Not that it's the funniest moment in a movie ever, or anything, but you know when there's a line of dialogue that just stays with you and seems to fit so many other situations... anyway, watch 'Shirley Valentine' and you'll realise that "realisation" must be said with a deeply mustachioed Greek accent and you'll laugh too...
Anyway, I've had a couple of epiphanies in the last week that I'm going to share. That might be a record. Both of my light-bulb moments relate to the sense of alienation I feel here and ways that I am trying to deal with it and make it work for me... building that outsider's perspective into the research, I suppose. Or at least, using it purposely and deliberately to stop myself from assimilating and losing sight of what makes me different in the first place.
The first is the understanding that as an ethnographer (a wanna-be, or for-real, let history judge that one) my job is not to make sense of what they do, rather it is to make sense of how they make sense of what they do. Is this mere pedantry? Maybe, but I see it as a subtle and important difference and I try to consciously remember it daily. I might buy myself a hat for the winter and call it my 'ethnographer's hat' so that every day when I put it on, I am also putting on a material reminder of what I am here to do.
If you think that was a bit up-it's-own-arse, then I suggest you stop reading now because the second is even more so! You have been warned. At a very basic level, I problematise concepts like 'knowledge', 'practice' and 'expertise', yet I am now working in an environment where these things are taken as given. This is presents difficulties for me because I see issues with what they're doing even if there are no immediate problems in practice. At a practical level, there doesn't appear to be a problem, so the issues that I have remain invisible and unacknowledged. Indeed, when issues do arise, they're put down to a "breakdown in communication" or a "communication gap", which does not recognise that what is at stake goes somewhat deeper than "you never said that" or "i didn't know/hear about that".
Just to throw my reaction to your blog out there. It got me thinking and this is what i have come up with:
ReplyDeletethe way you describe it, if your intent is to understand how they make sense of their world, dont you have to leave all YOUR issues around conceptualisation of knowledge, practice and expertise at the door if that is not an issue that they have? Or if they have a whole different conceptualisation of it? You want to absorb and experience their view of the world but it seems clear at the same time that you are not a clean slate but a sponge that is already shaped and coloured...
So how will this work then? How will you know where one starts and one ends? Is it rather that you should strip down than put a hat on?
From what I understand the ethnographer immerses into that the field to become part of it, to be actually able to see what they are seeing...I assume at the risk that you become like them. Otherwise you are an observer, which is more along the tradition of practice me thinks, someone outside who is distinguished by a hat as not being part of the group (unless everyone in the group is wearing hats but it doesnt sound like it...)
Cc
p.s. have no idea how this blogging thing works in regards to profiles so thought i add my name so you know who to blame ;-) Ah, just figured it out...
Dammit, Carolin, as always, you are right.
ReplyDeleteThere's a blog in this...