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

A year of fieldnotes

For the past year and a half, I've been doing fieldwork in nine different schools in the Seattle area. I have mountains of fieldnotes. For the past week I've been reviewing all of my fieldnotes in order to write something like a finished product. I've been looking through the notes that are in the raw "jotting" form described by Emerson et al. as well as the various versions of complete, detailed notes that I wrote up (often in my car in the school parking lot) immediately after visiting a classroom.

In light of our readings for this week, it's been really interesting for me to notice what kinds of things I pay attention to in my "jottings" and what kinds of things end up being salient enough that they make it into the more polished notes emerging from the jottings. It's also been interesting to revisit the notes from fieldwork conducted a year or more ago. When I've done a good job of taking notes, I feel transported back into the moment simply by re-reading the notes. Here are some observations of my own notetaking processes and some reflections about what I think I would like to do better during fieldwork ... my analysis of some lessons that I'm learning by doing our readings ...


Patterns in my note-taking processes
Both Emerson and Goffman commented on the way that different fieldworkers attend differently to actions, dialogue, physical spaces, emotions, etc. My jottings consist almost entirely of verbatim records of classroom discourse. I note who was speaking, and I keep track of exactly what was being said. Often I make notes in the margins about typical patterns of discourse, like the fill-in-the-blank sort of intonation that teachers sometimes use when they say a sentence with rising intonation at the end making it sound like a question (even though a question has not been posed). I also make notes in the margins about the types of questions that teachers and students are posing to one another. Clearly, I am very interested in how people communicate in classrooms and in how people ask questions and press each other for information.

When there are pauses in the conversation in a classroom I make other sorts of notes off to the side of the main record of conversation. These notes consist of my thoughts, intuitions, questions, and emotions at the moment. I ask many questions of myself and of my notes. At the top of my note-taking pages I often record details about the physical space like arrangements of desks and access to (working) technology. I also make counts of people (like how many boys and girls in a physics class or how many students of color in an advanced placement class). While these notes do not make up the bulk of my pages of notes, these contextual notes are the parts of my notes that give me a sense of time-travel when I re-read my notes now, over a year after beginning fieldwork.

Fieldnotes as time machines
When I re-read my fieldnotes it feels as if I am traveling back in time to the actual day of the observation. In many cases I can re-read the dialogue and actually hear the voices and the excitement (or the boredom) expressed by those voices as they talked through some science lesson. The context notes that I make in the margins of my paper or at the top of each page have been extremely useful for helping me to reconstruct my memories of particular classrooms, particular children, and particular lessons. When I read my notes about the physical classrooms I can see the space in my mind. When I read my questions that I wrote in the moment as rhetorical questions to myself or to the conceptual framework guiding the research I am struck by how little threads of theory were emerging even at the very beginning of fieldwork.

What I can do better in my fieldnotes
Looking back at my own fieldnotes in light of the readings for this week, I can see that there are plenty of things that I could do better. First, I am definitely generalizing, which Emerson et al. caution against. In my next round of classroom observations I'm going to try to write specific, focused details rather than generalizations and see if I can break myself of the habit of writing too many generalizations. Second, I am really focused on discourse, which I think is great for the sort of study that I'm doing right now, but I wonder if I'm missing other observations because I'm spending so much time listening and capturing dialogue. The next time I'm in the field I'm going to give myself a break from discourse for a few minutes each class period to try to capture some other observations, especially body language and expressions (a form of communication that is currently absent from my notes). Finally, I'm going to try to be even more disciplined about wasting no time between writing the initial jottings and the subsequent detailed notes. I haven't been as disciplined about that part as I should be. All of the authors this week acknowledged that this step is one of the most important, and most difficult, parts of fieldwork. It's true, like Emerson et al. said, that for every hour in the field, there is at least another hour of note-writing later in the day. It's really hard to make myself do those subsequent hours sometimes, but I'm going to try.

See you all next week after I return from Texas ~~ Melissa

"To Fink, or not to Fink...?"

I have to admit, because of my interest in metacognition research, I skipped ahead to the section that Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw called “In Process Analytic Writing: Asides, Commentaries, and Memos.” I’m interested in how the focus on using strategies to locate and re-construct detailed observations of lived experiences meshes with an observer’s ability to occasionally step back and take account of the big picture. I entered into the book with the assumption that it would deliver skills and strategies for providing the most detailed, objective sorts of fieldnotes humans can muster. Luckily, this isn’t the whole thrust of the book. The notion of presenting, or inscribing, a version of world, from selectively recalled and accented moments, rather than a “mirrored” reflection of the world one observes (p. 66) struck me as an appropriate way to balance objectivity and subjectivity as a researcher. So I was taken by the description of a student’s aside in which she not only gives her version, or impression, of an agency office, but also puts herself in the shoes of a hypothetical, distraught office visitor, whose hypothetical confidence in the agency would be shaken, as a result of the researcher’s feelings about its lack of orderliness (p. 101). I find this “speaking for the other,” driven by one’s own emotional and positional reactions, in situ, a compelling motivator for the practice of in depth ethnographic methods. I also think that getting this into a context and lifestyle, such that one can feel legitimate in posing hypothetical beliefs of other participants, goes a long way past Irving Goffman’s notion of having to be a “fink” to do proper ethnography (p. 154).

Thorne Lit Presentation

Sarah Childers
2/12/2008
EDPSY 582 B
Literature Presentation: Barrie Thorne’s “Learning from Kids”

Main Points / Summary

• Learning from children of your own culture requires adult researchers to “render strange” the experience of being a child. I.E. the challenge is to not assume that: children are incomplete versions of adults and so their behavior and language is legible to adults and not to interpret observations only through framework of own experiences as a child. [225]
• To “come into consciousness,” must look at children’s every day interactions and language in an attempt to understand the meanings that that the children give and take away from their interactions with one another.

Issues encountered in her fieldwork at two elementary schools

• Understanding and finding order in kids’ seemingly chaotic interactions on the playground.
• Managing her authority as an adult figure and learning to avoid language that kids’ associated with adult authority [i.e. not to ask what students were “doing” or to tell them that she was interested in their “behavior”]. She did not tell on the kids or intervene in play unless necessary for safety.
• Managing her relationship with the teachers in her fieldwork classrooms. Being at cross purposes sometimes with the teacher. E.G. Thorne would sometimes participate in the “underground economy of food and objects” or chat with students when they were supposed to be working. She sometimes felt guilty about this behavior. At the same time, sometimes she would collude with the teacher by engaging in an adult relationship in the classroom [e.g. making eye contact with the teacher above the kids head to communicate].
• Memories from childhood and legacy of past self affects fieldwork practices, including forming relationships with student subjects and interpreting student interaction [i.e. status among girls]. Thorne describes how the girls she met the schools brought up powerful memories of girls she knew [and the girl that she was!] in elementary school.

Terminology

• Studying down – studying a group with a social position lower than the ethnographers in order to “[seek] understanding across lines of difference and inequality” [224].

Linkages

To class readings…

• Link to Nespor: studied kids’ “every day” interactions at school; both looked at gender as well although for Thorne it was the thrust of the project; managed complex position as adult in kids’ world; focused on kids’ language; highlighted the role of the body in kids’ interactions and how schooling is organized [e.g. kids physicality with one another and meaning attached to physicality and schools controlling kids’ bodies]

To own research…

• Gender and feminist analytical frameworks are important to my work. I do research with students and so I also manage the “studying down” and “chain of remembering” issues.

Discussion question

• A take on a question Thorne poses: Are moments of remembering [when ethnographer was a child] a source of distortion or insight [for studying the lives of children]? [pg. 236] Thorne argues both? What do you think? In what ways is remembering distorting / insightful for noticing and for interpreting?

Additional readings

• Holmes, Robyn M. (1998). Fieldwork with Children. Sage Publications.

Response

I appreciate Thorne’s discussion of the role of memories in fieldwork practice. We have thought together in class about positionality and the effect on fieldwork practice. Memories and experience are clearly linked to social location. Given this, I was struck by how I had not seriously considered how my experiences as an adolescent would affect my fieldwork with adolescents. I have thought about and reflected upon the effects of my gender, race, age, position as a “teacher”, etc., but I had not thought about how my own memories of being the age of the students I want to study would affect every aspect of my experiences in the field. I was also interested in Thorne’s findings from her fieldwork at elementary schools, namely the role of the underground economy in the schools and the differences in the dimensions and role of the economy in each school depending on school culture. This finding demonstrates her focus on kids’ everyday activities and especially on the activities that they find important and meaningful.

Random Week 6 Thoughts

As the person in the class who loves the practical instruction, I really enjoyed getting back into the "ethnography manual" book again.  The guidelines and suggestions for note-taking were excellent and easy to understand.

For whatever reason the readings this week got me thinking about who should be doing ethnographic research.  I started thinking that the best person to study a culture in depth would be a person living in that culture.  After all, they already know the daily living activities and they can probably interpret member meanings better than an outsider.  Wouldn't this be ideal?

But that got me thinking that a member doing research on their own culture may not work out so well simply because they are too close to the subjects.  I think there is something good in having the detachment of an outside professional.  Is the outside, trained opinion better than the thoughts of the insider?  I guess I don't know if the outside opinion is better, but it is different.

I'm sure this is a thought process you have all gone through long ago, but as a newbie to the subject I thought I'd get it out now.  Still mulling it over...

See you Tuesday!

Anne

IMMIGRATE ASSIMILATE

This is in response to Holly’s entry of Tuesday, Feb 5. There was an excellent article on the Opinion page of last Sunday’s P.I./Times, Feb 3, 2008. If you don’t have Sunday’s paper, you can get it on the web by googling Immigrate Assimilate, Amy Chua or using the following URL.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2004159071_sundayimmigration03.html

She asks, “What happens when ethnic pride erodes national identity? Yugoslavia found out, Iraq’s finding out. Are we - The United States - heading that way?” I had never looked at it in that light, but it really made me stop and think about it.

Marcia

Loving it!

I really enjoyed Sullivan's compilation of research on delinquent behavior (well what I took the paper to be doing!). It was something that is of great interest to me. As I read the chapter I found myself refering to the references and attempting to develop a reading list that was related to Juvenile Delinquency. I also like the fact that rather than discarding previous (old 1930's) research they built on it! It seems that the authors for ethnographic works are more interested in building on (turtle on top of turtle!) than there peers who seem to often spend alot of energy on disproving others findings. That being said I do think that we should not accept all research as good and have to have an ability to acknowledge research that may not be "good".
I really enjoyed Corsaro writings and think he raised some great questions and insights. I like the idea of longitudinal international ethnography. I was very interested in his observations of the students change from headstart to kindergarten. The little girls struggle to be like the majority was telling to me as an educator in that I HAVE to be aware of all the reasons for behavior and not isolate it to a classroom context!

Segregation/Desegregation

I've noticed in a couple articles related to racial differences, that some of the writing seems to support benefits to segregated settings. In one of the Nespor chapters there was an interview segment with an African American girl who said that before she was bused out of her local community for school, she was a good student and was seen by her teachers as capable. But once she moved to the school in a caucasian neighborhood, she related negative experiences with teachers and the school. There was also a clear theme in the Nespor book about how the African American community was destroyed through urban renewal efforts. This was not only the physical boundaries that defined their community, but their sense of togetherness as well.

This week in Corsaro's piece, in his discussion of Zena, he also discussed difficulties related to integration. He stated that Zena's difficulty with the transition to an unfamiliar peer culture was largely unsuccessful and was possibly disruptive to her educational experience, based on declining academic performance and negative perceptions of her by the teacher and other students. He also said that the priming effects through the Head Start did not lead to positive transitions later, as the interaction norms in that setting were completely different (and even offensive) in the first grade classroom. In terms of positive outcomes for Zena, Corsaro said she would be returning to her neighborhood school the following year, where she would have more in common with her peers.

In my career and education, I have not spent much time on critical theory or inter-racial issues, outside of having a general understanding that people have different perspectives and things go better when you can be open to those. However, there is also a general understanding that segregation is "bad", though a sense of community is "good". I am having a hard time reconciling these things in my mind. This extends to my personal concerns around the inclusion and integration of people with disabilities in schools and local communities. Benefits tend to go along the lines of acceptance by others increasing with more exposure. The downside is that integration appears to have been made into an overarching goal without allowing for groupings that have a sense of identity associated with them.

Last week I was talking to someone who supports 5 people with developmental disabilities in a large local corporate office. They were hired 8 years ago through a policy that looked a lot like affirmative action. They choose to have lunch together, which is seen as a bad thing by the person providing support. She commented that in other settings where there is only one person who is developmentally delayed, they are "forced" to have lunch with the other employees, which was seen as a positive. It really made me wonder about the importance we place on personal choice, and how we still think that we should impose our values and choices on others under the pretext that they don't know what's best for them. Hmmm.

I would like to hear what other people think about how to merge the ideas of desegregation with the benefit of increased exposure, acces, and understanding, with the benefits of a sense of community and personal choice.

Understanding fu

The sociohistoric approach by Saxe and Esmonde was very interesting, yet this is something we do not cognizant of when we think about functions and forms of words. I feel bad that I always use examples of Japan (and that's something I can think of at 6 am), so I apologize in advance.

This example is little different from the one from New Guinea, but it also reflects Japan's shift in social climate before and after the "isolation" era (1640 - 1853). Many of the Japanese words from the isolation era were borrowed from China and Netherlands because Japan believed the Chinese and the Dutch were not Christians (I don't know why they thought the Dutch were not Christians). It is important to note that Japanese people are good at borrowing concepts and words and modify them to suit their convenience. After the isolation, Japan started borrowing words from English (especially British English). Today, we use many words from the U.S. because we value American culture more than anything else (that's why I feel awkward every time I go back to Japan). For example, we started using an English word "celebrity" or "celebu" since 1990, but the meaning of the word is a little different from the one people here commonly understand. We originally used the term to represent actors/actresses or supermodels from other countries (it also implies the Caucasian actors and models), but the meaning changed to things that they wear or carry. Today, the meaning of "celebu" is the wealthy people. Not only the Japanese switched the countries to borrow words from, but also switched the meaning of them to suit their lifestyle.

I hope this example is interesting to you...

Here is the summary of Saxe and Esmonde article:

EDPSY 582

February 4, 2008

Fumi Suto

Studying Cognition in Flux: A Historical Treatment of Fu in the Shifting Structure of Oksapmin Mathematics by Saxe, G. & Esmonde, I. (2005)

Main Points

Saxe and Esmonde researched on mathematical cognition, a shifting function of fu which is related to changing collective practices of economic exchange, in Oksapmin communities in New Guinea. They argue that it is important to look at sociohistorical processes to understand humans’ cognitive development.

Research Questions

• How do new collective systems of representation and associated mathematical ideas arise in the social history of a social group?
• Was this fu a historical descendent of the earlier fu that I had learned long ago?
• Or was this a new word form, perhaps borrowed from a neighboring group?
• Did someone invent fu as a way to represent values greater than those permitted by the indigenous number system?
• If any of these processes fits the case, how did new uses of the word come to spread in the social history of Oksapmin communities?

History and Diachronic Analysis

Issues: There are few projects that incorporate social history into empirical analysis. Many of them do not focus on the dynamics of historical change itself and its relation to the conceptual activities.

Saxe and Esmonde’s approach

• Cross-sectional study of single community: It brings multiple aspects of engagement with newly emerging practices and assessing the cognitive tasks through the way historical shifts.
• Longitudinal study and individual activities: Social history is shaped by individual activities. Longitudinal study reveals the patterns that emerge over historical time and become collective representations.
• Genetic continuity of form: the progenitors of the forms and functions differ even though there are many similarities between them.
• Genetic continuity of function: seeking for how discontinuity emerges through continuous change.
• Genetic shifts in form-function relations: understanding the complex interplay between shifts in form and functions.

Sociohistorical Niches: Precontact and Postcontact era

Precontact: Trade was central to life in precontact era. The Oksapmin’s 27-body-part counting system is rooted in this era. Western arithmetic concept did not exist.

Period I (1938-1960): Westerners made first contact (the 19-month Hagen-Sepik patrol).

Period II (1960- 1980): shift from traditional trading system to a cash economy with Western currency (pounds and shillings). Heterogeneity in people’s experiences with qualification and economic exchange.

Period III (1980 – 2001): Copper and gold mine in Tabubil – men and women of Oksapmin found work there – language shift (English and Tok Pisin) – money was needed.

Genetic fu – Observations and Interviews

Challenge I: Continuity of form: Unconscious adaptation of shifting collective systems (e.g. traffic jam example by Keller).

Challenge II: Traditional functions of the form: Position of fu on the body (a way of using body parts in qualification)

Challenge III: The organization of collective practices that support shifting relations between form and function: Shift in economic practice and currencies – Schooling vs unschooling.

Analysis

Microgenesis: People turn cultural forms (body system) into means for accomplishing representational and strategic goals – different mathematical function of fu (29 stones vs 29 kina).

Sociogenesis: Shift in forms and function by synchronic distribution (communicative activities) in cultural forms.

Ontogenesis: Asking children about numerical values – younger children tend to incorrectly identify the numerical value on body parts.

Key Terms

• Fu: Okspamin’s 27-body-part counting system; pinky (27); elbow (20); other body parts; plenty; complete; denominations of currency (tan kir, 20 or 2o kina note); a marker for a complete group of 27 or 20.
• Longitudinal Study: a correlational research study that involves repeated observations of the same items over long periods of time, often many decades. Longitudinal studies are often used in psychology to study developmental trends across the life span.
• Microgenesis: Changes that occurs as individuals transform cultural forms into cognitive means for representing and accomplishing colas in practice.
• Sociogenesis: Changes that occur in cultural forms as individuals representational and strategic accomplishments become valued by multiple members of the community.
• Ontogenesis: Shifting relations between individuals’ uses of particular forms and functions in their activities over development in practice.

My Response

The argument of implementing sociohistorical approach into research on cognition makes perfect sense because communities, cultures, and our lifestyle change over the time. It was hard for me to understand multiple functions and meanings of fu without someone demonstrating them in front of me, (the illustrations are not enough for me!), yet it is surprising that understanding of just one word form varies by generations.

This approach may not be useful for my research since I have limited amount of time, though it is interesting to see how self-identities of curators and museum educators have shifted since the role of museums as learning institutions have changed since the first appearance of the museum in 280 B.C.

Linkages to Other Readings

It is interesting to compare the research by Fortes (1938) with the Saxe and Esmonde article because Fortes sees the learning occurs within the unitary social sphere of adults and children while Saxe and Esmonde demonstrate the generational difference in understanding of fu.

To know more about the three approaches Saxe and Esmode used for the analysis, read

Saxe, G. B. (1999). Cognition, development, and cultural practices. In E. Turiel (Ed.), Culture and development. New Direction in Child Psychology. SF: Jossey-Bass.

This article came out a few years before the 2001 research by Saxe and Esmonde, but Saxe goes into the details of three approaches.

Questions

Do you think Saxe and Esmode knew or could speak the Oksapmin language? If not, what would be the disadvantages for them to understand cultural phenomena? As researchers, should we understand the “lingo” of the community that we research? If so, how much should we know?

My reactions to readings for Week 5:

I’m struck by the ethnocentric characteristics of Fortes work and the review of works around Community Studies in Sullivan’s chapter. I know, I’m supposed to be shocked, stunned by studies waged in reaction to the development of the concept of “culture of poverty”, fights that with hindsight we can assume wouldn’t be necessary if methods for understanding the roots of social disparities hadn’t developed out of positivist, ethnocentric research agenda. The intense lack of Fortes’ membership as a legitimate community member, and his entire lack of appreciation of the fact that his domineering presence as a representative of a colonial power comes through when he writes that his questions evoked responses like “he replied reproachfully,” and “she responded almost indignantly” (p. 11). Gee, Meyer, do ya think you might be asking inappropriate questions? No, he didn’t. It was his job, his position, and (if you got to know him) he might say his “duty,” in the 1930s, to ask people questions that made them mad at him, and to feel comfortable continuing to invade their lives, in the name of scientific research.
I thought Sullivan’s presentation of the methods leading to the on-going debates over the concept of “culture of poverty” was a powerful example of the need to pursue longitudinal, multi-level, and cross-cultural analyses in ethnographic work (Corsaro, p. 420). As Sullivan puts it, “By focusing on processes internal to a poor community, the researcher continually faces the risk of ascribing the causes of problems within the community entirely to its own members and neglecting problems of disempowerment, exploitation, and exclusion emanating from powerful interests and institutions outside the community” (p. 209).
Eric H.

Thoughts on Week 5 Readings - Sullivan

There were a couple things that really stood out to me in the Sullivan article in particular.

First, near the beginning of the article was a passage that said, “the emphasis…was driven strongly by a reaction to the notion of a ‘culture of poverty,’ itself the product of ethnographic work.  The specter of the culture-of-poverty debate continues to haunt ethnographic work on the urban poor.”  I think this statement really brings to light for ethnographers that as much as you are trying to observe only and not affect what is going on around you, you may have a much more far-reaching effect that goes way beyond the subject at hand.  It’s scary to think that the work of ethnographers could basically stifle an entire population and pigeon-hole them into a stereotype.  This must make ethnographers today more careful about how they observe and interpret to mitigate any unwarranted negative impact.

The other part that stuck out to me was the passage that said, “the gap between studies of community and studies of human development is somewhat surprising, since both fields have long acknowledged, in theory, their interdependence.”  It seems that there would be more of an effort in the field of ethnography to make sure that these two fields are treated equally.  I am surprised such a gap exists since I don’t know how one understands the individual without understanding the community, and vice versa.

Reading Response- Ethnography in Everyday Life

Reading Response

Week 5 - Ethnography in Everyday Life

Thérèse Dugan

This week’s readings were really interesting. I really like that we are finally seeing how ethnographic work can be used in many different settings, and how it is very important to do ethnographic work in these settings to get rich results and better understandings. It was also beneficial to see how this work can be used across research disciplines.

An overall theme, which was also present in the Nespor book, is that to set up a good ethnography you need to spend a considerable amount of time trying to understand what is going on around you because you are an outsider and unfamiliar with the territory. You have to dedicate a lot of energy and time to this endeavor if you want to produce solid ethnographic data.

This issue was exemplified in the Saxe and Esmonde (2005) study in their investigation of the definition and meaning of the word fu to the Oksapmin Valley peoples of New Guinea. They found two very different meanings for the word from one visit to the next, and the meaning depended on who they talked to as well. As Nespor says, when we do ethnography we can only comment on what we see in the time we interact with our subjects, but they are constantly continuing to live their lives after we leave them. The Saxe article really brought this home as so many aspects of the culture had been changing from the researchers’ initial study in the 1970s to their return in 2001, and so in their article they needed to take a substantial amount of time to show the reader the timeline of social, political, and cultural changes to the region, and how the meaning of the word fu evolved.

Furthermore, I think the point Corsaro (1996) stated at the beginning of his article was the most profound and significant argument for why we should do ethnographic work: “…ethnographic studies have made important contributions to fill in the sketchy pictures that emerge from more large-scale quantitative research” (p. 421). I certainly find this apparent in my own work with students’ images of science and scientists: Many researches have found that students understand scientists as stereotypical gendered figures, yet when you use ethnographic methods to talk to the students, their perspectives are much more complex. In fact, their perceptions and understandings of science and images of scientists are much richer than can be quickly captured in a survey.

What does everyone else think of these issues?