©Annette N. Markham, Ph. D. 2003. All rights reserved.
In a discussion of doing an ethnography, I thought it might be useful to discuss what ethnography means to me. The ethnographic project in general, has been a topic of great debate and discussion in recent decades. Here, I do not rehearse the strands of this discussion; instead, let me give you a sense of where I stand.
As I have studied and conducted ethnographies, I have come to understand ethnography as a way of knowing and being rather than a strict interpretive or qualitative method. I think the best way to understand ethnography from my perspective is to step away from it as a set of procedures that help us understand Others. Instead, the focus of attention becomes the process of coming to know other, and the way that knowledge is presented for the reader.
In a sense, because every ethnography is a text, and every text takes a particular form (depending on the author’s style and voice and indeed, worldview), I am arguing that ethnography is a way of knowing that cannot be separated from the text, which cannot be separated from the author of that text (and I haven’t even begun to talk about the role of the participants and readers). So the questions arise: How is the text generated, and what is the purpose of the text?
These questions lie at the heart of many recent discussions among ethnographers; there are no easy or agreed upon answers. John Van Maanen (1988) tells us that ethnography has been broadly conceived as storytelling. Problematizing the difference between fact and fiction is a current and recurring--if not common--theme of writers writing on writing (or other less privileged forms of research representation such as performance or artistic expression) (e.g., Ashmore, 1989; Bochner & Ellis, 1995; Clifford and Marcus, 1986; van Manen, 1990; Van Maanen, 1988; 1995; Wolf, 1992). Many contemporary writers not only question the principles and premises of ethnographic
realism (e.g.,
Clearly, ethnography can provide a lot of insight about the ob/subject of study. However, as much can be hidden as highlighted through a researcher’s attempt to systematically understand and explain the social world. Recent critical appraisals of ethnographic research (notably Clifford & Marcus, 1986) explore the position or stance of the researcher in both the collection of “data” and presentation of “findings.” These writers also question how those being researched are positioned and controlled by the researcher--which reveals, in some sense, one of the inevitable stances taken by the researcher. Exploring texts that talk about ethnography, I conclude that while they produce no answers, they raise many questions that must be considered by both ethnographic researchers and readers.
So one question contemporary ethnographers ask is: As ethnographers, how do we know what we know? Another related question (perhaps asked at a later point) might be: How do we tell Others about Others? The answers to these questions are not easily derived, and depend on where we’re coming from, ontologically as well as epistemologically speaking.
I believe ethnography does not begin with the researcher going to some Other, learning some things, and coming back to report on it. At least for me, the planning, going, thinking, interpreting, and writing are not separate means of getting to the product…they are inseparable processes, they are lived experience.
Of course, my focus on these issues, as opposed to others, is based on my own worldview. I realized, as I was trying to figure out why I prefer certain forms of ethnography over others, that part of my strong reaction to any ethnography is based on a long-standing belief that people defy definition. In everyday life, nothing makes me more defensive than when people try to define me, when they say they know me, when they propose to know what’s going on in my head maybe even more than I do. And when people interpret my actions and make judgments about my character, I react strongly, and negatively.
As well, when researchers proclaim to objectively “know” another’s experience, their conclusions are immediately suspect because, to me, this project tends to reduce a person’s experience to something that can be measured, counted, observed, analyzed, figured out, or distilled into words on a page.
Is the author saying “I know what these people are all about,” or “I know what these people are about, based on my interpretation of what they say--to and around me,” or “I know how I feel about myself and these people, based on what they’ve said--to and around me--and how I’ve heard and interpreted it.”
No position is necessarily more real than another, but the third position is more respectful of another’s life experiences. The third position is also more respectful to the reader, whose understanding of the subject of study depends on the author’s interpretation--which depends on the author’s perspective. Finally, the third position is more honest; it is a reading of another that acknowledges the tenuous bond between observation, interpretation, reality, and truth. It is an admission that we only know what we perceive, not what others perceive, and that our interpretations are just that--ours. It is a recognition that ethnographers, who want to describe folk, are being inconsistent when they claim to be interested in understanding people and social structures, while simultaneously ignoring the fact that while they are studying others, they too are members of distinct social structures, which influence them.
And when you think about it (with Bateson, 1972; Bakhtin, 1981; Buber, 1958; Laing, 1990), we can also never truly see others outside the range of the self, because we are an intimate part of everything we encounter. However, we can do the best with what we have, and hope that others listen to us. And if we persuade them, we must realize we have not found or given “truth,” but just our honest interpretation of our experience of someone else’s experience of the world.
To what end?
From a traditional social science perspective, ethnography should simply report findings. This is an important goal, but an equally valuable goal for me is to move the reader through aesthetic form. In a sense, ethnography “aims not to foster the growth of knowledge but to restructure experience; not to understand objective reality, for that is already established by common sense, nor to explain how we understand, for that is impossible, but to reassimilate, to reintegrate the self in society and to restructure the conduct of everyday life” (Tyler, 1986, p. 135).
In our everyday lives, we are addressed by and experience aesthetic forms like poetry, or abstract art. Sometimes we experience the aesthetic in strange and unlikely forms; a construction site, the wind, dreams, clouds, and so forth. The aesthetic seems to depart from the commonsense world. But it does so only to reconfirm our understanding of the world and to return us, “renewed and mindful of our renewal” (Tyler, p. 134).
For Marcus (1986), ethnographers who want to present their work as aesthetic integration “seek rather a means of evoking the world without representing it” (1986, p. 190, emphasis added).
I begin, then, with John Van Maanen (1988), who contends that, “Ethnographies join culture and fieldwork. In a sense, they sit between two worlds or systems of meaning—the world of the ethnography (and readers) and the world of cultural members” (p. 4). Most generally speaking, ethnographies are representations of culture. But, as Van Maanen further notes, “culture is not strictly speaking a scientific object, but is created, as is the reader’s view of it, by the active construction of a text” (p. 7). He presents “three narrative conventions that define a particular type of ethnographic tale” (p. 7): the realist, the confessional, and the impressionist.
However, in my search to understand Others and present my understanding to you, the reader, I depart from Van Maanen in the end. We may choose to present our findings (the realist tale), or give an account of own experiences (the confessional tale), or present a dramatic retelling of the doing of fieldwork (the impressionist tale). But these products come out of a process that involves all three tales in the telling. These can all be texts, yes. But for me, they are moments in the ethnographic project.
Perhaps in the end, it is all just a good story that helps us make sense of our own lives by focusing on the lives of others.