[Air-l] Re: ethnography

[Jonathan Marshall]

Danny Butt <db at dannybutt.net> writes:

> Paul
> Willis' "Notes on Method"  in Culture, Media, Language (1980) is a 
> goodsummary - it's a dangerous move to pretend the researchers' basic
> assumptions can be overthrown by "experience". And the potential for
> debilitating neo-colonial effects is (in my experience) much 
> greater in this
> ethnographic mode than in sending out some surveys which 
> communities can more easily ignore if they obviously don't fit.

Surely this depends on how the surveys are administered :)

Even when only a few people particupate in a survey they can 
frequently be used by researchers to extrapolate about 
the rest of the 'community' - even to assume there is a community -
without any check from closer ethnographic investigation.  

This is still a form of neo-colonialism.  A way of simply 
imposing your categories on people with no means for them to 
tell you this is crap - or why it is crap. Its a research
monologue.


There is obviously a history of power in any kind of research 
- and i'm not so sure that ethnography is more prone to this 
than other forms of research.  

What research does operate outside a social field of some sort?

Ethnography confronts you with this fact, as you try and negotiate
within it or around it. 

If you have done ethnography you might know that people can
make it fairly uncomfortable if they do not want you there,
or they think you are imposing badly on them.
 
> I also see many situations where well-intentioned 
> ethnographic work
> causes grief for both the community of study and the researcher. 

And the same is true of non ethnographic work.  

> It's worth
> holding in mind a) the inextricability of the ethnographic mode 
> with the
> colonial missionary project and b) the likelihood of unintended 
> consequencesover intended ones, and the very different positions 
> of power which are held
> in the ethnographic encounter. Linda Tuhiwai Smith's "Decolonizing
> Methodologies" takes up the argument forcefully and should be required
> reading for anyone considering this kind of work.

Sure, but equally ethography is the only western social research 
(i say western to allow there may be other traditions i'm not 
familiar with) which has historically operated with much awareness 
of the problems of translation.  The idea of incomensurabilty, 
unintended social consequences, misreading, the capturing of the 
researcher by social faction, positioned analysis, the failure of 
good intentions to be enough, and so on largely arises from 
ethnographic work, or its appropriation. 

Likewise fieldworkers actually have some hope of finding out 
some approximation of what the interests of the people they 
study actually are.  
They are also less likely to impose categories decided in 
some office somewhere else - because they don't work *here*.  
The whole history of disputes about social structure and 
kinship and so on in anthropology should be some kind of 
illustration of that. 

It also needs to be stated that in many cases early 
functionalist ethnography was phrased in the way it 
was to try and prevent colonial powers from simply 
imposing their own categories on people.  The idea 
being that if socities meshed then it would be foolish 
to disrupt them. This is not simply neo-colonialist 
conservatism.

The project may have been semi-futile and imperfect 
but it is doubtful any other proceedure would have been 
much better.  I don't know of many ethnographic studies
of how best to get people to work, for example, but
there is plenty of that in sociology.
 
> But the bottom line for me is 
> that if the
> goal is to improve the world, and not just ourselves, we need to 
> find a way
> of negotiating between the needs and desires of those under study 
> and our
> own desires for knowledge - and the power imbalances between 
> these. 

Is there a way other than ethnography, which involves dialogue, 
and the alteration of research parameters in line with that 
dialogue which has any chance of succeeding here?

It is difficult to get the strangeness of 'others' (*not*
the monolithic post-modern 'other' which neglects difference
in a big way), but living with people, being partially 
dependent on them, is one way of *starting*.

> the bottom line is that Don 
> comes and
> talks to us about Ghanaians without them necessarily being 
> present. 

Don't we all? nearly all the time?  Most anthropology 
departments i'm aware of at least expect people to write 
ethnographies in consultation with the people. 

My stuff is always online, for the group i write about 
to read or to decry before its published, to use a trivial 
example.  I don't say i get approval from everyone - that 
is not always possible, but at least there is some possibility
of discussion, and i *will* rewrite.

> The
> effects of the circulation of this knowledge in western academia (and
> related appendages e.g. into development policy), away from explicit
> dialogue with the research subjects, can have a far greater impact 
> on the
> subjects' community than their dialogue without us present can 
> have on us.

This is why some of us have insisted that you cannot disregard 
the presence of corporate capitalism, imperialism, patriarchy etc, 
when doing your analysis.

With ethnography you are more likely to see how such forces 
already impinge on things, rather than to pretend the internet 
is isolated from them.

> No first world ethnographer ever lost their job for their 
> informants not
> being happy with how they are represented, 

Not true - but for obvious reasons i'm not going to discuss 
these cases here.  

Sometimes ethnographer's have lost their lives, or their
'reason' as well.

> but there are plenty of 
> examplesof such impacts (and worse) happening in researched 
> communities due to
> research publications (e.g. in this part of the world, Cook's mapping
> practices).

Are mapping practices ethnography now?

> My simple point is this:  the "benefits" of research projects to 
> those under
> study (or, in too many less-reflexive cases, to "the world") are 
> routinely treated as self-evident by researchers, yet the 
> experience of those being
> researched is more often a betrayal of trust, loss of control, and
> unintended consequences. 

This again has nothing to do with ethnography as such.  
All these things can happen without ethnography, and 
are probably more likely to do so.

> Research is a powerful way of telling 
> stories, and
> the key issue from my POV in methodological concerns is not "which 
> method"but "how are the power relationships here being circulated 
> through my methodological choices?".

Fair enough :)  but ethnography tends to bring you face 
to face with these issues in a way in which other techniques, 
to my knowledge do not.

It is all very well to argue ethnography is not perfect, and 
i certainly agree, it can't be - this is what doing ethnography 
has 'taught' us - but perhaps you need to suggest an alternative 
research strategy which does not have these problems.


jon



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