Some Clarity in a murky pool!

Hi Everyone,

As I have been up for long hours and thinking I felt that I was confused about whether "joining" the group was necsesary. As I pondered it I began to think that what, in my mind separates ehtno. form other qual. work is that you try to weave yourself with in the society no matter what your question is. If you are not "invited" or able to get in you do the periphary ethnography. This is what my sleep deprived brain has been pondering. So if I want to understand teacher student interactions around behavior I can just watch but that is a more observational qual. study but to the inner workings with as "thick description" as possible is what makes ehtno. ethno.

Thoughts?

John

research agendas

In thinking of the task of thinking of guidelines for doing ethnographic work, I liked a lot of the ideas that Nespor covered in chapter 7 (the reflexive chapter where he talked about his position as researcher). On page 232 he has a brief discussion of what it was like to interview the kids in groups and how this solves for some issues and creates others. The one issue/benefit that he pointed out was that he came to the project with a specific research agenda, but the kids tended to take control of the conversations. I specifically like his sentence, "I eventually realized I should be taking their agendas seriously." This reminded me of Frake's comments that are quite similar where he suggests that as an alternate to the typical question-answer structure to interviews, ethnographic research should spend effort on listening to naturally occurring dialog. Rather than the researcher coming with a sharp agenda, the agenda should to some degree be to find out what the respondent’s own agenda is. I'd pitch this idea as a guideline derived from our readings, particularly since the idea occurred in at least two of the readings.

re: more thoughts on "Tangled Up in School"

All the different viewpoints on this ethnography (Tangled Up in School) are so interesting - as Anne stated, I, too, am looking forward to our discussion tomorrow.

Although there was so much to pay attention to, I was particularly fascinated by Nespor's accounts of Tota's "administration", Principal Watts' "innovations", and the effects they both had on teachers. I was reminded of an article I had read about a research study on an early childhood prevention program; the researcher of this study concluded that the intervention had been ineffective not due to the specific program intervention, but due to the poor implementation of the program, which could be traced back to tensions between the social service workers (who were serving the families in the study) and the administration of the social service agencies. The researcher used the term "parellel process" to describe the program's difficulty. According to the "parellel process" theory, "a dynamic in one part of the system reinforces similar patterns of interaction in other parts". This made me think of how both Tota's and Watts' relationships (though different) with teachers affected the teachers' relationships with their students...how this affected students' accounts to their parents...and so on. I don't have any conclusions, just a greater appreciation for the vast complexity of systems.

Nespor - Tangled Up In School Chapters 5-6

Thérèse Dugan

Tangled Up in School:
Politics, Space, Bodies, and Signs in the Educational Process
By Jan Nespor
Chapters 5-6

Citation:
Nespor, J. (1999) Tangled Up in School. Politics, Space, Bodies and Signs in the Educational Process. New jersey and London: Lawrence Erlbaum Association.

Response/Main Points:
Chapter 5: Intersections of Kids, Signs, and Popular Culture. This chapter explored how children make meaning out of popular culture and how popular culture intersects with students’ everyday lives in and out of school. Building on the Chapter 4 ideas of how space and body affect children’s lives, Nespor explores how students’ immersion in the controlled spaces of their homes, where kids watch TV and play video games, has “some advantages over school culture” as it is “more widely disseminated and easily transportable… it ties more directly to kid’s core concerns, issues such as gender, sexuality, race, violence, and power” (p. 163), and all in a time and place where they control what is going on.

Furthermore, Nespor explores how pop culture is “open to appropriation and used by kids interacting with peers, while school based representations still often presume international systems containing both kids and adults” (p.164). As Nespor explains, kids spend a considerable amount of time (upwards of 4 hours a night) watching TV and playing video games, and this “culture” is something they can relate to and understand a lot more than the “forced” culture they are required to participate in at school.

Nespor points out several instances in which pop culture benefited students:

• They learn and inquire for themselves (for example: Felix and his video games (p.164));
• They become important members of society in relation to industry, politics, and economy (p.166);
• They become integral members of elite networks that disperse entertaining and valuable information, which in some cases only they can understand (p.169-70) and then teach to adults (p.171).
  

Furthermore, Nespor sheds light on how popular culture:

• Helps young people interact and forge friendships and commonalities with others, both in their immediate space and in the greater world (p. 172);
• Helps young people identify themselves and their interests even if they do not surface in the school culture (p.182);
• Reflects how more research into this subject is needed since the United States spends so much time immersed in pop culture (p. 174).
  

Next, Nespor explores the meaning of pop culture, which can be nearly anything that kids think it is. In one sense, pop culture consists of commodities or artifacts that students can consume, absorb, watch, listen to, buy, possess, or share with others. Nespor states that students do not just collect these commodities to help cement their place in the culture. They use the culture that surrounds the purchasing and owning of these artifacts (such as sports cards) to define their own identity. The extent of this identity is vast, transcending kids’ own schools, neighborhoods, and towns to include kids their age all over the country and the world who enjoy similar things.

Furthermore, kids invoke popular culture “to position themselves in local settings by connecting themselves to distant sites of practice” (p.180). Examples include references from the media (Duane’s imaginative story, which seemed like a plot from the popular movie Toy Soldiers (p.181), or the way in which students talked about Saved by the Bell or X-Men characters to explore their ideas about gender and sexuality (pp.186, 192), or even to tease or ridicule one another (p.188). By using these common images when interacting with one another, everyone seems to be on the same page in the kid culture.

However, as Nespor realized, it is a “kid” culture; when he inquires for more information from some of the students, he receives blank stares and the sarcastic reply, “Don’t you know anything?” Apparently, most kids think it’s unimaginable that not everyone in their lives knows about the things in which they are most interested. Perhaps if teachers and educators were more informed or at least in tune with what interests young people, they could connect with them on more meaningful levels and see that their public selves presented at school are only one small part of their personalities, identities, realities, and cultures.

Response/Main Points:
Chapter 6: Loose Ends. In this chapter Nespor explains his ideas for future research after completing his study. He states that what he has seen is only a sneak peak into the lives of his subjects at a certain time, and that those lives are constantly changing. However, as ethnographers we see tiny parts of subjects’ lives, and those parts are all we can try to interpret and respond to. He also explains that he does not want to bog us down with theory, although there are considerable connections to other sources and academic writing and theory throughout the book.

Below is a list of some of the future research Nespor hopes will come of his work. The questions with asterisks next to them are personal interests to my own work and the work I hope to continue to explore in the future:

• Pedagogy has been decontextualized and treated as a virtual system of classroom practice. Does this occur in other schools in different places?
• What are some connections between inter-and intraschool administrative and political structures?
• What are the chains of interpretation within which terms like whole language acquire meaning?
• How are teachers spatially related to the schools and communities in which they work?
• What might happen if parental involvement meant that teachers gearing their practice to parents space-time orientations?
• Do parents ever organize on a cross school basis?
• How do national, state, and regional political movements affect parental activism?
• What would educational research and theory look like if there were refocused on schooling as a long-term trajectory?
• How do schools get reputations?
• How does student mobility alter uses of media and pop culture, access to neighborhood, status in school?
• How do assessments and grades function as communication between school and community?
• How are kid focused funds of knowledge held together?
• How do kids in certain sociospatial locations gain and lose interest in particular cultural aspects?
• Do kids exchange, invoke, inhabit, or appropriate their school based representations they encounter in their academic work?
• **How do teachers understand students popular cultural uses?
• At what point do students stop using their parents as intermediaries for the acquisition of goods?
• **How do preadolescents use cultural products, and how do these uses fit into their network of friendship association?
• **How does popular culture appear in students interactions?
• **What would studies of students individual popular culture interests look like?
• ** How do the functions of cross-gendered association of desire change as kids more through grades? How are these related to media portrayals, constructions of masculinity and femininity, gender relationships among adult at the school?
• How do meanings of fighting change as students progress through school?
• What does it mean to become embedded in a neighborhood?
• How does a child’s movement through a city and neighborhood change over time?
• What happens in school business partnerships?
• What can be made of long term systemic relations between university programs and school practices?
• Note: I used asterisks (**) to mark my personal interests.
  

Key Concepts/Ideas/Terminology:
Popular Culture: (or pop culture) can be deemed as what is popular within the social context - that of which is most strongly represented by what is perceived to be popularly accepted among society. Otherwise, popular culture is also suggested to be the widespread cultural elements in any given society that are perpetuated through that society's vernacular language or lingua franca. It comprises the daily interactions, needs and desires and cultural 'moments' that make up the everyday lives of the mainstream. It can include any number of practices, including those pertaining to cooking, clothing, consumption, mass media and the many facets of entertainment such as sports and literature. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_culture)

“School occupies about 6 hours a day, 180 days a year for most U.S. kid, but on average they spend 4 hours a day everyday watching television and more hours playing games with, reading, or shopping for artifacts of popular culture” (p.164).

“The intensity of engagements with popular culture were certainly greater than with school based activities” ( p.164).

New World Teen Study: Conducted from January through March 1993 among 6,547 high school students, ages 15 to 18, in 26 countries. "The D.M.B.& B. New World Teen Study" was undertaken by the agency's worldwide research and strategic planning group with a goal of quantifying teen-agers' cultural attitudes -- and, not surprisingly, their consumer behavior as well. (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B01E0D81E38F930A15751C1A962958260)

Pop Culture References Mentioned:
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: is an American live-action television series, created for the American market, based on the sixteenth installment of the Japanese Super Sentai franchise, Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger. The show and its related merchandise both saw unbridled overnight success, catapulting into pop culture in mere months. Under the original name Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, the series ran from 1993 to 1996 and spawned a feature film, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mighty_Morphin_Power_Rangers)

Nintendo: is a Japanese multinational corporation founded on September 23, 1889 in Kyoto, Japan by Fusajiro Yamauchi to produce handmade hanafuda cards. Over the years, it became a video game company, growing into one of the most powerful in the industry and Japan's third most valuable listed company with a market value of more than $85 billion. Nintendo has the distinction of historically being both the oldest intact company in the video game console market and one of the largest and well-known console manufacturers, as well as being the dominant entity in the handheld console market.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo)

Saved by the Bell: is an American sitcom that originally aired between 1989 and 1993. The series is a retooled version of the 1988 series Good Morning, Miss Bliss, which later became into the history of Saved by the Bell. The series follows the exploits of several students at Bayside High School, along with their principal. The show stars Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Dustin Diamond, Lark Voorhies, and Dennis Haskins, who appeared in Good Morning, Miss Bliss, as well as Tiffani-Amber Thiessen, Elizabeth Berkley, and Mario Lopez who joined the cast for Saved by the Bell. The show brought fame to the cast members and launched most of their careers. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saved_by_the_bell)

X-Men: is a fictional Marvel Comics superhero team. Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, they debuted in The X-Men #1, published in September 1963. The X-Men are fictitious mutants who, as a result of a sudden leap in evolution, are born with latent superhuman abilities, which generally manifest themselves at puberty. In the stories, many ordinary humans harbor an intense fear and/or distrust of mutants (often referred to as Homo sapiens superior), who are regarded by a number of scientists as the next step in human evolution and are thus widely viewed as a threat to human civilizations; mutants who use their powers for criminal ends exacerbate the tensions. The X-Men were formed by the benevolent Professor Charles Xavier, (a.k.a. Professor X), a wealthy mutant who founded an academy to train young mutants to protect themselves and the world from Magneto, the Brotherhood of Mutants and other mutant threats. The X-Men comic book series was one of comicom’s earliest and most influential trendsetters in adopting a multicultural central cast; during the 1970s, the roster was diversified, adding characters from Canada, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Kenya, and the Soviet Union. Characters representing many other ethnicities and cultural backgrounds have subsequently been added. The stories themselves have often included themes relating to the status of minorities, including assimilation, tolerance, and beliefs regarding a "superior race". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_men)

Toy Soldiers: is a 1991 film about a group of trouble-making boys who were sent by their high class parents to a boarding school. One day their boarding school is taken over by terrorists and the boys decide to resist them.
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103112/)

Links to other Class Readings:
There is quite a contrast between Nespor’s Chapters 5 and 6 and the Sarangapani reading, which was also a school ethnography. While Sarangapani seemed to leave out some major aspects of students’ popular and political culture, Nespor includes a lot of context about the lives of the students. From their own construction of their social world through pop culture to the politics and culture of the school and related community, Nespor offers a better understanding of where these students are from and how they are making sense and meaning of their world.

I found this extra context essential for my understanding of the content. Perhaps this is why I had trouble relating to or connecting with some of the information given in the Sarangapani article without the added contextual layer provided by Annan in class.

Class Discussion Questions:

1. How do you see popular culture influence your academic life?
2. Do you think academia embraces influences from popular culture?
3. What do you think teachers should know about the elements of popular culture that their students care about?
4. Would students relate more to formal learning environments if it included more popular culture references?
5. How do you think the media and popular culture are affecting how young people’s self identities? Is this process hampering their individuality?
6. How do you think today’s life of a young person is the same or different from your own experience growing up? How do popular culture, space, and time constraints play in?
   

Additional Reading:

Andy Hargreaves (1998). Book Review: Tangled up in School: Politics, Space, Bodies and Signs in the Educational Process by Jan Nespor. American Journal of Education, 107, 1, pp. 50-56.

Nespor and Sarangapani

While I was reading Nespor’s “Tangled Up in School” and the Sarangapani article, I kept thinking about my elementary school in Japan. Especially, the part where Nespor talked about how teachers control students’ body spaces and where Sarangapani talked about how teachers ignored students’ opinions/corrections reminded me how strict teachers in Japan were. These also made me think about pedagogical differences among various cultures. When I was in elementary and middle school, teachers’ authority was absolute and we students could not say anything against such imposed power. I clearly remember that my middle school math teacher hit my head with his fist when I corrected his mistake. It was common to see male teachers carried wooden swords all the time (this type of sword is used to practice Japanese Jujustu…I know it sounds scary…and it looks scary, too!) and were ready to smack students who did something against their rules.

This sounds terrible, but Japanese students and parents at that time understood and accepted the teachers’ absolute authority as part of our education. Then, I started thinking about our subjectivity and objectivity issues as ethnographers. Some behaviors, traditions, or practices may look strange to us, but they are culturally accepted by certain ethnic groups. In other words, we should not judge things by our subjective views. The positionality of ethnographers or researchers in general has been my question and my dilemma at the same time because we cannot get rid of our lenses (identities, cultural affiliations, etc) when we look at phenomena that we are interested in. Or, should we bring Harding’s “strong objectivity” to our research? In my opinion, I really like Harding’s idea, but I do not know how to use the theory in actual data collection and analysis. I guess I need to read more about ethnography…

more on Nespor

This post relates a bit to what Melissa touched on in her last post -- embodiment of knowledge in conventional schools [like Thurber]; controlling student bodies; learning and bodies and privileged embodiment of particular knowledges. On pgs. 162-163 Nespor introduces the chapter on "kids, signs, and popular culture" by speaking about everyday learning/cognition or "learning in the wild" to use the popular phrase. Maybe it's because I am also taking Reed Steven's "everyday cognition" course [as are others in this class] and so I'm thinking about this stuff a lot, but I was struck by Nespor's turn to disembodied learning/knowledge production as something that primarily happens in school as opposed to being the consequence of particular forces or power structures that affect/shape schools among other spaces/institutions. Disembodiment as a function of school alone is hard for me to swallow. 

Drawing on Lefebvre, he argues that at Thurber official learning in school is disembodied; it is unrelated to kids' real lives - where they don't look "from a distance upon a world rendered on in books, paper" etc. In this binary framework, school becomes abstract space, where learning happens in your head and at your desk, history and English are in books [and as Melissa noted, science is in carefully designed and controlled lab "experiments"]. Real space happens elsewhere. 

Nespor goes on to argue that popular culture competes with school knowledge, that kids bring it to school, and that it holds more relevance for kids because they are interested in it, etc. I buy that. But I wonder about the link from embodiment & learning to pop culture & life outside of school. How is pop culture any more embodied or related to kids "real lives" than school? Are they not just different fantasy lands in a way? Or is it only that the second is better marketed? 

Sure, as compared to school kids spend more time thinking about pop culture, talking about it, watching/listening/buying it. I probably do too! But is learning or life in the context of interactions with the forms of pop culture experienced by the Thurber kids [TV shows, music, movies, televised professional sports] any more corporeal or any less comprised of gazing and abstract space than school? For Nespor, it seems to be more about kids' interest and affinity and time than about what is "real" and what is "abstract".  

I understand that Nespor seeks to show kids' facility with pop cultural knowledge [especially when they need to ridicule one another or to impress Nespor himself]. And that seems to be Nespor's point - he quickly transitions from embodiment of knowledge to everyday learning/experiences to pop culture. However, this chapter has got me thinking about what strikes me as a romanticization of bodies outside of school or life outside of school. I do it too. I think that it is vital to explore kids' lives outside of school if we want to understand development, learning, behavior, choices, values, trajectories, talk, students' interpretations of their experiences, etc. However, I reject the simplification that inside of school all learning is disembodied, that kids are always disembodied through through formal education [or that all kids experience this process similarly], and that outside of school life is groovy or more real or that kids learn more [not in different ways but more or better] and that there is freedom for body and mind. I certainly know kids for whom school is where their bodies and minds are most liberated, where they are most free, where learning is most embodied.

On another note, I found the discussions of kids' uses of pop culture fascinating, especially when Nespor brings gender and race analysis to bear on not only what the kids are saying but what they are accomplishing through their words and references. However, I wonder if it is possible to be an academic and not sound so tweedy when analyzing kids' pop culture talk? If not, I'm up a creek!  

What are students learning?

As I read Nespor's Tangled Up in School, I was reminded of emotions and turmoil that I experienced as a teacher in a large urban high school in Texas. I taught high school science classes there for seven years. I intentionally left that job because I refused to engage in the tracking practices and hidden curricular agendas that are so ubiquitous in our schools. Nespor's description of this elementary school mirrors my own experiences teaching high school.

A question that plagued me throughout my first years of teaching, throughout this book, and that continues to plague me when I visit classrooms (including my own!) is, what are the students learning? For example, in Nespor's account of the entrepreneurship activity where students organize small businesses, apply for a start-up loan, and plan to manufacture a product to sell to classmates, I found myself asking my question repeatedly. What do you think they were learning? Were they learning fiscal reasoning? Were they learning mathematical concepts? Or were they learning capitalism and a commodity-based worldview? Sadly, I don't think that very many of the teachers, administrators, parents, and corporate volunteers bothered to ask what the children were learning.

A similar dilemma happened for me during my first years of teaching. As I would walk the hallways of the school where I taught I would see other teachers lecturing while students sat in quiet rows. Or I would see students following precise directions to complete a "lab" in chemistry or physics classes. I frequently saw darkened rooms where students watched National Geographic and Discover channel videos for the full class period. What were the students learning? My science classes included lectures, "labs," and videos too, but my classes also overflowed out of the classroom into the hallway to test car engineering projects and onto the balcony to drop helicopters or gliders. My biology classes argued passionately (and loudly) about evolutionary theory, archeological evidence, stem cell research, and health care in the developing world. What were those students learning?

I made sure to invite my principal to observe on days where I was lecturing, because it was that mode of instruction (and student silence) that best fit the evaluation instrument used to determine teacher quality. And I got reprimanded (every year) for the audible arguments heard from my classroom and the excited cheering heard from the balcony when a helicopter would successfully hover before slowly falling two floors to the lobby floor.

On p. 123 Nespor writes about this strange quality of schools where silence is golden and noise is associated with misbehavior. Thankfully, since 2003 I have worked in alternative schools and non-school programs where silence is looked upon as dictatorial and noise is seen as evidence of engagement and sense-making. The first question I ask teachers when I sit in on their classes is, what do you think the students were learning? The second question is, what did you hear them talking about? How can we get more teachers, administrators, and parents to ask those questions? How do we alter the culture of school so no one else ends up tangled?

Thoughts on Tangled Up in School

I have found Tangled Up in School to be quite interesting.  My focus in my masters program is higher ed, so I can’t really relate too much to the elementary school classroom.  However I do coach a lot of elementary-age kids on my cheer squads.  So I especially related to the chapter about the intersection of bodies and space.  I, like Kyle, want to go a little “off topic” in talking about the subject of the chapter rather than the methods used.

Although she didn’t say it outright, the author gave the impression that requiring children to conform to the rules of the classroom is detrimental to their body space development.  I don’t agree with that at all.  It is necessary that children learn to control their bodies in a classroom setting for two main reasons.  First, there are many “real world” settings both in their current lives and their lives as the age and grow where they will need to control their bodies to maintain an appropriate level of decorum (such as attending church services, concerts, theater, etc.).  It’s good for them to learn this control in the classroom where they can make mistakes, then they will be better prepared for the real life situations.

Second, and this goes along with the first, is that children need to learn control in order to respect the bodily rights of those around them.  In the classroom especially, if children are allowed to run freely, they will likely start infringing on the rights of the other children in the classroom.  I went to a harassment training at work a few weeks ago and one thing the trainer said really stuck with me—“your rights end where the other person’s rights begin.”  This is something that children might as well learn early on.

Sorry to go off topic a little—away from the methodology into the subject.  I look forward to a good discussion on Tuesday.

Thoughts from Class Yesterday

Just wanted to thank Annan for his very informative discussion related to the Sarangapani article in class yesterday. While I very much enjoyed reading the article and the ethnography. It wasn’t until Annan gave us more first-hand context and framing to the situation of the students and student’s agency did I think I better understood the article. Furthermore, his explanation of the political and social culture surrounding the cast system seemed essential in better grasping the full “picture” of what was truly going on in these rural schools. Why the ethnography chose not to explore these issues is unknown but I really appreciated Annan giving us a mini lesson in some major cultural aspects of Indian culture. This discussion also helped me structure the information better and make much more sense of what I has been reading. Since we discussed frame and getting into the heads of our subjects yesterday I thought this discussion and subsequent outcome was worth mentioning. It really makes a difference what an ethnographer chooses and does not choose to disclose in their work. When you finally do get more information or another perspective from someone who has also been there it really makes things get interesting. Who do you believe? Is it wrong not to disclose specifics of politics or culture that influence one’s work? I am sure these are all issues we will touch on in the subsequent weeks of class. I am looking forward to it.

Emerson Review Week 2 - Members' Meanings

Summary of Main Points and Key Concepts:

• Ethnographers May Impose Exogenous Meanings:
• Ethnographers often fail to attend consistently to members’ meanings, instead importing outside or exogenous categories and meanings
• Ethnographers may use a term, category, or evaluation that is recognized, used and honored by one group in a particular social world to describe features or behaviors of another group in that world.
• Field researchers may adopt a dismissive attitude toward members’ meanings, treating such meanings as flawed, hypocritical, contradictory, or fallacious.
• Descriptions and memos may be framed in terms of a standard of what is “supposed to be” that derives from official rules or understandings that are held to govern action in some specific setting.
• The researcher may invoke a priori theoretical categories, often those sacred to the core of a particular discipline, to characterize events and settings
• Describing local settings or actions in terms of dichotomized variables may involve an imposition of exogenous categories
• Ethnographers begin to construct members’ meanings by looking closely at what members say and do during distinct moments in group life:
• Members terms of address and greetings – can point out a familiarity or a formality in a group setting
• Everyday questions and answers – what questions are asked in everyday settings can lead to more important underlying information.  Knowing these questions and when to ask them helps the ethnographer elicit more information
• Naturally occurring members’ descriptions – members frequently provide naturally occurring descriptions of their setting when they introduce or orient outsiders, or during the ongoing talk about significant events in the setting
• Members’ Stories:  People may present extended descriptions of events they witnessed or directly experienced, or of the reported doings of others, organized by means of some narrative strategy into a personal story.  Such members’ stories may provide insight into the people and events they describe.
• Such stories are always partial, being told for many different reasons and adjusted to fit different relationships and situations.
• Ethnographers should also look out for and record different stories told about the same events.  Diverse versions provide insights into the ways different members construct and make meaning of the same event.
• Member’s Terms, Types, and Typologies:  Ethnographers give close attention to the terms or phrases that members regularly use to characterize people and events.  They are drawn to everyday, colloquial, and often evocative terms and terms that may be graphic or earthy.
• Members’ Explanations and Theories:  Ethnographers should look for and seek to convey members’ more complex explanations for when, why, or how particular things happen. 
• The ethnographer puts aside his own inclinations to explain when and why particular events occur in order to highlight members’ accounts of them.
• In this way the ethnographer seeks to elicit or distill members’ theories of the causes of particular happenings.
• Ethnographers must recognize that as social identity, situation, or language shifts, human beings readily adjust their explanations.  Ethnographers should carefully document in field notes when, how, and to whom people explain their crises.
• Members’ Categories in Use:  Processes and Problems
• Members’ descriptions, stories, types, and theories, no matter how rich and evocative, provide only a starting point for the ethnographer.
• “Storytelling” as “Doing”:  What stories are “about” must consider the kind of speech, to whom the teller is speaking, the stated or implicit purposes, as well as other contextual influences.
• Members’ Terms in Everyday Interactions:  Ethnographers must discern local knowledge not simply on the basis of people’s talk but rather through their “talk-in-interaction,” that is, they must notice what people do in relation to others in order to produce specific, situated meanings.
• Race, Gender, Class, and Members’ Meanings
• First step:  pay close attention to any occasion upon which people explicitly talk about and/or act toward each other on the basis of race, gender, and/or class.
• Second step:  push beyond explicit use of relevant terms to make more systematic observations to identify patterns of activities that reflect the relevance of gender, ethnicity, or class.
• Ethnographers must not ignore the importance of observing people and settings as they change over time.

Ideas and Terminology Used:

• Exogenous:  originating from outside; derived externally
• Indigenous Contrasts:  occasions when members themselves use characterizations where they describe events in terms of what the event is NOT rather than what IS.
• Contradictory Explanations:  when people offer more than one explanation for an occurrence, particularly in multicultural and multilingual communities where people frequently shift between languages, cultural expectations, and differing frameworks for perceiving and assessing behavior.
• Local Knowledge:  the intricate underlying behavior and everyday interaction which underlines any competent use of members’ terms in specific situations.
• Experience-Near:  valuing the local and specific—looking in a focused way at daily life rather than in a broad and sweeping manner at general patterns (which is considered “experience-far”).

Linkages to other class readings:

I found it interesting that what I loved about this chapter (its practicality in methodology) was somewhat eschewed by the other readings.

The Jessor chapter started out talking about how methodology in ethnography is not necessarily considered important.  I can only assume that, based on the Emerson reading, this thinking is changing in the industry.  I understand the notion that in ethnography there can’t necessarily be any hard and fast rules due to the nature of the work—namely working with different people in varied situations on a constant basis.  However some general guidelines are appropriate, even if not strictly adhered to.  The Jessor chapter, like the Emerson chapter, outlined some good techniques to try to extract meaning from research.

The Frake article likewise did not seem to initially support methodology, although then the author seemed to slip it in via a non-invasive way during the talk.  I thought the examples he used were relevant and understandable, much like the Emerson chapter.  However the Frake examples seemed to be more relatable to me.

Possible class discussion questions or topics:

• Can you think of a time either in your research, or even in your life, where you imposed your own meanings into a situation where you should have remained objective?  What could you/should you have done differently to remove that bias?
• What are some methods you can use to elicit truthful responses from subjects on a sensitive topic without offending the subjects?  (Sleeping arrangement example)

Response

I enjoyed this chapter because of its practical nature.  I’m a very practical, pragmatic person and I appreciate having this chapter laid out in a way that gives suggestions in a clear, understandable manner.  I know I need to understand the underlying theories to be able to fully participate in the practical application.  But I am usually better able to comprehend the theories when I have a good guide for the practical use to complement the theoretical portion.  I liked the layout of this chapter as well.  It was easy to read and understand.  The sections were divided well—they worked well in sequence.

Having never done ethnographic research, I am glad there is a companion guide available to take a new researcher through the steps.  This chapter gave good suggestions for working to control bias, and thereby learning to recognize what is truly happening in the events being observed.

This chapter made me think about the ethnographic process in general.  The goal, of course, is to submit a completely unbiased presentation of the events.  However this can never be the case because every person who either witnesses or participates in an event will have a different interpretation.  Whether biased or not, however, this is the best way we have to ensure our history and research is recorded.

Emerson Literature Review Week 1

Response to Emerson Reading, Week 1

I am not very familiar with ethnography, so reading this chapter and putting together this summary has been a good introduction for me.  Ethnography is a relatively new field.  I’m amazed at how quickly it has developed into a complex discipline with many branches.  I am also impressed with how carefully analyzed the field and its experts seem to be, despite being new.  There is a healthy respect for what ethnographers do, and how they can either help or hinder their research based on the even seemingly minute choices they make every day.  Ethnographers realize they can have an enormous impact on the world through their research.

There was a minor annoyance I had when reading this chapter—the author’s style of sentence structure.  Most of the time he describes what a term or concept is NOT before he describes what it IS.  Although in many cases this can be a helpful descriptive tactic, it can also be confusing for those who are not as familiar with the topic.

This chapter was replete with important basic concepts.  There is also a full complement of vocabulary words.  Although I could not include every important point and definition, I have highlighted the main ones in my literature summary.  If you would like an electronic copy of that summary, please email me at ataylor@bcc.ctc.edu.  Thanks!

Thoughts on Frake's Push for Frames & Dimensions

When I write, "I spent all day Sunday on the couch dozing and watching tv", it might not seem terribly surprising. Any grad student who has access to a tv on the Sunday of a three-day weekend might be tempted to blow off the whole day sleeping and catching up on crappy broadcasting. But if I add, "when my grandma called to wish me happy birthday at 9am, I couldn't even answer the phone," now you're thinking, sheesh, this grad student is lazy! But when I build another layer to the frame (if I understand Frake's use of the term), and admit that I feared I wouldn't even be able to talk with dear grandma because of my scratchy throat caused by my cold, the extra layer of context should dispell, well perhaps, some of the judgement of laziness. Actually, I was very motivated to anwer the phone and thank my grandmother for sending a card and a little birthday cash, but I wanted my conversation with her, whenever it might take place, to be fairly clear and coherent. She might not care that much whether I sound like a hoarse frog, but because I don't talk to her all that often, not nearly as often as I would like, I want to sound pretty good, strong and confident, for her.
Although Frake's chapter/talk is a bit dated, based on a conference presentation from 1974, I believe the general thrust continues to be echoed in current proposals in the education sciences. Such work addresses how our methods of inquiry might better account for the great variety and depth of contexts within which cultural participants interact, as both interpreting cultural participant-observers, and as those whose cultural interpretations we as researchers interpret and document. For example, in EdInquiry we questioned whether Deering had "gotten in" sufficiently to make claims on the culture of the middle school where his research took place, and part of that questioning focused on whether the researcher was participating authentically enough in the culture to make his claims. Interpretting participants' talk "authentically enough" would involve, as Frake points out, not only addressing how they ask and answer questions, but also how they "propose, defend, and negotiate interpretations of what is happening" (p. 37).
I've been grappling with the relevance and positionality of the survey project I have been working on the last couple of years. I find newly-released peer-reviewed articles all the time that report on research that looks remarkably similar to my project. I feel, however, having constructed the survey, administered it in schools first-hand, entered the complete data set, and analyzed the data by a variety of statistical methods, that there's a lot more that I could have done to more clearly and comprehensivley represent the viewpoints of the students I surveyed, to communicate their interpretations of the school cultures within which they find themselves challenged to learn. I must say, I like the prospects of my being able to do a better job of employing effective methods to represent their interpretations than the sense I got from Shweder's cynicism toward traditional instruction in ethnographic methods (p. 15).
I called my grandmother in the early afternoon. We had a nice chat, and my grandmother, at 73 years, called me, 30, older than dirt.

re: Thoughts on today's readings

The readings for class today made me think about my past reactions to ethnographies about inner city families/school systems - in particular, I was thinking about some of Jonathan Kozol's work (Rachel and her Children, Savage Inequalities)...I remember reading his books in college and while teaching in an inner city neighborhood, and becoming annoyed, even a bit angry at his tone, and not knowing why. Although I need to reread these books (it's been a long time...), I wonder if I was reacting to his moral/righteous positioning of himself and of the people he wrote about...are these true ethnographies? Again, I need to relook at these books - but I'd like to do so now through the lens of our class readings/discussions about ethnography; perhaps I'll better understand my initial reaction or have a different - better informed - reaction. - Sasha

ESSAY: A Theory of Culture for Demography

In the Shweder piece for today's class, he spends some time bringing evaluative discourse and praxis into focus as an object of ethnographic accounting and representation. He is building upon Eugene Hammel's essay (1990) entitled "A Theory of Culture for Demography". In that piece Hammel presents a range of definitions for culture before settling in on how to do ethnography. He makes a nice methodological point about the importance of finely grained case studies for the purposes of understanding the details of human social processes (and hence development and learning, for our purposes):

How information is gathered will depend, as always, on the exigencies of fieldwork. A guiding principle in ethnographic fieldwork is that more information can be gathered by intensive exploration of a few cases than by superficial examination of many. It is important that the few cases be representative.

Shweder uses this platform to bring the evaluative discourse to the fore in terms of developing an ethnographic accounting of specific moral communities:

By means of evaluative discourse members of most moral communities comment on their preferences and constraints, socialize and sanction their members, and seek to maintain their honor, prestige, and well-being.

Sarangapani article - Slightly off topic

I was fascinated by the Sarangapani article. I say this post is off topic because my thoughts are related to the topic of the article as opposed to learning from it's methods. I missed the first week of class because of an 8 week trip I've been on with my family. The bulk of the time was in India. The connection to the reading came from connecting with a family living in a village outside Calcutta. I've know the family for 7 years and we have seen them a hand full of times during this time. I made two observations that are relevant to the topic of Saragapani’s article. First was that my friend Simpson is fairly fluent in spoken English, but struggles a bit with reading and writing. He is somewhere around a 3rd or 4th grade level per a mutual friend who is an elementary teacher. This was not that surprising to me. You meet some guy in a developing country who is an orphanage worker (therapy assistant) in the place where your adopted daughter spent her first 7 months who has trouble reading and writing. There are probably 500 million others just about like him right? It was a second observation that fascinated me. It was his wife’s ability level. She was not able to speak in English as well, but she could pick up just about anything (including physical therapy text books) and read them. She didn’t comprehend what she was reading, but she was able to read fluently. This ability surprised me. How could you read fluently and not comprehend. (Between the two of them, btw, my friend was able to get through the physical therapy texts.)

My question about how this could happen was partly answered when my friend showed me with pride how well his kindergarten-age daughter could read. She read from a “computer” textbook where she read the names of parts of a computer. In observing her read, I could see how her mother could read fluently with so little comprehension. This child was reading and a monotonous tone of voice and clearly was hyper-focused on the mechanics of reading, but not having any comprehension of the meaning of “hard drive” or “CPU”. It was very fascinating for me, but sad at the same time. I felt that this little girl is at risk for growing up like her mother, able to read, but not comprehend. I have seen first hand the importance of text books in village education in India, not in a government school, but in kids attending a school that may be a small step up from the government schools imo. Memorizing the parts of a computer and parroting them out of a text would not be appropriate for a kindergarten age kid imo (in my culture), but this was exactly what was happening in my friend’s home. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that she was not memorizing parts of a computer. There was no computer around. She was just looking at poor quality photos and illustrations of parts of a computer and memorizing words associated with these images. I’m quite sure the images were meaningless to her.

I gave my friend a few of my daughter’s books and told him to have her read them to her younger brother and to look at the pictures while she was reading. I don’t have high hopes for this kid or her little brother. But meeting them certainly primed me for reading the Sarangapani article!

Issues around units of analysis come to mind. (perhaps because I’ve just been reading the Frake article) Sarangapani does a nice job describing what’s happening in the school and what the experience may be like for the students. What I observed last month gave me a very tiny snapshot of what the impact of this kind of an education has on adults. A broader ethnographic study of education in this setting would be fascinating to me. A study covering education, but also focusing on where students end up after school, what the family lives are like, and how this school fit into the larger society would be very interesting. Perhaps I’ll have to read the rest of Sarangapani’s work. J

Introduction to Critical Ethnography: Theory and Methods (Madison)

Literature Presentation (Therese E. Dugan, Winter 2008)

Introduction to Critical Ethnography

Madison. D. (2005). Introduction to Critical Ethnography: Theory and Methods. In Critical ethnography: Method, ethics & performance (pp. 1-16).

Madison’s Introduction to Critical Ethnography: Theory and Methods gives an interesting overview about why it is important to do critical ethnography in today’s world. She beings by telling the story of watching a documentary about female genital mutilation in Ghana, in which the filmmaker tells the harrowing account of a Ghanaian woman whose own father wants her to undergo this treatment. Furthermore, the documentarian infers that Ghanaian women, along with many others worldwide, are without support or help from their country against these physical injustices. But now that the woman is safe in the United States, she is free from her pain.

The audience for this film is mainly Western and probably has little or no knowledge of Ghanaian people, their customs, traditions, or culture; they probably saw this sensational film as a triumph in spreading the word about the horrible problems facing women in Ghana. However, when Madison views the film she sees something completely different. She is enraged that the filmmaker leaves out the numerous people in Ghana working tirelessly to help women’s human rights violations in Ghana whom she has worked with first-hand. She is also upset that the filmmaker does little to position her work, tell about herself and her own experience, or explain how her data were collected. While the author feels the filmmaker did not intentionally leave these details out, she uses this example to point out the main goal of critical ethnography is, at present, the need for researchers to take a position on their ethnography regardless of the presentation medium and support their work through their own critical analyses of themselves and their relationships with their subjects.

I believe this article would be very beneficial to students writing and reading about social injustices and working on qualitative ethnography projects. As a documentary filmmaker myself, I know how powerful this medium can be. While many people go into the field with a worthy cause, researchers can easily lose sight of their subject’s story, or the politics, culture, and context behind the story. Although this filmmaker told a heart-wrenching story, she left out some critical information and made the people of Ghana look uncaring toward women’s biological rights even though many people work tirelessly to try and help these women in their own country. By using her film to glorify the United States as the only safe haven for this woman instead of explaining why women must submit to genital mutilation, the filmmaker sacrificed objectivity and completeness of perspective for a good journalistic story. Therefore, researchers must be extremely careful about exploiting their subjects for the sake of making a certain point.

Furthermore, Madison sees critical ethnographers as producing powerful “knowledge which guides and equips us to identify, name, question, and act against the unjust; consequently we unsettle another layer of complicity” (p. 6). In other words, we as ethnographers have power with our words and/or pictures from our work, and we should use that power in a positive, ethical manner. While I primarily agree with her, I am not sure this can be done in every instance, especially in instances of open inquiry because keeping an open mind is challenging when you are trying to view a situation from a specific perspective.

I) Summary of Main Points:

• Convention ethnography for a political purpose.
• Critical Ethnography is the new ethnography and begins with an ethical responsibility to your subject and viewer to address unfairness or injustice within a “lived domain” (p.5).
• Move from “what is” to “what could be” (p. 5).
• One should take a certain position when doing their work and make sure this position is know to subjects and viewers.
• Think about these questions:
1. How do we reflect upon and evaluate our own purpose, intentions, and frames of analysis as researchers?
2. How do we predict consequences or evaluate our own potential to do harm?
3. How do we create and maintain a dialogue of collaboration in our research projects between ourselves and Others?
4. How is the specificity of the local story relevant to the broader meanings and operations of the human condition?
5. How—in what location or through what intervention—will our work make the greatest contribution to equity, freedom, and justice?
   

• The people you are collecting data from are real people just like you and me and so you can never go into a ethnographic situation with preconceived notions of what you might find there but should only comment on what you see and experience.
• Critical ethnography must begin “to extend its political aims and augment its notion of domestication” and ‘politics. Politics alone are incomplete without self-reflection. Critical ethnography must further its goals from simply politics to the politics of positionality” (p. 6).
• Michelle Fine (1994) outlines three positions in qualitative research (p. 17):
1. The ventriloquist stance that merely “transmits” information in an effort toward neutrality and is absent of a political or rhetorical stance. The position of the ethnographer aims to be invisible, that is, the “self” strives to nonexistent in the text.
2. The positionality of voices is where the subjects themselves are the focus, and their voices carry forward indigenous meanings and experiences that are opposition to dominant discourses and practices. The position of the ethnographer is vaguely present but not addressed.
3. The activism stance in which the ethnographer takes a clear position in intervening on hegemonic practices and serves as an advocate in exposing material effects of marginalized locations while offering alternatives.
   

• You must protect your subjects and not exploit their problems but explain your reasons thoroughly for being interested. “Knowledge is power” and postionality is important because it forces us to acknowledge our power (pp. 6, 7) and if done correctly should eliminate the notion to pass value judgments.
• As we recognize “the vital importance of illuminating the researcher’s positionality, we also understand that critical ethnography requires a deep and abiding dialogue with the Other as never before. This means that our attention to ethnographic positionality still must remain grounded in the empirical world of the Other” (p.8).
• “This book serves as a resource for qualitative researchers who wish to emphasize critical analysis, ethical considerations, and theories and practices of performance. In order to proceed, I must first stress that criticism, ethics, and performance require a level of theoretical understanding. Theory becomes a necessity, because it guides the meanings and the vocabulary for each of these three domains. Theory is embedded in their definitions and functions: Critical analysis is grounded in social theory; ethics is grounded in moral philosophy; and, performance is both a practice and a theory. In accepting the significance of theoretical knowledge, it is equally important for us to comprehend the way in which theory is at times the same as method, and at other times distinct from it” (p.12).
  

II) Key Concepts, Ideas, & Terminology:

• Critical Ethnography - 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. (Thomas, 2003).
• False consciousness - is the Marxist thesis that material and institutional processes in capitalist society are misleading to the proletariat, and to other classes. These processes betray the true relations of forces between those classes, and the real state of affairs regarding the development of pre-socialist society (relative to the secular development of human society in general).
• Ethical responsibility - A compelling sense of duty and commitment based on moral principles of human freedom and well –being, and hence a compassion for the suffering of living beings. (p. 5)
• Resist domestication - she will use the resources, skills, and privileges available to her to make accessible—to penetrate the borders and break through the confines in defense of—the voices and experiences of subjects whose stories are otherwise restrained and out of reach. (p. 5)
• Jurgen Habermas (1971) (p.6)
• natural science model - of empirical analysis, in which the social world can be measured, predicted, and tested as life phenomena in the natural sciences through the invisible reportage of the researcher;
• historical and interpretive model - in which social phenomena is described and its meanings and functions further elaborated through the balanced commentary and philosophical descriptions of the researcher
• critical theory model - in which social life is represented and analyzed for the political purpose of overcoming social oppression, particularly forms that reflect advanced capitalism through the overt polemics of the researcher. (See also Davis, 1999, p. 61.)
  

• Postcritical Ethnography - They not only describe positionality, but also comprehensively critique it relative to traditional notions of critical ethnography. (p.7)
• Mojado Ethnography - (wetback) refers to Mexicans and other Latinos who cross the nation-state territorial border into the United States, and are socially, politically, economically (as well as legally) constructed as “illegal entrants,” and “newcomers.” . . . Mojado symbolizes the distrust and dislike experienced in gringolandia, as la raza odiada, “those damn Mexican,”—extranjeros, which literally means “outsiders.” (p. 7)
• Auto-Ethnography- autobiography, travel writing, or memoir; an exclusive experience. (p.9)
• Structural Functionalism - A. R. Radcliff-Brown’s (1958) development of structural functionalism is concerned with defining and determining social structures and the interconnectedness within their own system of structures. It excludes any consideration of external influences; the focus was on the mechanisms that sustain the structure, thereby deeming human behavior as a function of the structures that guide and determines their culture and conduct. (p.11)
• The Chicago School - The Chicago School of ethnography developed in the 1920s in the Department of Social Science and Anthropology at the University of Chicago. Key contributors to the school were Robert Park (1864–1944), who turned the focus of fieldwork to the urban landscape; G. H. Mead (1865–1931) and John Dewey (1859–1932), who emphasized pragmatism; and Herbert Bloomer (1900–1987), proponent of symbolic interactionism. The Chicago School is credited for laying the foundation for “a vibrant and increasingly methodologically sophisticated program of interpretive ethnography” (Thomas, 1993, p. 11). (p.11)
• Positivism - Positivism is based on the idea that empiricism must reach the goal of positive knowledge—that is, prediction, laws of succession and variability. Positivists believe genuine knowledge is founded by direct experience and that experience is composed of social facts to be determined while reducing any distortion of subjectivity (theology or metaphysics) by the presence of the ethnographer. Therefore, positivism is based on the following assumptions outlined by Norman K. Denzin (2001): (a) There is a reality that can be objectively interpreted; (b) the researcher as a subject must be separate from any representation of the object researched; (c) generalizations about the object of research are “free from situational and temporal constraints: that is, they are universally generalizable” (p. 44) (d) there is a cause and effect for all phenomena— there are “no causes without effects and no effects without causes” (p. 44); and (e) our analyses are objective and “value-free” (p. 44). (pp.11-12)
• Post-Positivism -The post-positive turn—or what is variously referred to as the “performance turn,” the “postmodern turn,” the “new ethnography,” or the “seventh movement” (Denzin, 2001, 2003)—has denounced the tenets of positivism. Positivism’s goal for objectivity, prediction, cause/effect, and generalization has been replaced by the recognition and contemplation of subjective human experience, contingencies of truth claims, value-laden inquiry, and local knowledge and vernacular expressions as substantive analytical frameworks. (p.12)
• Positionality - Positionality is vital because it forces us to acknowledge our own power, privilege, and biases just as we denounce the power structures that surround our subjects. A concern for positionality is a reflexive ethnography; it is a turning back on ourselves. When we turn back on ourselves, we examine our intentions, our methods, and our possible effects. We are accountable for our research paradigms, our authority, and our moral responsibility relative to representation and interpretation. (p.14)
• Dialogue/Otherness - Dialogue emphasizes the living communion of a felt-sensing, embodied interplay and engagement between human beings. Dialogue keeps the meanings between and the conversations with the researcher and the Other open and ongoing. The conversation with the Other that is brought forth through dialogue reveals itself as a lively, changing being through time and no longer an artifact captured in the ethnographer’s monologue or written transcript—fixed in time and forever stagnant. (p.14)
• Theory/Method - Critical ethnography becomes the “doing” or the “performance” of critical theory. It is critical theory in action. Theory, when used as a mode of interpretation, is a method, yet it can be distinguished from method (and indeed take a back seat to method) when a set of concrete actions grounded by a specific scene is required to complete a task. We rely on theory—whether it is Marxist theory, critical race theory, or phenomenology—to interpret or illuminate a social action. However, in composing a lay summary, designing interview questions, or coding data, theory may inspire and guide, but it is a methodological process that directs and completes the task. (p 15).
  

III) Linkages to Other Class Readings:

• All of the readings for this week can relate in someway to the basic ideas of critical ethnography in that they all point out the main points of the “new” or “contemporary” ethnography.

IV) Class Discussion Questions:

• Take an image—it can be from a photograph, a painting, an advertisement—and speak from the points of view of the various objects or characters within the image. How are they each expressing differently what it means to be within the frame or parameters of the image? How are they expressing their relationship to the other figures or images around them? In your various voicings of what is within the image, are you giving more emphasis to one or more images over others? Why or why not? (p.15)

Example(s):

V) Additional Readings:

Carspecken, P. F. (1996) Critical Ethnography in Educational Research; A Theoretical and Practical Guide. New York and London: Routledge.

Stanton, J.M. (2006). Book review Critical Ethnography: Methods, Ethics, and Performance Organizational Research Methods, 9, 3, p. 404.

Thomas, J. (2003). Musings on critical ethnography, meanings, and symbolic violence. In R.P. Clair (Ed.), Expressions of Ethnography. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, pp. 45-54.

Reconstructing an Interview

I've been attempting to reconstruct my interview all morning, and I'm finding it to be very difficult. I started by trying to remember the sequence of questions-responses-follow up questions that created the framework for our conversation. It was easy for me to remember what Fumi said, but it was impossible for me to remember what, exactly, I had asked.

Next I tried to map our conversation more thematically. I remember that our conversation was not linear; we did not go through her life history chronologically. Instead, we followed a web of connections between her life and mine and between different events in her life. Unfortunately, I am unable to recall the structure of the "web." My memory subsequently organized Fumi's life story chronologically, which is great for helping me remember details, but I think the "web" might have also been informative because there are probably reasons why one idea was connected to another idea. So, even though I can see some themes in the content of Fumi's responses to my questions, I am frustrated that I cannot remember either the questions or the web-like structure of our conversation.

Because I cannot remember the questions or the flow of the conversation, I'm worried that I might be misinterpreting (or misremembering) somethings and I'm worried that I've lost an opportunity to gain insight from the framework of the questions and the conversation.

Anyone else having difficulties reconstructing the interview? ~~ Melissa

Need a Break?

Last week, when I didn’t know how to use the Blog, a wrote a comment brought about by the Geertz reading, and posted it as a comment to the Welcome paragraph posted by EDPSY 582B, where you can read it if you wish.

Heather showed me how to do it right (thanks, Heather). This week, I have a funny, but pertinent url to suggest you listen to, if you have 20 minutes and need a break from your reading.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4964296663335083307

Week 2 readings

Thought I'd post my reading summary to the site. Saving paper is great! See you all soon.

Sarah Childers
EDPSY 582 B, 1/15/2008
Summary of Weisner (1996) Why ethnography should be the most important method in the study of human development.

Main Points

• Main Argument: Cultural is the primary influence on child development. Constructs influencing development (e.g. self-esteem, attachment, identity, resilience, autonomy) that are often characterized as individual, cognitive, or biologically-based, are in fact culturally constituted. Through ethnography, a researcher can know the particulars of a cultural place; it is a method that gets to meaning, how it is constructed by members of a community, and how meaning systems constrain and afford development and action. Through ethnographic fieldwork, a researcher in the developmental sciences would see “what is means to be a parent or a child and the variety of forms development can take”, that “children acquire cultural abilities” and that children are developmentally prepared for their culture (p. 306). Thus, ethnography is the most important method in the study of human development because it keeps central the importance of cultural place to development, “transforming it from ground to figure” (307).

• Ethnography and fieldwork get researchers into cultural place of children and families. In contrast to experimental methodologies (i.e. the attachment study referenced in the chapter), ethnography is a naturalistic method. Its goal is to “describe and understand cultural place and its influence on the everyday lives of its members” (307).

• In the field there are a number of ways to do research. There is diversity within ethnographic approaches, as evidenced by other chapters in this section. What unites the various approaches is a focus on subjective experience of members of cultural groups. Also ethnography tends to involve a long-term and deep commitment on the part of the researcher, who often works as a participant-observer.

• Ethnography is complementary to other methods in studies of human development. In fact, it provides data for understanding cultural and human universals and differences, including “adaptive problems and developmental concerns” and “ecocultural features that … appear to influence child development everywhere” (p. 310). As such, methodocentrism should be resisted. Polarization of qualitative and quantitative traditions, insistence that they are discordant and that researchers choose sides is unnecessary and inaccurate. See Shweder (Chapter 8 in Jessor, Colby, & Shweder) for an interesting discussion of qualitative and quantitative objects of inquiry within ethnography.

• Ethnography is not purely descriptive and open-ended in terms of research thrust. It can and should be question driven, even in initial stages. Ethnography does and should produce valid findings/evidence.

• Ethnography and developmental sciences should be viewed as siblings as they share a lineage of a naturalistic tradition within the social sciences.

• Incorporating fieldwork in another place into training programs for researchers in the developmental sciences would benefit the researcher and the field. Through fieldwork, it would become clear that culture is both the context and primary force of child development.

Terms

Naturalistic – studying a phenomenon in the real world [“the wild”], contrasted with experimental design

Methodocentrism – focusing on one method as the correct/best/only way to understand, explore, and explain the world, ignoring and perhaps disparaging other methods and methodologies.

Link to class readings

Weisner does not claim any one tradition of ethnography, arguing that it is a multi-faceted method. Emerson and Madison clearly articulate the different traditions within ethnography, historicizing turns within the field. It is interesting to think about Weisner's work in dialogue with Emerson and especially Madison. I doubt Madison would take such an a-political view of the multiple ethnographic traditions. Madison is also likely to be wary of Weisner's (simplistic) assumptions about the benefits that are sure to result from sending burgeoning developmental scientists out into the field in another culture. Power and politics in addition to the injustice that can result from field work is missing from Weisner's account of ethnography in the developmental sciences.

Links to my own research

I am being disciplined as a scholar of educational psychology a decade after this piece was published. Although still perhaps not the most popular method within child development studies, ethnography and its derivations are largely acceptable means of understanding and exploring development. Culture is now accepted to be both ground [context] and form [inextricable from the object of inquiry] of development. I currently study achievement motivation, identity enactment, and collaborative learning in college students. Although it is still common to decontextualize these constructs, it is also common and acceptable to theorize them as inherently situative and to study them accordingly through ethnographic methods.

Discussion Question

Considering this piece within the larger child development literature, what are possible responses to Weisner's central claim that development is a cultural phenomenon ---> ethnography is the method to understand nuances of culture ---> ethnography is the most important? Even if development is cultural, is ethnography the most important method for studying development? Can we attribute what we observe in a laboratory to culture yet still study it in a non-naturalistic setting? On a related note, how could we flip Weisner's attachment example, thinking about what would be lost without the lab observations and with only the mother's narrative?

Response

The context for Weisner's piece is the turn in the last few decades within the developmental sciences to appreciating development as a deeply cultural phenomenon. Weisner positions himself as a scientist who is widening his own theoretical and methodological frameworks based on research experiences that themselves were framed by more tradiitonal [i.e. cognitive] ways of conducting developmental research, and his audience seems to be primarily other developmental scientists. He prods his colleagues to consider ethnographic methods as valuable, as scientific, as flexible, and as complementary to the methods they have relied upon for years. I am on board with the general thrust of his arguments but find some of the particulars problematic. For example, I think that it is important to recognize the diverse strains within ethnography as not just different ways of doing things but as bound up in history and politics and are in some ways opposed to one another. I wonder if Weisner affiliates himself with a particular tradition or if he would argue that one ethnographic framework is better suited than others to uncover developmental phenomena. I also hope that Weisner would advocate for a rigorous training regime for developmental scientists who would do ethnographic wok. One does not have to adopt a critical or post-positivist stance to appreciate that simply tossing nascent researchers into "the field" is no way to train them [us!] to value the possibilities of this method or to recognize and grapple with its complexities.

Welcome to the Ethnography of Human Learning and Development Blog

This blog will serve as a pooled set of resources and thoughts compiled by the students and instructors associated with the advanced methods seminar on "The Ethnography of Human Development and Learning" held at the University of Washington in the Winter of 2008.