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Taking It All in Stride: An Ethnographer’s Guide to Grace in the Field
We had just finished spending two hours with a handsome, lovely young couple in Boston for our study on facial hygiene. We got a tour of their home and spent a good chunk of our time in their bathroom as we got the skinny on how they each took care of their faces, how they organized the bathroom space and how they navigated the universe of cohabitation. We laughed heartily as they made plenty of jokes and told stories about boogers and nose picking. “I guess it’s good to know you pick your boogies with a Kleenex,” said the wife.
“Well this was fantastic fieldwork!” I thought to myself. Something just clicked with this couple. My colleague and I were excited about visiting them for our second round of fieldwork, which we would use to better understand the patterns that had started to emerge. For our first round we were getting a broad understanding of facial hygiene and how facial tissue fits into that. For the second, we would hone in on some of the themes that would be most beneficial to our client’s business objectives. It was a really fun project.
We gathered our little camera and engaged in the appropriate goodbye. I started out the door but it stuck. “Oh, you just have to give it a tug,” said the wife. In any participant’s home we take the path of least insistence, so I quickly moved out of the way to let her open her door. I certainly didn’t want to break anything. She opened the door. “Bye, thanks again!” I said, and I took a fervent step forward.
Have you ever had one of those moments where you feel like, “Hey, I’ve got it going on today. I look good, I feel good, I am the [wo]man!” only to trip on the sidewalk in a very compromising sort of way?
I do. My fervent step forward launched me head first into their screen door, the one I know existed because I opened it to walk into their house when we arrived. Like a caterpillar caught in a spiderweb, the more I tried to fight my way off the screen door the more my head, arms and legs entangled. I ripped the door, and not just the screen but the entire door, right off its frame.
Have you ever enjoyed that scene from the movie Old School where Will Ferrell gets shot in the neck with a horse tranquilizer dart and then falls in the pool? On his way down everything juuuuuussst ssssllllloooooows doooowwwnnnn. That’s what it felt like for me, because it was only 5 seconds of real time, if that, but I experienced a slow reel of humiliation.
My video camera, cell phone and tapes went flying. I fell flat on my face. “I’m so sorry, I will replace it!” came out of my mouth. My fellow ethnographer stood behind me next to the wife. “Are you ok?” they asked. I looked over at the husband, who stood wide-eyed in the doorway with a mixed expression of utter shock and stifled laughter.
I just kept repeating over and over, “We will replace this, I am so embarrassed.” And we all laughed and laughed. My fellow ethnographer grabbed me by the arm and we walked to the car. I couldn’t contain myself and once we got in the car, neither could she. She laughed for the next 15 minutes as she drove me back to my hotel in Brookline.
We replaced the screen door for our participant. And, they invited us back for the second round of our study. Talk about breaking down barriers to rapport!
You do what? Building Rapport with Participants
People often wonder how we’re able to go into people’s homes for several hours, with a video camera, and talk to them about their lives–not to mention that they are willing to show us inside their cupboards, trash cans and other spaces generally considered off-limits to the general public. We often get asked, “How do you get them to do it?”
Well, we don’t. At least we don’t ‘get’ anyone to do anything. Here’s the thing about ethnography and ethnographers. We genuinely are very, very interested in the people we visit, and we cherish what they have to tell and show us.
We’re not just interested in specific information about specific products or services. In ethnography we go into each experience with eyes and ears wide open, and without an agenda about what we expect to see, hear or experience. When we do that we get a whole lot of information that helps us really understand what our clients want to know. And if we did have expectations, the people we visit would surely pick up on that and not be as likely to share with us.
So if you want some tricks of the trade, we can share a few. It won’t necessarily make you an ethnographer, but it will help you understand the ethnographic approach.
1. Have a-wear-ness. If you show up to a participant’s house wearing dress slacks and a tie, you might not learn as much as you would have had you arrived in jeans and a sweater. On the flip side, show up to a physician’s office wearing those same jeans and you might not learn much at all. In ethnographic fieldwork aim to blend in to your surroundings. You’ll make people feel comfortable but also give yourself credibility as someone who can navigate different cultures.
2. Have a slice of humble pie. A lot of us are used to having to be the expert in daily life (how else would we do our jobs!). But when it comes to ethnography, our participants are the experts. Remember, we are trying to understand daily life to really get at how products and services are conceptualized and experienced. So what you may typically think of as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ just isn’t so during an ethnography. Stifle that urge to tell someone, “You’re not doing that right.” There’s no quicker way to stop a conversation dead in its tracks and trash the opportunity for learning.
3. They’re not subjects, they’re participants! We talk with and learn from the people we spend time with during an ethnography. Not the other way around. Remember, they are the experts.
4. We never, ever get carte blanche. Just because someone has invited us into her home, it doesn’t mean we have free reign. It’s not only impolite to wander off into spaces we haven’t received permission to see, it’s downright unethical. Especially when the use of video is involved. Honoring the privacy and confidentiality of our participants is important and something we take very very seriously.
5. Less said is best. If it’s done right, an ethnographic interview looks a lot like two people having a conversation over coffee. Normally when there is a pause in conversation people have a tendency to fill it with words. If you can resist the urge, your participant will likely tell you something you never would have known had you added your two sense.
The Top 10: Fieldwork with Kids
Top 10 things we recently discovered during fieldwork with kids about family gaming and communication/technology.
10. Just how quickly a video game can suck them into “the zone”. And what the zone actually is.
9. Just how fast a text from their friend can suck them out of “the
zone”.
8. What REALLY happens when a 12-year-old and 6-year-old girl try to play
Sorry together!?
7. Are those board game laughs always about the game? Nope. Sometimes it’s the fart!
6. Discovering how loud and chaotic Rock Band really is for a family of six.
5. The frequent and never-ending correction of their parents on how
to text, use an iPod, start the Wii, etc.
4. Seeing how kids REALLY behave during a game of monopoly. Chaos theory!
3. Learning the multitude of ways kids communicate without ever opening
their mouths. No, not ventriloquism. How about that conversation analysis?
2. Texting with one thumb? No problem.
1. Texting with one thumb while also talking to mom? You better believe it.
Say What?
For the past several months we have been talking with families to learn more about how different generations communicate and how technology impacts their day-to-day decisions about communicating. Whoa, is this ever a rich, broad and diverse ethnography! We’re talking with kids as young as 6 and working our way across the life span to get the skinny on all things interpersonal. Talk about a sociological minefield! We are starting to uncover oodles about identity and the impact of technology [ahem, facebook anyone?] on identity formation, about voyeurism, narrative and compulsion, about the functional and symbolic nature of electronic devices, about rites of passage, about reference groups, about concentric zones…really we could go on and on about what we’re learning. More on that later!
Season’s Greetings: An Ethnography on Attitudes and Behaviors Around Holiday Card Making
We spent time with women and mothers to learn more about how they approach the holiday season, and specifically, how they go about sending holiday cards. We learned about their annual traditions, how they decorate their homes, what they try to get accomplished during the last month of the year and how they really, really feel about everything that makes up the holiday season. We also explored the universe of holiday cards with them, from paper to photo to ecards, and we learned more about what these women look for when they set about the task of wishing their friends and family Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Happy Holidays, etc. We were just as overwhelmed as they were with all the options for cards. There’s just so much to choose from! We learned a whole heck of a lot about the creative process, about multi-tasking and about the impact of technology on decision-making, not to mention how everyday life impacts all these things.
Growing Pains: An Ethnography on the Impact of Acromegaly on Daily Life
Of all our projects on health and illness, this was one of our favorites. We wanted to better understand how having acromegaly impacts the daily life of the men and women who have it. To learn, we spent time with men and women who have acromegaly throughout the U.S., and we also asked them to keep video diaries of their experiences in between our visits. We also spent time with endocrinologists throughout the U.S. to learn more about how they treat acromegaly, and we even got to go on doctor visits with some of our participants!
We discovered so much about what it means to have acromegaly, from a physiological standpoint but also in terms of how it changes how those who have it relate to the world, not to mention how it can turn what we think we know about the nature of illness on its head. We are extremely grateful to our participants, each and every one, for sharing so much of their lives with us.
Our Holiday Wish List
Tis’ the season for wishful thinking. That’s why here at ERI we have put together our holiday wish list of ethnographies we would just LOVE to undertake. Take a look, and if you think of something else that might be fun to study, just let us know!
1. Travelers by necessity, we would love to work on more projects related to travel or hospitality of some type. We really enjoyed the project we did for Brand Atlanta [check out a project summary in the notes/boxes tab on our facebook page]. Melinda would like to do any project that allows her to go to Spain [she has ALWAYS wanted to go]. Everyone at ERI is particularly interested in doing a project for one of the airlines or for TSA. We feel like we have a TON of useful information already and they could obviously benefit from some ethnographic research.
2. We would love to do something on HIV. Particularly Melinda, who would like to see how living HIV positive is different than it was when she did ethnography 14 years ago with the same population.
3. We really appreciate when we have the opportunity to do projects that are aimed at helping organizations improve how they serve populations in need. Any kind of project where we could help organizations improve the way they serve people living in poverty or help them better understand their clients is an A-plus!
4. We would love to do some more research on how moms take care of their kids around the world, looking at different cultural, social and historical influences on child care. We’d also like to learn more about baby traveling behaviors (stroller vs. sling vs. holding baby, etc.) How do people move about the city with their babies?
6. We would like to know more about how people conceptualize “entertaining others” and what that involves (food, wine, cocktails, music, etc.). How are people entertaining others and how do lifestyle differences impact their styles of entertainment?
7. We would love to explore the concept of relaxation. After all, our way of life has people super-busy and connected all the time, so what do they do to relax? How do they relax? We are ultimately hoping that this would lead to an ethnography on spa experiences!!!!!!
8. We’d like to revisit fast food and eating rituals outside the home. When is fast food a choice? How do people think about fast food? What defines it?
9. We’ve always been really interested in how people meet and fall in love. Now that internet dating sites are a real force in the dating world, we’d like to explore how internet dating impacts people’s lives around the formation of relationships and how it compares to some of the more traditional ways in which people meet, date and fall in love.
10. We would really love to do something for ESPN or other sports media outlets. There is so much variation and interest in sports and sports programming, and as our communities continue to grow in diversity, there’s an opportunity to really get to know the men, women and children who stay connected to the sports world [all over the world] to see where new opportunities lie. We’d like to learn more about sports fans and their rituals and behaviors in Europe vs. the U.S. too. For example, what do people do in preparation for games? Afterwards? Where and how do they watch games?
Ethnography and Travel: It’s not just about the final destination
We tell our clients that ethnography brings us up close and personal with their consumers and allows us to journey into their lives–be it for a week or more, a day or a few hours. Travel is an ethnographic necessity. Lucky for us, it’s not only utilitarian (and therefore a budgetary obligation) but also an opportunity for lots of contextual understandings about whatever it is that we’re studying.
Over the years we’ve been all over the world, visiting multiple cities in Australia, Japan, Taiwan, Mexico, England, Sweden, France, Germany and the Philipines, not to mention countless U.S. cities.
Transport helps us connect with the people we visit and enhances whatever we learn during fieldwork. Several years ago we traveled to Manila to learn more about how women approach infant nutrition. After navigating the streets of Manila from our hotel, we crammed ourselves onto local Jeepneys, probably the most popular form of public transportation in the Philipines. Hot, kind of dangerous and exceedingly full, the Jeepneys brought to life the narratives of our participants around working and caring for their families, adding watercolors to our existing sketch of their daily life. When we rode the train, we better understood the role of gender in Filipino culture. Did you know the trains are segregated by gender, and while women are permitted to enter the man’s side, the men are not permitted to enter the woman’s side?
Whether it’s the on tube in London or at Gate B12 in Boston, we have ongoing access to the men, women and children who make up our consumer culture. We’re not going up to random strangers and doing impromptu interviews with them about our topic of study. No, that’s not necessary. What we are doing is observing them as they go about their daily lives, and we, ours. So it’s not always in our best interest to be checking our email, because then we miss out on the action!
Not all of us at ERI talk to strangers when we aren’t in the field. But some of us do. And when we do it ethnographically, we learn all kinds of things from our flight attendants, row companions and taxi drivers. Just yesterday we learned about a flight attendant who has lived in Spain, Turkey, Latvia and soon Greece with her boyfriend who plays in the European basketball league; about the pastor from Ghana who lived in Germany for 25 years and now resides in a small town in Ohio and has four highly educated and successful children; and, about maternal death in Pakistan and Israel-Palestine water conflicts from a Middle Eastern frequency radio station in a local taxi.
And really, now that we think about it, who better to study airline travel than us? We are constant participant observers when it comes to that. We can tell you which airports have the best TSA (Buffalo), which airlines give the best service (Midwest), who has the most comfortable economy seats (Midwest and Southwest), who makes it easiest if you miss your connecting flight (Delta), who has the best standby policy (US Airways), and on and on.
Getting there is just as interesting as being there. And as far as doing ethnography, it’s just as fruitful.
Why Alex Wills Loves Ethnography
I love working as an ethnographer because I get to be a perpetual student! Each project I work on, each fieldwork I do, is fresh and exciting in its own right. Every one has a story to tell, given the chance. Doing this kind of work has really taught me the value of listening and opening up to understand how others navigate our social worlds (and really, worlds is the operative word here). And the people. I LOVE just how many viewpoints and experiences there are. The people we spend time with are almost always gracious, hospitable, and very, very interesting. And if I’ve done my job right, I honor them by transmitting insights our clients just couldn’t get with other methodologies.
Sometimes the path we travel to find the people we spend time with is just as interesting as our actual time with them. Doing ethnography constantly requires me to step outside of my comfort zone, whether that means stepping off the plane in a new and unfamiliar city and making my way to our participants, or being willing to ask the delicate questions that help us get to the heart of our topic of study. It keeps me on my toes.
And how exciting is it that as an ethnographer, I get to spend time in places that ordinarily I would never have access to, like hospital basements, patient bedsides, or the gardens of people I am meeting for the very first time? I studied journalism in undergrad and the leap to sociology only seemed natural. Then in graduate school I studied ethnography and spent time learning about the Cambodian community in Long Beach, California. I remember thinking to myself, “Man, I wish there was a job out there that would let me do ethnography.” Voila!
I love symbolic interactionism, partly because I love language and communications, but also because I appreciate how our reality is socially constructed. I find it fascinating that each family member can have a completely different interpretation of the same birthday party, and that we constantly adjust who and how we are to fit our perceptions of how we think others see us. One of my colleagues said it best when she referenced the prominent American sociologist Charles Cooley and his theory of the looking glass self by saying, “I am who I think you think I am.”
I am too new to this work to have ‘a favorite’ place. I try to relish the gems bobbing along the surface of seemingly mundane experiences. Like Herman the hotel shuttle driver in Albany, the ferry trip from Seattle to Bainbridge Island, the scrumptious potato pancakes at Zaftig’s deli in Boston, or simply a visit to a new neighborhood in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio.
Why Melinda Rea-Holloway Loves Ethnography
I always knew that I wanted to be a sociologist, I just didn’t know what it was called! Growing up in a family of 9 kids sure taught me a lot about people and the nature of social interactions. Then in my senior year of high school, I took a sociology class from Marcelus Reed and I finally knew what to call my career aspiration.
Teaching sociology for several years taught me a lot about sociological concepts and theories (more than I ever learned in graduate school.) Doing fieldwork with police officers as an undergraduate and with people who were HIV positive as a graduate student taught me a lot about how to listen and approach fieldwork in an inductive way.
I love that ethnography allows me to embrace my curiosity about the world and about people. I love that it allows me to meet people with a variety of experiences and backgrounds. I love that it allows me to continually learn without having to pay tuition or take exams! I love the analytical process of putting it all together—I get paid to do puzzles. I love sharing what we learn with clients and helping them to see their product and their consumer in a more holistic way. I love being able to put my training as a sociologist to practical use. Really, I could go on and on. . . .
I really like dramaturgy (Erving Goffman) because I can see it in practice everyday, in almost any social situation. We are ALL doing impression management ALL the time. This theory helps to remind us how SOCIAL virtually all things are, even things that we tend to think of as personal (like thoughts).
Manila is probably the favorite place I have traveled for work. . .
I loved the mixture of so many different cultures. Daily life routines and rituals occur within a collision of Eastern and Western norms. You can see the many different indigenous, Spanish, Chinese, and American influences in everything from architecture, to food, to language, to religion, to healthcare, and beyond. I often think about places in terms of the ‘heartbeat’ that you feel when moving around the city. I think that Manila has such a friendly, funny and hospitable heartbeat!
Within the US, I love to travel anywhere in the Wisconsin/Minnesota area–some of the nicest people in the US live there. I also have a soft spot for Atlanta and Seattle. Both places where I have conducted oodles of fieldwork, have met lots of people, and eaten lots of good food.
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Ethnotale: Up Close and Personal 