The Role of Ethnographers and Ethnographies We have a problem when we try to study cultures.
Do you know what the problem is?
The problem is that we all belong to at least one main culture and numerous subcultures.
So, how can we objectively understand and study different cultures?
Subjective understanding is easy.
Subjectively we constantly are judging and evaluating other people and their values and
behaviors based upon our own personal experience.
It is much more difficult to put our personal feelings, preferences and values aside in
order to objectively evaluate and study another person’s culture.
Ethnography attempts to deal with this issue.
Ethnographers are individuals conducting the ethnographic study.
They come from any field of study, but most commonly are found in sociology, anthropology
and psychology because those are three fields that study human behavior and need a "scientific"
way to do so.
An ethnography is an objective inside look at a group of people.
It often is referred to as "participant observation" because the ethnographer, or fieldworker,
might live with the people or at least spend as much time as possible with them and take
part in as many daily events and special ones as possible.
By participating in the culture, they can get a better understanding than just by watching
from the outside.
The observation part comes from filtering the daily activities through one or more theory
from their field; so they are filtering the activities and attempting to apply some objectivity.
Hofstede said (I believe that’s how you pronounce it) "The core of intercultural awareness
is learning to separate observation from interpretation" (Hofstede et al., p. 17, 2002).
It is such a natural process to observe something and make a conclusion/interpretation about
what we have observed.
Think back to the images in the Module 1 Lesson.
When you saw the pictures, your mind probably automatically applied an interpretation that
fit your personal experience.
For example, I grew up in a farming community, so I interpreted the first picture as the
planting of seeds and it never even occurred to me that it was a man attacking a woman
violently.
My interpretation of the second picture was a sales presentation.
I would have said it was a teacher except that in my experience classes are usually
larger than that.
However, my point is that I observed and interpreted at the same time.
As ethnographers, we need to learn to separate the observation from the interpretation.
Visiting students at their homes or in their communities was suggested in the reading of
Megastrategy 10 as a form of ethnographic study.
I personally can vouch for the effectiveness of this strategy.
Instead of keeping all of the power in the relationship and making the student and student's
relatives always come to you, it can be extremely helpful to the relationship if you surrender
some of the power and visit them on their "home turf."
One of the things I like about Michelle Pfeiffer's character in the movie "Dangerous Minds" is
that she did visit some of her students in their homes.
However, there's an interesting point in the movie where a mother of two of her students
explains that she is taking her sons out of school.
She tells Michelle's character to find "some other poor boys to save."
So, she wasn’t very happy with Michelle visiting them and taking time out for them
because she thought it was done from a position of superiority.
So, even when we reach out with the right motives, if we are members of the majority
population, we need to be sensitive to possible misinterpretations.
In fact, it doesn’t really matter what we do, we should realize that someone else will
not always interpret what we do and say the same way we mean it because their experiences
are going to filter the information that comes in through their senses.
In Module 3 you will get a taste of being an ethnographer; although, it will be a unique
way of writing an ethnography I admit.
At least it will introduce you to the process of separating observation from interpretation.
An ethnography describes what is observed and attempts to interpret what is observed
through the eyes of the cultural insider.
So, it’s interpreted the way that that culture would interpret it themselves instead of applying
an outside viewpoint, an outside cultural interpretation (if that makes sense).
So, it’s a challenge, but I think you’ll be up to it.
Thank you.