Western research methods, or knowledge-acquisition, within the concepts of, and the power negotiations involved with, modernity and liberalism. It seems like a horrible twist of fate for a set of ideals, the Enlightenment, that aimed to liberate people from the clutches of powerful monarchs, to develop into the culture-claiming and annihilating force of colonization. As Smith writes, the knowledge-developing prospects started out quite innocently:
Once it was accepted that humans had the capacity to reason and to attain this potential through education, through a systematic form of organizing knowledge, then it became possible to debate these ideas in rational and “scientific’ ways” (p. 59).
But this intellectual freedom took place in “The nexus between cultural ways of knowing, scientific discoveries, economic impulses and imperial power [enabling] the west to make ideological claims to having a superior civilization” (p. 64), and the combining of these dynamics making new colonies the “laboratories of Western science” (p. 65). It was amidst these colonial cultural laboratories that research methods, including ethnographic methods, were developed.
I wonder to what extent, and in what ways, ethnographic research, as it is currently practiced by education researchers, is continuing the “culture-collecting” agenda of the long-standing ethnographic practices. Does this differ by areas of the U.S., as well as by country, in which ethnographers are learning and practicing their methods? How might our research approaches maintain and institute this critical perspective toward the historical development of methods?
EH

What is “reliability” in ethnographic research?

In research which does not use qualitative instruments, how do you know that your research is reliable? Generally speaking, research is reliable if the instrument yields the same results on repeated trials. The National Research Council report also argues that educational research must be scientific and can “yield findings that replicate and generalize across the studies” (Feuer, Towne, Shavelson, 2002, p. 5), but how can we replicate the findings of ethnography which mainly looks at human behavior?

I had a chance to talk to a museum program evaluator who has Ph.D in Education. Dr. Deborah Perry uses a methodology called “naturalistic inquiry” which studies a group of people in natural settings. She recommended me to read a book by Dr. David Williams, which is available online (http://education.byu.edu/ipt/williams/index.html). In Chapter 5, he talks about standards for judging natural inquiry and touches on the issue of reliability.

First, he defines naturalistic inquiry

• focuses on discovery and participants interactions
• claims that realities are multiple, constructed, and holistic
• holds that only-time and context-bound working hypothesis
• claims that the knower and the known are interactive and inseparable

In addition, he says that each of us constructs a view of reality different ways. Thus, it is essential to seek for each person’s interpretation/construction of reality, instead of finding out a “true” definition of everyone’s experience. In other words, we cannot generalize human behavior. Therefore, I think that reliability of naturalistic inquiry and qualitative research depends on how researchers accept their own and others’ subjectivity and project it onto the interpretation of constructed reality. I think it is fun to think about how ethnographers think about the reliability of their research projects.

Colonizing Knowledges

Colonizing Knowledges

Week 7

Therese Dugan

Citation:

Smith, L. T. (1999). Colonizing Knowledges (Chapter 3). In Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples (pp. 58-77). London & New York: Zed Books.

Reading Response/Main Points:

Smith’s article, “Colonizing Knowledge,” is quite a lot to absorb all at once. The article is an overview of some of the main points of Western Civilization. It begins with historical context about philosophies of the Enlightenment, Colonialism, Manifest Destiny, Imperialism, the Industrial Revolution, and the present day; Smith describes how these philosophies have impacted indigenous populations around the world. This chapter explores how the Western search for truth did not include indigenous people as equals, but as noble savages or something not quite human because they lacked souls.

Many historic philosophies, such as Social Darwinism and religious missionary work, supported the idea that the Westerners were “right” and the indigenous were either not strong, knowledgeable, or of the right character to exist on their own without the need for external “saving” and “help.” However, by eventually colonizing the indigenous people’s lands and driving out the original settlers, much of the original culture and society was lost. Furthermore, research into indigenous cultures was always compared with the “correct,” Western cultural viewpoint; as a result, indigenous cultures were regarded as inferior, other, and odd.

Sadly, many indigenous populations were forced to obey or risk death, since the colonizing cultures typically possessed greater force and more advanced technology. Ultimately, the original settlers had no rights to their own homelands, as the concept of land ownership was not part of many indigenous cultures. To these people, no single person could “own” part of the land; the Earth gave itself to them. The colonizing forces did not share this perspective, and so the First Nations people suffered, gave in, and began to assimilate.

As this process of assimilation proceeded, some native intellectuals found themselves in a bind. They became trapped between two worlds: unaccepted into the new world because of their heritage, and rejected by the old world because of their attempts at assimilation with an imperialist force. The uneducated native people struggle as well, as they try to save enough money to help their children get educated and integrate into the new society. While they entertain dreams of their children fitting into a capitalist society, they are frustrated that Western education does not always focus on ideologies important to indigenous cultures.

As a descendant of European and Native American ancestry, I can relate to this situation, particularly when Smith concludes with sections about what “indigenous” means today. Smith explains that, through all the social and cultural upheavals of the last few centuries, we are not really sure what it means anymore to be a “native.” I really appreciated her description about “Oh, I forgot to come as a native” when she discussed the indigenous intellectual conference in the news. I remember one graduate student adviser in Chicago remarking to me that, because I came from Oklahoma, he expected me to look more Native American. Is there some way for me to be Native American “enough” for this person’s liking?

Similarly, I worked on a documentary about birth defects in Mi'kmaq women, and when my subject died during the film the mother and tribe worried I might not be Mi'kmaq “enough” to share insights into their culture and personal lives. Therefore, I still wonder what is means to be “native enough.” When do we know how authentic we are or where we fit into this world? I think this is the eternal struggle of the native.

Main Points, Key Concepts & Terminology:

1. Enlightenment - a philosophical movement of the eighteenth century that rejected traditional ideas and values, emphasized the notion of human progress, and promoted the use of reason and direct observation in science.

2. Modernity- is a term used to describe the condition of being related to modernism. Since the term "modern" is used to describe a wide range of periods, modernity must be understood in its context, the industrial age of the 19th century, and its role in sociology, which since its beginning in that era examined the leap from pre-industrial to industrial society, sometimes considering events of the 18th century as well. Basically the time period since the Middle Ages (mid 1400s-modern times).

3. Papal Bull/Inter caetera - was a papal bull ( Pope proclaimed proclamation) issued by Pope Alexander VI on May 4, 1493, which granted to Spain (the Crowns of Castile and Aragon) all lands to the "west and south" of a pole-of-pole line 100 leagues west and south of any of the islands of the Azores or the Cape Verde Islands. Thus creating an imaginary line between east and west.

4. Imperialism- the forceful extension of a nation's authority by territorial conquest establishing economic and political domination of other nations. In its second meaning the term describes the imperialistic attitude of superiority, subordination and dominion over foreign peoples.

5. Orientalism- refers to the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists. The term has come to acquire negative connotations in some quarters and is interpreted to refer to the study of the East by Westerners shaped by the attitudes of the era of European imperialism in the 18th and 19th centuries. When used in this sense, it often implies essentializing and prejudiced outsider interpretations of Eastern cultures and peoples.

6. Modernism - The term covers many political, cultural and artistic movements rooted in the changes in Western society at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. It is a trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology and practical experimentation. It also encouraged the re-examination of every aspect of existence, from commerce to philosophy, with the goal of finding that which was 'holding back' progress, and replacing it with new, progressive and therefore better, ways of reaching the same end. In essence, the modernist movement argued that the new realities of the industrial and mechanized age were permanent and imminent, and that people should adapt their world view to accept that the new equaled the good, the true and the beautiful.

7. Colonialism - forced change in which one culture, society, or nation dominates another.

8. Soul – The idea that westerners held that indigenous peoples might not be real humans because they did not have a soul in the sense that Christian doctrine. According to many religious and philosophical traditions, is the self-aware essence unique to a particular living being. In these traditions the soul is thought to incorporate the inner essence of each living being, and to be the true basis for sapience, rather than the brain or any other material or natural part of the biological organism.

9. Indigenous peoples- Aborigines, aboriginal peoples, native peoples, first peoples, first nations and autochthonous (this last term having a derivation from Greek, meaning "sprung from the earth"). Cultural groups and their continuity or association with a given region, or parts of a region, and who formerly or currently inhabit the region either:
1. before its subsequent colonization or annexation; or
2. alongside other cultural groups during the formation of a nation-state;
3. independently or largely isolated from the influence of the claimed governance by a nation-state,
4. linguistic, cultural and social / organizational characteristics, and in doing so remain differentiated in some degree from the surrounding populations and dominant culture of the nation-state.
5. peoples who are self-identified as indigenous, and/or those recognized as such by other groups.

10. Diffusionist Explanation - The term diffusion implies that an innovation from one place or culture spreads to influence other places and cultures. It is an archaeological theory that says attributes of civilization diffused from the Near East to Europe.

11. Ecological Imperialism - is the idea that the European conquest of the New World was more a matter of the introduced plants, animals, and diseases that accompanied the Europeans than their technology or weaponry.

12. Survival of the Fittest- a nineteenth century concept that the strongest survive. Often called Social Darwinism. Survival of the fittest misrepresents the process of natural selection. The mechanism of natural selection is reproductive fitness, those who produce offspring. Social Darwinism refers to being the most powerful, which is not the mechanism for natural selection. Basically the theory states that competition between all individuals, groups, nations or ideas drives social evolution in human societies. The term is an extension of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, where competition between individual organisms drives biological evolutionary change (speciation) through the survival of the fittest.

13. Miscegenation- Sexual intercourse between individuals of differing racial groups. At various times and places (including the American south and South Africa under apartheid) there have been laws prohibiting both sexual intercourse and marriage between racially mixed couples.

14. Cultural Assimilation- is a process of consistent integration whereby members of an ethno-cultural group (such as immigrants, or minority groups) are "absorbed" into an established, generally larger community. This presumes a loss of many characteristics of the absorbed group.

15. Licentiousness - often used interchangeably with lewdness or lasciviousness, which relate to moral impurity in a sexual context.

16. Benign Neglect - Refers to doing nothing about a problem, in the hope that it will not be serious or will be solved by others.

17. Manifest Destiny- A belief found among the early American colonies that held it to be the destiny of the colonies to stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific and as far south as the Rio Grande river. In the early 19th century this belief was behind the decision to reclaim the territories of Texas , Oregon and California. Bring the country into conflict with England and Mexico. Canadian politicians were concerned that this belief also held that the American state should eventually occupy the territories to the north and much Canadian policy can be seen as an attempt to cut off American territorial and market expansion.

18. Universal Knowledge – global knowledge that is available and not owned by anyone that is until the western scholars laid claim to it

19. Colonial Education- The process of colonization involves one nation or territory taking control of another nation or territory either through the use of force or by acquisition. As a by-product of colonization, the colonizing nation implements its own form of schooling within their colonies which must then be adopted by the colonized people.

20. Civilization - is a human society or culture; specifically, a civilization is usually understood to be any type of culture, society, etc., of a specific place, time, or group. Compared with less complex cultures, members of a civilization are organized into a diverse division of labor and an intricate social hierarchy. The term civilization is often used as a synonym for culture in both popular and academic circles. Every human being participates in a culture, defined as the arts, customs, habits... beliefs, values, behavior and material habits that constitute a people's way of life. Civilizations can be distinguished from other cultures by their high level of social complexity and organization, and by their diverse economic and cultural activities. The term civilization has been defined and understood in a number of ways different from the standard definition. Sometimes it is used synonymously with the broader term culture. Civilization can also refer to society as a whole.
21. Civilized - having a high state of culture and development both social and technological

22. Oedipus Complex- in Freudian psychoanalysis refers to a stage of psychosexual development in childhood where children of both sexes regard their father as an adversary and competitor for the exclusive love of their mother. The name derives from the Greek myth of Oedipus, who unknowingly kills his father, Laius, and marries his mother, Jocasta. Further, for girls Freud came to regard the relationship with the mother as of great importance in understanding her psychosexual development, which affects her entry into the Oedipus complex.

23. Intellectual Racialists- some westerns who define in their writings and work certain cultures and classes of people negatively and believe that there are peoples who are intrinsically superior or inferior to members of other races

24. Primitivism – Belief that nature provides truer and more healthful models than does culture. An example is the myth of the noble savage. The noble savage expresses a concept of humanity as unencumbered by civilization; the normal essence of an unfettered human. Since the concept embodies the idea that without the bounds of civilization, humans are essentially good, the basis for the idea of the "noble savage" lies in the doctrine of the goodness of humans.

25. Academic Freedom - the freedom to conduct research, teach, speak and publish, subject to the norms and standards of scholarly inquiry, without interference or penalty, wherever the search for truth and understanding may lead.

26. Formulas of Domination – examples of discipline Foucault explore when discussing how newly assimilated people must act including exclusion, marginalization, and denial from the colonizers.

27. Producers of Culture- artists, writers, poets, teachers

28. Culturally Homogenous – a culture that has become uniform or the same

29. Post-Colonial Intellectual – Persons whose work explores the literary theory (or critical approach) of post colonialism which deals with literature produced in countries that once were colonies of other countries, especially of the European colonial powers Britain, France, and Spain; in some contexts, it includes countries still in colonial arrangements. It also deals with literature written in colonial countries and by their citizens that has colonized people(s) as its subject matter. Colonized people, especially of the British Empire, attended British universities; their access to education, still unavailable in the colonies, created a new criticism - mostly literary, and especially in novels. deals with cultural identity in colonized societies: the dilemmas of developing a national identity after colonial rule; the ways in which writers articulate and celebrate that identity (often reclaiming it from and maintaining strong connections with the colonizer); the ways in which the knowledge of the colonized (subordinated) people has been generated and used to serve the colonizer’s interests; and the ways in which the colonizer’s literature has justified colonialism via images of the colonized as a perpetually inferior people, society and culture.

30. Post Structural - While post-structuralism is difficult to define or summarize, it can be broadly understood as a body of distinct reactions to structuralism. There are two main reasons for this difficulty. First, it rejects definitions that claim to have discovered absolute truths or facts about the world. Second, very few people have willingly accepted the label post-structuralist; rather, they have been labeled as such by others. Therefore no one has felt compelled to construct a 'manifesto' of post-structuralism.

31. Psychoanalytical Feminist Theory - based on Freud and his psychoanalytic theories. It maintains that gender is not biological but is based on the psycho-sexual development of the individual. Psychoanalytical feminists believe that gender inequality comes from early childhood experiences, which lead men to believe themselves to be masculine, and women to believe themselves feminine. It is further maintained that gender leads to a social system that is dominated by males, which in turn influences the individual psycho-sexual development.

Linkages to other readings:

The section of this article about cultural education and assimilation made me think about the children in the Sarangapani article, and how they were indoctrinated into the educational culture of India. Although many of these students were physically at schools (whereas in the past according to Smith they were not even allowed but considered “ineducatable”), there was still a lot of hostility as a result of the caste system and other cultural influences. These circumstances made it hard for the children to learn, grow, and thrive in a rural school setting because they were forced to accept and regurgitate rhetoric from the textbooks and do things in a preordained way.

Questions for the class:

While Smith explores at length the effect and influence Western thought and the Enlightenment have had on indigenous peoples, how has the East affected or influenced indigenous peoples?

What does this article say about our own cultural history if that history is written from the perspective of Western imperialists? Is the history of the indigenous peoples who were here before the colonization occurred lost forever? What ethical obligation do Western historians have when trying to explain the histories of indigenous, First Nation peoples?

For those in the class who come from multi-ethnic, diverse, minority, and/or first nation backgrounds, what do you think of Smith’s assessment about the “authentic native” in today’s society? For others who are not of multi-ethnic, diverse, minority, and/or first nation backgrounds, what do you think?

As ethnographers, what can we do to explore and define a culture without assimilating it into our own? Is this even possible?

Thoughts on Jessor for Week 8

I found the two Jessor readings particularly compelling this week.  Although I know we’re supposed to be reading with an eye to the methods, etc., I still get swept away in the content.  There were a couple of things that stuck out to me:

Culture, Development, Disability:  I work with developmentally disabled adults on a limited basis and have for two years.  I had never worked in this capacity before that and had often found myself feeling sorry for those with such impairment.  I thought this chapter was really interesting in turning that around on me – is it the way we have arranged our culture that makes these people somehow “less”?  I don’t know.  But I do know after working with them for two years I am amazed at how much they can and do contribute to society.  And how they have their own society (much like Martha’s Vineyard) where abilities, or lack of them, don’t matter.

However, if I were to have my own child, I would still pray for a healthy, fully-abled child.  I do live in this culture, and as much as I love the disabled adults I work with, when it comes to my own family I still hope for what is most “accepted” in our culture.

Development Among Inner City Teens:  A couple thoughts came to me about this one too.  It made sense to me that teens who were living adult lives out of school had a hard time separating their roles and acting like kids at school.  However it seemed to me that the researches should have further explored the idea of escape—I’m surprised more of the kids didn’t comment about using school as an escape from their adult lives.  Adults use vacations to escape from the realities of work and home.  I would think these kids would use school the same way, but perhaps they are not mature enough to even be able to separate that out.

The other interesting point that stood out to me in this chapter was when the young girls were discussing dating the same men their moms were dating.  There are so few eligible men in the population that the women are all competing for the same men and there’s (understandably) a lot of resentment from the older women because of this.  I found that particularly compelling because of my own situation—having married a man several years older I have sometimes felt the resentment of women his age.  We have also gotten disapproving looks and questions about whether he’s my father.  And that’s in a population where there’s not a great shortage of men, but there seems to be enough of a shortage of good men to cause bad feelings.  I can see how this would be magnified in the inner-city situation where middle-age women are competing with teenagers.

That’s it for the moment…I look forward to a good discussion in class on Tuesday.

Advice for a group of novice ethnographers

I am also enrolled this quarter in Reed Steven's Cognition in Context class. Although the class is not explicitly about methodology or methods, issues of method/methodology often emerge as much of the contemporary work we have read employs qualitative / ethnographic techniques to study cognitive processes [e.g. learning, meaning-making, and classification] in real-world contexts [i.e. not in a lab].

Dr. Stevens has suggested that we do a whole-group fieldwork project next week [Thursday]. We've chosen to focus broadly on "The Ave" . Now we're grappling with questions of: what are we looking for? if what we're looking for is a nebulous theme [e.g. affect], how do we operationalize it in terms of visible behaviors or interactions? how could we use our dozen bodies/perspectives/vantage points most productively to collect data? should we observe or be participant observers? if we do only the latter, how do we sift through observations of behavior to get at meaning? is this possible [I'm thinking back to Kitchen Stories]? How should we collect data; the following have been suggested: walk down the street with an audio recorder; spend time in one spot taking notes; interview people and take notes; talk to people without taking notes and then later write up notes; and walk down the street observing only and then write up field notes elsewhere.

We've been immersed in these issues for 7 weeks. What advice do you have for us dozen ethnographers before Thursday?

thanks!
sarah

ps. I'll let you all know how this project turns out...

Hi Everyone,

As I am trying to find out what impact Aint no makin it has had had I have chosen to look at how often it was used. Due to time constraints I am unable to check all of the citings for positive or negative feelings towards the book. It is cited 445 times in topics from early childhood to higher education. It also appears in published articles and books. I was interested in finding that Willis's "learning to labor: how working class kids get working class jobs" (lads and ear'oles st in Britain) was cited significantly more. It was published in '81, when Macleod did his research so perhaps it has been around longer?

I would later on when time and colicy babies permit do a analysis of where and for what it has been used.

John

Emerson & Pollner – Feb 19, 2008, Week 7

(a) a one paragraph response to the piece,
Wow, this can be messy. It was interesting to read about how the fieldworker can change and be so personally impacted by the experience of being in the field. I wasn’t surprised that there are issues of problematic relationships that can develop and that respondents can feel slighted by the lopsided nature of the fieldworker informant relationship. I was surprised, however, by the account of the person studying a religious movement and getting caught up in the movement so much as to come to the “brink” of being swayed by the religion. I love the idea of a “controlled adventure”, but from reading this article, you have to be careful to maintain some degree of “control”.

(b) a summary of main points,
Intro - The focus of this article is on the feature of ethnographic fieldwork that makes it different from other social sciences which is the “embodied presence in the daily lives of those who host the research.”
Inclusive overtures
Boundary work – The major thrust of this article, in contrast with many others is focused on maintaining distance in order, essentially so the fieldworker doesn’t get caught up so much in being a participant that he/she forgets to be an observer. The article describes three ways that fieldworkers can get caught up in the participant role and gives tips on how to manage each of them.
Fieldworker as resource – The fieldworker may be seen as an expert in a given field and so be taken advantage of because of this.
Fieldworker as member – Some fieldworkers may “go native” which can impair the ability to be an objective observer.
Fieldworker as person – Personal relationships can be problematic, both intimate relationships and also personal criticisms can impact the fieldworkers ability to observe.
Managing inclusive overtures
Preempting – some overtures can be managed proactively.
Finessing – It is important to be socially tactful when the fieldworker distances him/herself.
Declining and withdrawing – There is a suggestion to use indigenous reasons to decline and withdraw to maintain rapport.
Subjective anchoring – One idea in this section was to use note writing as a reminder to self and to others of the role of the researcher.
Conclusion – While the major thrust of the article was along the theme of how to maintain necessary distance, the article concluded with observations about how informants play the part of the observed, “how hosts constitute themselves as objects of study.”

(c) key concepts, ideas & terminology used in the piece,
There is a continuum of participant\observer where some researchers are more actively participants and others are more distanced observers
Distance is something that can be “done” (and closeness as well)
The boundary between the fieldworker and field is “collaboratively constituted.”

(d) linkages you see to other class readings,
One linkage that jumped out at me is the idea that “You need to know who you are and what you are doing there.” in Lareau. On one level it seems obvious, but if your thoughts of the purpose of work focus only on research questions and not reflexively on who you are and your position in the field, you will run into the kinds of issues described in both of these articles.

(e) linkages you see to your own research,
I have joined a design team at Berkeley and University of Toronto as a volunteer. The group develops a wide range open source education technology applications for higher ed. The focus of the group is on usability and accessibility which is a perfect match to my own interests. The team meets primarily using Breeze for teleconferences. I’ve recently offered to do “contextual inquiries” for this group here in Seattle. I am hopeful that this may develop into a relationship where I can do research and write a dissertation around.

(f) a possible class discussion question or topic,
I will shameless propose a self-serving discussion topic which was alluded to in last week’s class discussion, but personally important to me.

Can the field consist primarily of my own computer if the group I’m interested in working with primarily meets through internet teleconference? How will this limit what I learn/observe?

(g) additional readings that you want to related to the piece you want to bring to everyone’s attention.

Industrial anthropology:
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/05/anthro.html

Consumer anthropology:
http://www.ethnographicinsight.com/

Gaining Entry and Ethics

Reading Response – Week 7

After reading this week’s readings, I felt quite relieved to finally read more about how researchers are feeling when in the field. While I understand it is very important to know how to do research by the book, so to speak, it is also nice to see that books can’t always tell you what will work in the real world. Jumping from hypothetical to real and trying to explain what is really happening to others is what ethnographic research is all about; therefore, reading about how other researchers have maneuvered these rocky paths is very helpful to a new researcher like myself. It’s nice to know that we are not alone and that others have encountered similar dilemmas as those of us who are new to ethnographic research.

MacLeod’s account of how he gained entry into his research community and his personal struggle to deal with the vast disparity between his own personal values and the values of some of his subjects was compelling. MacLeod gave me a lot to think about when trying to choose subjects for research, and how my relationships with the subjects can and will have an impact on me personally.

Furthermore, Lareau’s personal essay about her entry into the two elementary schools made me think of how, during my first time collecting data in an elementary school, I made similar mistakes. This also made me think back to Nespor: His struggle with his status as researcher, professor, and educator made it hard for him to interact with members of his research community.

I remember going in to observe my first fifth grade class as part of a pilot exercise in which I hoped to interview students about their future career plans and get to know them more. But, being a bit naïve, I didn’t think to introduce myself when meeting the students, so I was introduced as a PhD student researcher from the university who had attended over 20 years of school, who studies children, and who was “really smart.” While this introduction was certainly flattering, I did not want the students to look at me as “really smart” or as a PhD-level student researcher. It was a great learning experience, however, as it took me a long time to gain the students’ trust. Eventually, they decided that I was “cool” to talk to and “not just like a teacher or something,” as two of the girls in the class said to me after we’d talked several times.

Finally, to address Ann’s question “is there not a code of ethics for ethnographers?” As far as I know, there are quite a few codes of ethics for ethnographers. Of course for most anything we do, we have to abide by the IRB from the university. Also, when conducting participant observations, ethics come into play quite a lot. Read this for some more insight into what IRB usually asks you to explain: http://www.research.utoronto.ca/ethics/pdf/human/nonspecific/Participant%20Observation%20Guidelines.pdf

Plus, there are several links and books that talk about ethics in anthropology and ethnography at length. For an overview check out this link: http://www.aaanet.org/committees/ethics/ethcode.htm

That site has some interesting information from the American Anthropological Association.

Thérèse Dugan

Thoughts on Participant/Observer

Greetings from sunny Mexico!

Apparently my addition to the blog last week really should have waited until this week—or perhaps it was a good segue.

In the first section of the Participant/Observer reading by Emerson, the author talks about the ethnographer being a “witness” to the events as opposed to an interviewer or a listener, as has been the tradition in ethnography.  He notes that the idea of staying “sufficiently detached” has received little attention.  This was what I mentioned in the blog last week.  The idea of staying detached instead of being a member (or becoming a member) of the subject group gives a more objective tone to the research.

The chapter also gave a warning about increasing levels of inclusion when in the field.  There is obviously a fine line between finding a place of comfort where subjects are willing to open up to you, and crossing over to an inappropriate level of familiarity.  Personally, I think having sex with the subjects (as mentioned in the reading as almost a common occurrence in the field) definitely crosses that line.  I was surprised by this section of the reading—is there not a code of ethics for ethnographers?  If not, maybe there should be.

Well, I must sign off now get back to the beach.  Enjoy class this week for me and I’ll see you next week.  Anne

More on Field Notes

Sorry I missed you all in class this week.

But I did want to make some comments on field notes. Over the past several years I have read many different approaches to writing ethnographic field notes similar to the ones we read this past week, and I have found that writing field notes seems to be a very personal endeavor. I mean, what works for me might not work for everyone else, but I think discussing this topic will help us all learn more ways to capture the information we need later on for our analysis.

I don’t have to write a lot of notes right away after an interaction because I have a photographic memory. Even so, I still have to write notes. I can’t remember everything, either. I tend to write more notes then I probably need to but I really find having more is better than not having enough when analyzing data. You just need to be practical about it.

In my research position with the UW Teacher Ed program (TEP) and first-year teacher induction program, we take many observational field notes and sometime do not review them again for months or years later. Moreover, while we are collecting data we are also putting on a seminar and trying to interview people, so a lot is going on at the same time. During the day of the event, it is really hard to remember everything, let alone what occurred or who said what, without the aid of a good video document.

But our notes are essential too. I have learned a cool technique for taking field notes from my work associates and I think it may be helpful to others too. I have used this approach in my own personal research projects and R&I work as well and it was great.

I find it quite helpful to separate my notes into sections when I am taking field notes. First, I try to choose some guidelines to follow or look for before going in so I can focus on these but if something entirely different happens I certainly take that into consideration as well and am always up for changes. But I try to separate my notes in two or three parts the first part focusing on just what I see and hear going on, the second part on how it made me feel or thoughts I had about it, and the third part is for later if something else comes to mind about the situation or a theme relates to something on another day.

It may not be the best way to take notes but I find it really works well if I am very descriptive (as Melissa points out), so when I return to the notes later I am transported back to that experience. If I don't take very good notes things seem to be a bit vague and some valuable data get lost in the shuffle.

How does everyone else take field notes? Do most of you have a chosen technique or do you just write about it after its over, going on, etc? I would be interested how other people are approaching this topic.

Therese Dugan

pushes toward and against note taking

I liked the quick comment that Goffman made about not taking too many notes. I have had the personal experience of being buried in copious notes that really weren't that useful. Since the work I do is generally recorded I've found that it is better to take very few notes and only note key ideas and link them to the time so I can go back and capture a video clip of the finding. . . and then when I read a bit about being pressured *to* take notes I felt a connection with my own work. I'm often in a position where when a respondent sees that I'm taking notes and they say something that is completely useless to my objectives, there are times that I have to clutter up my notes with their comments so I don't offend them. :-)

-Kyle

week 6

Marcia, I wanted to say thanks for sharing that article. Also, I have the same question as Anne about whether it's best to do work in your own culture or a different one. Is it just a list of pros and cons, or is there a direction experienced ethnographers tend to lean on this?

I'm doing some fieldwork preliminary to dissertation, and found the chapters in Fretz & Shaw to be very helpful, as I've struggled some with how to get notes down in the best way possible without the process of note-taking actually detracting from the experience.

Holly