Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes, Ch. 1 and 2
- Ethnography: ethnos + graph (people + writing)
Fieldwork (or ethnography) involves a kind of social proximity to that thing you’re studying. This means that research will take on a more active character than merely looking up information or facts. For the sake of your projects, this means that you should consider yourself a part of the very thing you’re studying. Since you live/study in Columbia–and since your topic relates somehow to this place–you are already immersed in it.
Fieldwork-research precludes the notion of “passive” or “neutral” research. Why? Because you are a participant in this social space, but you are also a selective recorder with a limited perspective (3). You will end up selecting which details to record or not. What does this mean for *the truth* of any written account you give?
PREMISE #1:
Transparent research is a myth. Even if you faithfully record something observed, you are still writing one version, one interpretation of events that you saw from a highly situated position. There is no “eagle’s eye view” of events that you can offer, since you are an embodied writer with a history of your own (9). There is a matter of accuracy, to be sure. But accuracy in your recording does not mean that you have provided The Truth of any event (5). See the examples of the different checkout line accounts on pages 5-8.
Does this mean there’s no such thing as truth in writing? Is it all a matter of fiction??
PREMISE #2:
There is an inseparability of methods for writing and what you actually discover/find (11). “What the ethnographer finds out is inherently connected with how she finds it out.” Your research findings, then, are “contingent upon the circumstances” you are in (12).
PREMISE #3:
Your research notes should involve close descriptions that avoid generalizations (32). When you write, think about how to show rather than tell those details. (See example on page 33 as an example.)
