Ethnography in Theory and Practice

If you've ever been a student of Sociology, anthropology, or communication, you've probably heard about ethnography and ethnographic projects.  The concept behind the word is crucial for effective research into a culture and community.  Ethnography as described in The Cultural Experience is "the process of discovering and describing a culture." (McCurdy, Spradley, & Shandy 2004).  In my little experience, easier said than done.  Today it is my goal to better explain to you the concept of ethnography.

When talking about ethnography, it's really the thorough study of culture which may possibly include sub-cultures and microcultures.  Subcultures means smaller cultures found inside a national culture, and microcultures are cultures even more restricted than subcultures, found within the subcultures.  Microcultures are typically very specific and are not restrictive on how many different ones a person can be a part of.  Microcultures remind me of a picture within a picture,within a picture again.  While microcultures are part of the larger group, the focusing on a smaller group of customs and people make it easier to quickly immerse the student in the culture.  For student projects with a shorter time frame, studying microcultures is a much more efficient way to still have a thorough project.  For instance, instead of studying all sports at your school, you might just study the microculture that occurs in, say, soccer or football.

If one does decide to study a microculture, the encouraging news is that they're everywhere!  Microcultures exist in places that you might not necessarily think of as being separate from other cultures.  You could have a whole grocery store microculture or just a deli department microculture; the possibilities truly are endless.  As McCurdy asserts, it's definitely better to choose a topic that's interesting so that hopefully you'll be more encouraged to actually get into your ethnography project.

There are several necessary steps one must take in order to start the whole ordeal of an ethnographic project, which I'm sure I will detail at a later date.  Today, I will focus on what I have learned by reading about a particularly interesting ethnographic project by an anthropology student Jennifer Boehlke titled "Juicing Their Way to the Top"(McCurdy 2004).  This shortened ethnography project studies the microculture of a downtown Tattoo parlor, to which the author gives the pseudonym of "Damascus".  While I'm sure there are multiple facets of this microculture that could be highlighted, this ethnographic student focuses on the selling techniques used by these social chameleons we call tattoo artists utilize.

First, Boehlke observes the type of people that frequent the tattoo shop, quickly realizing that there is no set type of person that gets a tattoo.  But the key here, I believe, is to observe your surroundings and the people in it.  In this case, there were old, young, lazy, motivated, successful (or not) people, the door is constantly revolving with different and interesting people looking for tattoos.  Alternatively there were people just looking to browse tattoos, or groupies.  The real emphasis of Boehlke’s project, however, is the term 'juicing'.  No, not the real juice we drink; in this context, the author uses the term as a particular metaphorical juice, often like a motivator that the tattoo artists give their customers to achieve a particular action or feeling from the  customer.

Juicing can be done by one or two people depending on the situation.  These “juicers” attempt to achieve a variety of different responses.  It seems there is a juice for just about every desired action throughout the process of  getting a tattoo.  There's  a juice for getting people to come by the shop, a juice for raising the price of a tattoo even a juice for pain (to help them forget it, of course).  A juice to cover mistakes and a juice to get people to add more expensive items to their bill, just to name a few.

The flirt juice is typically used to pick up customers and consequently sometimes turns into obtaining groupies.  Apparently, groupies for tattoo shops are not uncommon.  Other tattoo artists will team up in the same shop to lay on some add-on juice to try and get the consumers to spend more money.  To gather her information Boehlke interviewed the artists about juicing as well as observing the group from the inside.

An interesting facet to this ethnographic method of total immersion is the effect it can have on the researcher.   By the end of the project it almost seems like the authors tone has changed. In one of Morgan Spurlock’s episodes of 30 Days, a minute man agrees to spend 30 days with a family of illegal immigrants.  Considering that minute men's sole self-assigned duty is to call in illegal immigrants and get them deported, this was a considerably tension-ridden situation.  Though in the beginning the man gave no wiggle room to the illegal immigrants only seeing right and wrong, by the end of the month he saw that they were just people.  Of course he was still very much against illegal immigrants, but by experiencing their life right alongside them, he was able to more fully relate to them on a human level and understand their cultural experience.  

This effect is not necessarily the case or goal of all ethnographic projects, but rather an interesting possible side effect to consider. This man devoted to being a minute man, found his convictions at the very least questioned.  In the name of research or not, the author of this project ended up getting a tattoo, even knowing that 'juice' would no doubt be used.

Ultimately, studying this ethnographic project and watching this documentary gave me, and I'm sure every other reader, a unique insight into the type of microculture that exists within cultures and subcultures. Even the most seemingly simple and straightforward of culture or subculture, has microcultures with hidden facets that without further study, we wouldn't know about.

Experiencing Cultural Research

In researching ethnography, I have learned that the simple idea of studying a culture is actually a highly complex and more structured undertaking than I thought at first glance.  While I had no misconceptions

that it would be an interesting and involved process, I was unclear on exactly how much attention to detail would be involved.  Mainly I would like to inform all of you about several key points to remember when attempting an ethnographic project yourself.

Previously I have defined ethnography and looked at a practical example.  Today I will detail a few of the necessary steps involved in starting the no doubt exhilarating ethnography project journey.  Many of these I have found in my reading of The Cultural Experience by Mccurdy Spradley & Shandy (2012).  

After you've decided what you will be studying, or perhaps even before, you need to choose an informant.  He or she should be your guide through the world of the microculture you have decided to observe. Picking a friend is a feasible option, but consider the impact that might have on their answers to your questions about said microculture.  Because someone knows you on a personal level before embarking on this journey, their reactions around you might be changed, or they might not be willing to take the project as seriously.  This also deprives you of the truest form of ethnographic immersion into a culture to which you are truly a stranger . This choice is, of course, purely up to the student.

Think of the cultural informant as a tour guide.  You don't really know your tour guide to well when you sign up for the tour, but you only sign up for tours that YOU want to go on.  Because it's voluntary you want to learn about what you’re seeing, and because they agreed to this job, they want to teach you.  The tour guide is friendly,  sharing knowledge without bias to how you personally might react to any information.  Unlike a tour guide, however, your informant must be actively involved in the group you are studying.

Ideally, you would want to find an informant who is sociable and willing to talk to you about their microculture in a clear and coherent way.  You want to find someone who has been fully immersed in the culture, someone who is not new to it and "knows the ropes".  While this process can be stressful, many people have found that informants are willing to help and eager to teach about their passion or life.  When talking to your informant (and also when you are interacting with and observing your microculture) keep your eyes open.  Just be observing what's going on and you can learn more than what your informant may be able to remember in your interviews.

After you've picked your ideal cultural informant, it's important to think about how the interviewing process will go.  What questions will you ask?  How many?  Will there be more interviews?  All are valid questions which need thorough answers.  Don't limit yourself on questions.  Putting too much structure and constraints on your interview might stress you and/or your informant out.  Take it on a step-by-step basis.  Asking the right kind of questions can be equally or more important than the number of questions being asked.  The saying rings true; quality over quantity.  The goal is to keep them talking and you talking as much as possible.  On track, of course.  While it might be entertaining to hear about their toy poodle for half an hour, it probably won't be useful for your study of the night shift nurse’s microculture.  Discovering as many 'folk terms' or jargon during this stage is incredibly important.

Folk terms are important for a number of reasons, not the least of which is understanding what is going on when you are immersed in the culture.  For instance, if someone in the surfer community were to say that something is “gnarly” (meaning cool or awesome), without previous knowledge of the word, one wouldn't necessarily come to that conclusion about meaning.  Many microcultures have large sets of jargon or folk terms that make the culture more exclusive, making it increasingly important for the ethnographer to fully understand the terminology.

While you're asking questions, you need to remember some key information to gather to help you understand taxonomic structure.   Taxonomic structure meaning a way to define and categorize lists of terms and sets of ideas.  Also, when asking your initial set of questions, discover facts and details, but not the complex meaning of anything in particular.  Discovering what things mean can distract from your initial information gathering interview. Taxonomic structure is just a fancy way of saying categorizing or classifying something under broad and specific terms.  The book gives the example of cars as the domain with several car makes under it.  It is important to remember that each subcategory in your taxonomy should have at least two strings attached to it, or none at all.  In such a way, we also classify different ethnographic factors to form graphs which help the reader to better understand the inner working of said microculture.

Ultimately, learning about these few steps to effective ethnography helped me better understand how I am going to approach learning about different cultures.  Hopefully, it can inspire some of you to take the leap and learn about some different cultures yourself.  After all, you never know which one you'll end up joining eventually.