Are you studying me right now?
One of the first things people ask me when they find out I’m a sociologist is ‘Are you studying me right now?’ And if I’m being honest, the answer is usually ‘yes.’ I think people are fascinating and I wonder why everyone doesn’t people watch, all the time. There are so many people data points to ‘study’ in fact, that even if I collected data 24 hours a day, every day for the rest of my life, I would never run out of things to note. So obviously, I can hardly afford to take time off.
When I was in high school and college, I had a part time job at a local grocery store. The store was located in a neighborhood with lots of socio-economic, racial, and ethnic diversity. One of the things that I loved about the job was the opportunity to meet and ‘watch’ so many different people. As I look back on that experience, I realize that I was essentially doing participant observation every day. I wish I had taken field notes!
I learned a lot about people by being a cashier. I got to peek into customer’s daily lives and got to know what happened in their kitchens without ever visiting their homes. Being a teenager who had a working mom who didn’t cook much, I was amazed at the variety of foods that people bought and apparently cooked and ate. During my first several months on the job, I was forever asking customers what a particular produce item was because there were so many things I had never seen or heard of (jicama, kumquats, etc)! And many times as I was introduced to a new food, I was also introduced to a new dish or a new way of cooking or eating. Many of my customers took the time to explain to me how they prepared a particular food or where they had learned about or gotten a particular recipe. Many of these stories told me a lot about the person’s history, subculture, and family traditions.
But it wasn’t just produce, there were tons of other clues to household norms that passed through the grocery store each day. For example, there was a lot of variance in the amount of food people purchased and the frequency with which they visited the store. Some customers came grocery shopping virtually every day and others tried hard to keep their shopping confined to weekly, if not monthly visits. These habits obviously effected what they bought and therefore what they ate. But their habits were often grounded in ideas and values about food and about time. Some customers always came in in a rush and others seemed to never be in a hurry. Some customers bought the same items each visit and others varied their purchasing according to season or occasion. Some customers paid via food stamps and others paid with cash. All of these data points told a story about daily life, routine and ritual.
And each time I interacted with each customer, I learned a little bit more about who they were, where they came from, and what was going on in their lives. Although I had received very little training in sociology at the time, I was always trying to put together their ‘story’ by using the pieces of data that I got during our conversations and also the clues that I got from seeing what they purchased and what their shopping habits were. It was then that I realized how much you could learn about a person by just listening to what they were saying, and paying attention to what they were doing. I was fascinated by their stories and also a little bit surprised by how much I could learn by showing a little interest. I often asked a simple question about a particular produce item and got a very descriptive narrative about daily life.
People tell me a lot that I’m intuitive, but I think it is closer to the truth to say that I’m really curious and a pretty good observer. It is amazing what you can see when you are really looking, and what you can hear when you are really listening. So, if we ever met and you wonder if I’m studying you, the answer is probably yes. BUT don’t be offended, instead ask yourself, ‘when was the last time I had such a captive audience interested in me?’
Getting real: Life IS messy!
Remember a few years ago when Bissell came out with the tag line ‘Life is messy, clean it up’? I LOVED that campaign and also the sentiment behind it. Because the truth is, life IS messy. And consequently, real answers to questions about daily life are often not very cut and dry.
I’m sometimes asked about how ‘reliable’ or ‘valid’ ethnographic research is. Validity is easy to address because you can’t get more ‘valid’ than real life. Sure, people don’t always act EXACTLY like they would if you weren’t there. Almost all research impacts how people behave, and ethnography is no exception. But, over the years, we have collected lots of evidence (participants yelling at each other, people telling us about things even their spouse didn’t know about them, etc.) that we do get closer to real life than most other research methodologies.
But when it comes to reliability, ethnographers approach the issue a little bit differently. For example, think about the last 10 times you went grocery shopping. There were probably some patterns in the way that you did it. You probably went to the same place (at least most of those times), you probably started at the same end of the store, you probably had a list (or didn’t have a list), etc. But, there was probably a good deal of variation too, and a lot of the variation was probably attributable to the context of the trip. For example, did you go shopping alone or with someone else? Did you go shopping on a Tuesday evening or a Saturday afternoon? Where you stopping by to pick up an ingredient you had forgotten or were you going to the store for the first time in a month? All of these trips to the store can constitute ‘typical’ grocery shopping within a single household, but each can demonstrate very different types of patterns, and therefore can produce results that can appear a little bit unreliable. But that is because real life is complex and variable.
There are actually very few behaviors that get routinized to the degree that there is little or no variation in the way they are done. So for me, the question is not ‘is your ethnographic project reliable’, it is ‘how well does your ethnographic project capture the way(s) this thing is done’? It is obviously important to make sure we get to see what is typical, but we also want to make sure we get to see variation and why it exists. And this is important to try to understand both within and between households/people.
One of the things that concerns me a lot about my discipline (business/corporate ethnography) is that many people are now doing ‘ethnographic research’ without any real attention to the importance of context and the range of complexity that context brings to behavior. They assume that ‘context’ is covered by being there and watching people do something. But for me, context is so much more than that. Obviously the place where the thing happens is an important context to see and understand, but there are generally hundreds if not thousands of other contextual variables that come into play around any particular behavior. The skilled ethnographer will be cataloging and trying to understand as many of those as possible. And as you can see, this can get very messy, very quickly. But there is no reason to panic, the skilled ethnographer is also really good at systematically organizing those variables into an understandable story. I believe that the REAL value of ethnography is in its ability to explain the messiness of life and human behavior and to pull out the patterned similarities AND the patterned differences in how a thing is done.
Reconstructing Reality: What do you see?
Social scientists and philosophers have been arguing about ‘reality’ for a while now. There are generally two approaches to how reality is understood and measured by social scientists. Those taking a positivistic approach believe that although people may ‘see’ things differently, there is an objective reality. On the other hand, those taking a phenomenological approach assume multiple realities to any given situation. As an ethnographer, I generally skew toward the phenomenological viewpoint. I realize that not all versions of reality hold up equally well, but I have seen many instances of people creating their own reality around their experiences and around products/services.
I usually use the classic film ‘The Gods Must be Crazy’ to help illustrate this concept. So, in the film, there is a pilot that is flying over the Kalahari Desert and he drinks a coke and then throws the bottle out of the window of his plane. A man named Xi finds the coke bottle and assumes that it is a gift from the gods and he and his tribe find TONS of uses for the bottle—it is a tool, it is a toy, it is a musical instrument, etc. In other words, they construct an alternate reality around the bottle. And so the movie is a parable to illustrate how one man’s trash can become another man’s treasure.
This is one way in which the social construction of reality comes to life in my work. I do see many instances of people finding all kinds of interesting (but unintended) uses for products. They might fashion an expensive piece of electronic equipment into a workbench or they might use a medical device in ways that are not consistent with instructions, but which fit better into their particular needs. In these situations, my job becomes one in which I help my client understand not only WHAT they are doing, but WHY. This often requires me to walk a delicate line. Generally, my client has given a lot of thought to design and they have created a product that does what it is designed to do pretty well. However, sometimes I have to help them understand that it isn’t all about what this product does. Sometimes it is more important to understand the social world in which the product lives and how their vision of what the product should be might not be consistent with the reality in which the product lives.
For example, many years ago, we were hired by a manufacturer of high-end electronic equipment. This company had given A LOT of thought to their product line and were really, really proud of all of the bells and whistles their products had. But after spending a few weeks in the field, observing and talking to the people who used their products, I realized that the bells and whistles were not only NOT appreciated by the customers, they were often feared! Many consumers lived in constant fear that someone else would change some of the settings on this device and then they would have to spend hours trying to figure out how to reset it. There was clearly a disconnect in the ‘reality’ of what this thing was and especially around what the expectations of it were. For my client, the real VALUE of their product and what they believed really differentiated their brand from others were the bells and whistles (this was evidenced by their advertising, but also by the angry response we got from designers and engineers when we presented our findings)! But for the consumer, the value of the thing was that it turned on when it was supposed to and allowed them to do their job without being too complicated or distracting them from their real task.
As I said before, not all versions of ‘reality’ are tolerated equally, but it does pay to try to understand how your product might fit into the reality of daily life and how your customer might be constructing their own story about exactly what your product is and especially how (and for what) it is valued.
Why I like hanging with the frogs
I always tell clients that one of the benefits of an ethnographic approach is that you get really close to the action or the ‘thing’ that you want to learn about. And I do mean REALLY close. I often compare an ethnographic research study to a telephoto snapshot. Imagine you are at a football game and you want to capture an understanding about what is happening in the stadium. You have a couple of options at your disposal. You can take a wide-angle photo and capture the entire stadium. In this photo you will see EVERYTHING, but you won’t be able to see ANYTHING very clearly. Or you can take a telephoto picture and capture a specific area of the stadium. In this photo you will see only a small portion of what is going on in the stadium, but you will see that in detail and with clarity. The wide-angled photo is the kind of picture you get with large quantitative studies, and the telephoto picture is what you get with an ethnographic study. Both representations of the stadium are accurate and useful. In fact, they are complimentary. Ideally you would consult both before coming to any conclusions about what is happening at the football stadium.
I have a lot of respect for my statistics gathering colleagues (in fact I used to teach statistics). I like to know what they are learning because it helps to provide context for my fieldwork and sometimes even provides a framework for project design or analysis. But I really get excited about capturing that telephoto image.
Another way to think about this difference in perspective is to use the analogy of a frog’s eye view versus a bird’s eye view. Statistics give us a high level view of what is happening, from far away. Whereas an ethnographic approach gives us a frog’s eye view. In order to get the frog’s eye view, you usually need to get down in the thick of things and that is why I love being an ethnographer. I think it is so exciting to see things happen in real time and to be able to understand it all in the context in which it occurs. Real life is often unpredictable, messy, exciting, and frustrating, and ethnography helps to bring all of this to life. Over the course of my career I’ve had a frog’s eye view of so many interesting things and this has proven invaluable to me and my clients because it allows me to uncover insights and perspective that just can’t be obtained in any other way. For example, there is just no better way to understand the world of teenage gamers than to hang out with them for a summer and to try to get into their world. Yep, I got to do that! Or to hear the first hand stories and experience the daily life routines and rituals of people who are living with chronic pain and literally SEE how their world has shrunk into their living room or kitchen. Sure sometimes I get a little mud on me, but that is part of the experience and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Keeping our balance in a world of rapid change: Lessons from ‘Fiddler on the Roof’
When I used to teach introduction to sociology and sociology of marriage and family, I always had my classes watch the movie “Fiddler on the Roof”. It was a great way to bring to life many of the sociological concepts that we were learning in class. In that one movie, there are probably more than 100 sociological lessons, and the music is pretty fantastic too.
My favorite part of the whole movie is the opening sequence. The main character, Tevye, asks and answers the question: “How do we keep our balance?” “That I can tell you in one word.” “Tradition.” “Here in Anatevka, we have traditions for everything.” “How to sleep, how to eat, how to work, how to wear clothes.” “You may ask, ‘how did this tradition get started?’’ “I’ll tell you. . . .I don’t know” “But it’s a tradition, and because of our traditions, every one of us knows who he is, and what God expects him to do.”
Truer words were never spoken, and in my line of work, I see Tevye’s observation in action all the time. We could easily replace the word ‘tradition’ with the word ‘norm.’ No matter who the person, or what the context, behavior and ideas are driven and ruled by norms. And this is the case, long after we have forgotten (or perhaps even before we have learned) the reason for the norm. Norms are powerful forces that let each of us know who we are and what is expected of us. The number and diversity of norms that each person follows every day is staggering.
My job as an ethnographer is to try to get a handle on the norms driving the thing I’m hired to understand. Whether it is how people cook dinner or how one reacts to being diagnosed with a chronic disease, norms are ever present in determining how people think and behave. There are often well-established patterns in how things are done and even in how people think about and place value upon things, so many norms are obvious and often slap us in the face as soon as we spend a little time watching and listening. However, other norms are a little more subtle, and the patterns are not always so obvious until we see someone doing it differently or spend some time in analysis, really breaking down and organizing observations.
But the thing is, even the most obvious norms are often not so obvious unless you train yourself to look for them. Although we all follow cultural norms each day, for the most part, we do it on automatic pilot. The classic sociological example used to bring this concept to life is to ask people to think about what they do when they enter an elevator. There are some very rigid rules for behavior on elevators. You must face the front, go to the alternate corner if someone else is already on the elevator, keep conversation to a minimum, etc. Most of us do not remember reading a manual on elevator etiquette, but very few people ever violate these norms. And why do you think that is? T-R-A-D-I-T-I-O-N!
I learned a lot about the power of tradition a few years ago when I was in the Philippines studying how moms took care of their babies. I had spent the afternoon with a young mom (who also happened to be a biologist) and her one-year old son. We had spent a lot of our time talking about what was important to her as a mother, and how she made decisions about how to care for her son. She told me that she was very modern, but her own mother was very old-fashioned, and this often caused conflict when they were negotiating how her son was to be cared for. One of the things that they didn’t agree on was whether he should be seen by a pediatrician or a traditional healer when he was ill. My participant told me that because she was a scientist, she knew that modern medicine was based on scientific principals and that traditional medicine was based on superstitions and that she didn’t put much stock in superstitions.
I had been playing with the little boy, but after a few hours, it was time for me to leave, and when I walked out the door, the little boy started to cry. Because I’m a Western mom, I thought I should walk away as quickly as possible because I had been taught the ‘get out of sight, and you will be out of mind’ approach to dealing with crying children. As I rounded the corner, the mom came running after me and explained that she needed me to come back to her house. She told me that her son was very upset and she was concerned that he would get sick, so she needed me to place some of my saliva on her son’s tummy. Saliva from the offending person was the antidote to ward off potential illness. I of course obliged and then said goodbye again.
At first I thought maybe I had misunderstood the conversation with the mom and her seemed rejection of traditional practices and beliefs. But after seeing some other mothers, I realized there was a pattern when it came to western versus traditional medicine and that these norms were interlocked with rapid change and younger women’s desires to be more ‘modern.’ This all resulted in a complicated system of ideals, values, and behaviors that actually contained several seeming contradictions. In a nutshell, times were a-changing BUT many of the behavioral norms were lagging behind the changes in ideals. And so it turned out that the mother who seemed to WANT to reject traditional medicine, but who didn’t want to take a chance on her son getting ill, wasn’t unusual and wasn’t really a contradiction once the puzzle was put together and the power of TRADITION was factored in.
Leopard print bikinis and body exfoliation: Living outside my comfort zone
Usually the things that I get to do in the field are sooooo cool. But my job also often requires me to do things that are outside of my comfort zone. Seriously, I do things when I’m working that I would never do otherwise. It is almost like I have an alter ego that sometimes takes over when I’m in the field. Outside the field I’m a somewhat antisocial, risk-averse, fussy vegetarian that likes the creature comforts of life. But my alternate, fieldwork persona, we will call her Mel, is crazily social, fearless, impervious to embarrassment, above gastrointestinal upset, and generally unflappable.
When we were studying hair loss, I visited hair salons, talked to stylists and got my hair cut FOUR times. When we studied tourism in Atlanta, I visited the Cheetah, a high-end gentleman’s club and also a world famous tourist spot. I conducted in-context fieldwork while naked women danced all around me. When we were studying infant nutrition in the Philippines I was offered an expensive delicacy for lunch that just so happened to be congealed cow’s blood! Although I don’t drink alcohol, I’ve consumed cognac, homemade berry liquor, limoncello and lots of wine during fieldwork.
But last summer, I had one of my most interesting and challenging contextual mapping assignments. It all began with a trip to Istanbul and a desire to understand hygiene rituals. A logical stop in this trip was the local hamam (Turkish bath). I was woefully uneducated about what to expect (this is actually a job requirement—taking an inductive approach so as not to have too many pre-conceived thoughts).
When I arrived in Istanbul, our local ethnographer called to arrange my visit to the hamam. She told me they said I would need to bring a bikini. It had been many years since I had owned a bikini, so I asked if it would be possible to do the exfoliation treatment nude (that is how I sometimes get massages and I thought this would be a similar experience). I was imagining a private room, with towels and blankets to cover me. My colleague informed me that the hamam was insisting that I wear a bikini but that I could purchase one there.
When I arrived at the hamam, I was given a box full of potential bikinis. The one that fit best was a leopard print number that barely covered the essentials. At this point I should tell you that non-fieldwork Melinda dresses pretty conservatively, usually in black. No worries, however, Mel was there to put on the leopard print.
Once I walked into the room where the exfoliation experience was to take place, I realized why they had insisted that I wear a bikini. It turns out that the exfoliation treatment happens in a communal area! As I sat in the pool and waited for my turn, I experienced a rush of thoughts and emotions. I went from being embarrassed and resentful of the leopard print bikini to being SOOOOOOO thankful that I had been forced to wear it. I had rapid images of what WOULD have happened if they had granted my request to do the treatment nude.
My elation was short lived, however, once I had a good look at what was going to happen next. . . . The exfoliation took place on a large marble slab where 2-3 women could lay at once. The spa workers prepared each woman for her exfoliation by removing her bikini top and fashioning the bikini bottom into a thong. Did I mention that my client was with me? Yes, sitting in the pool, with my client, waiting for the eventual removal of the bikini top and conversion of the bikini bottom into a thong, Melinda and Mel began to have an internal dialogue. Melinda was saying ‘this is so inappropriate and unprofessional.’ Mel was saying ‘don’t be ridiculous, this is fieldwork, you are just doing your job, pay attention to what is happening.’
Have you ever been so embarrassed that you felt like you were having an out of body experience? The exact moment this happened was during the actual exfoliation process. There are a lot of details that I won’t share here, but did you know that when you visit a hamam, the exfoliation is so intense and vigorous that everything, and I do mean everything, is in motion? Laying on the slab, without the shield of my leopard print bikini top, everything was wiggling and jiggling, every which way. I had jiggles in places that I was well aware of, but also jiggles in places that I had no idea. Luckily Mel wasn’t bothered. She was fascinated by the whole experience. We left the hamam with a new leopard print bikini, perfectly smooth skin, and a bunch of interesting observations about hygiene, culture, and tradition.
How do you become an ethnographer?
I’ve been a professional ethnographer for more than a decade and there are recurring themes in the questions I’m asked about my work. When I tell people what I do for a living, the first response is generally ‘I didn’t know that job existed.’ This is usually followed by ‘exactly how does someone becomes an ethnographer?’ It is true, ethnography is not a common career choice, but my path toward this work was perfectly logical.
I was always a nosy kid and now I’m a nosy adult. I like to know the details. The details about what is going on. The details about what people are doing. The details about why they are doing it. The details about their thoughts and feelings. This sometimes makes me a little bit difficult to live with, but makes me ideally suited to be an ethnographer.
There were several key moments leading to my eventual career. I don’t remember the exact moment I knew I wanted to be a sociologist, but I do remember the exact moment I got the label for what I wanted to be. I was in my 11th grade sociology class and my teacher, Marcellus Reed, was explaining social stratification. A light bulb went on and I remember thinking ‘oh, I want to be a sociologist’. From that point on, I never waivered in my career choice. I started college and immediately declared myself a sociology major. I finished undergraduate school without ever considering a change. I went to graduate school and held fast in my decision. Never mind that EVERYONE was asking what I planned to do with a degree in sociology. I wasn’t exactly sure how I was going to make a living ‘doing sociology’, I just knew I was supposed to be a sociologist.
I had noted a glimpse of my eventual career when I was taking an undergraduate qualitative methods class. We were assigned an ethnographic research project and I decided to do mine on local police officers. The assignment was some participant observation for a few weeks and then a written report. But I was having so much fun, so I continued fieldwork for a couple of years. I thought at the time ‘this is what I should be doing for a living.’ But that thought was quickly followed by ‘no one will ever pay me to do this, so I better have a back up plan.’
Once I got to graduate school, I realized I could teach and do ethnographic research on the side so that became my plan. I would work in academia and do ethnographic research for fun. I got my masters degree and then decided to go for my PhD. Things had changed a little bit and I was gravitating more toward applied work. I began doing ethnographic research projects in the not-for-profit arena and found that people WOULD pay me to do ethnography. So I revised my plan. I would still teach and do ethnographic research on the side, but I now knew that I could use ethnography to supplement my income. Eventually, my not-for-profit work segued into full time ethnographic research for big corporations.
I tell my kids that their most important job is to identify their dharma. They should try to find the thing that they are ideally suited to do and they should do that for a living. Doing ethnographic research is my dharma. How lucky am I? I have the coolest job in the world. I get to be nosy for a living. I get to ask the ‘what is going on’ question about everyday, and not only do I not get in trouble for it (well, rarely), I get paid to do it.
Tales from the field: India
We’re doing our collaborative analysis this week for our study on the luxury lifestyle in India. In honor of that, here are a few more tales we haven’t told from John’s and Kazuyo’s weeks in Mumbai, Ludhiana and Bangalore.
Hospitality of Indian People
I was pleasantly surprised how hospitable Indian culture is. As a part of our fieldwork, we are to go to a place they frequent. But the thing is that we ‘invited ourselves’ to do this, so of course, we are going to pick up the bill. How many times I had to insist to pay! With one participant, he ended up taking us to dinner because we paid for other things!
How Quickly The Store Comes Down on the Price
Yes, it’s a bargain culture. It’s a part of culture, but the level of bargaining is quite different here in India. One day, John and I are doing our context mapping and going to various stores. We have gone to a few stores, including some carpet stores. We are shown all silk hand-made carpet in various sizes, some wool/silk combo carpet, etc. 
They are feast to my eyes for sure. I ask for the price, they ask me whether I want to know in Rupees or in US dollars. I tell them Rupees. They start rattling price of all those carpets. Well, it’s a bargain price compared to what people pay in the US. As we are there for about 20 minutes looking at it, and we are not making any commitment to buy any carpet. They suddenly tell us that they will sell us TWO carpets for the price of one. I look at him and had to repeat the same sentence to make sure. They say yes, but they say that we have to make a decision AT THAT MOMENT. Of course, we didn’t take their offer, but was surprised how quickly they came down on the price. They are a good price, BUT it’s not inexpensive.
Toilet in India
First day in Bangalore, I check into my hotel. I had no sleep coming to Delhi and I ended up not sleeping at all when I checked into the hotel in Delhi and I had to take a very early flight out to come to Bangalore. So mind you, I am pretty tired. I check in and go to the bathroom, I am very confused. There is no bathtub, but a little hand-held shower head next to my toilet. I think to myself, “Is this the shower? Really?” So I go out from my room and find a housekeeping person and ask, “Does any of your room have a bath tub?” They say no. I ask “So, I am supposed to use a little shower next to toilet?” They say yes. I am thinking OMG. Well, it turns out that little shower head next to toilet is their version of bidet! Apparently, it’s very easy to use, but I was afraid I would make a mess on myself, so I was not brave enough to try it. It’s everywhere—public restroom, etc. I am sure that it’s a lot more hygienic than using just toilet paper. In Japan, we have a built in bidet and they are nice.
It’s a Male-Dominant Culture
Indian women I met are strong. They are smart and they speak up. But when it comes to public space, it’s still a male-dominant culture. When I went to context mapping with John, at several stores, they completely ignored me and only spoke to John—especially when it came to price. At restaurants and bars, they ALWAYS bring a bill to a male who is in our party. They look very confused when I bring out my credit card to pay a bill. Even though I am the one who is putting down my credit card, a server often brings a bill to John (or a male person who is together). They just do not seem to get it!
Service Sector is Superb in India—except at the airport
Service in India is something to be said. I wish that it is like that in America. At a restaurant, hotel, bar, shops (even though they might be trying to sell things with higher prices), people are very nice, polite and pleasant. They say “Yes, Mom”, “No, Madam”, and they do pay attention to your needs and fairy quickly to meet our needs. Even at one hotel I was not even a guest, they gave us several recommendation to where we should go, made some calls for us, etc. Unheard of in America, right? Do not expect from airport staff though. It’s kind of a huge downer especially as the last stop to leave India. Maybe it’s because it is an international airport and there are just simply too many people. But airport guard almost sent me away because I didn’t have an itinery which made me frantic because I was catching a flight to come home! But another guard came to rescue me after hearing me screaming at him and straightened a matter. I think it would have been difficult for ERI to come bail me out from a jail in India.
Fan us on Facebook!
Ethnotale: Up Close and Personal 