Ethnography
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a qualitative research strategy
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relies primarily on participant observation
- glorified people-watching
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the study and interpretation of cultural behavior
Ethnography in Creative Nonfiction Writing
Some Ideas…
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maybe we stumble upon some information about Wicca, so we decide to look up if there’s a Wicca community in our city… this leads us to attend a meeting and befriend some Wiccan practitioners.
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maybe we meet a nice grandpa at a grocery store and decide we want to research and observe the culture of retirement homes
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maybe we want to see what it would be like to survive off minimum wage, so we take a job at Wal-Mart and see what happens (Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich)
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maybe we want to go to the airport and see how many people read a book versus how many people distract themselves with an electronic device…
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how old are these people? what are they wearing? what are they reading? on their smart phones or computers or tablets or what?
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Some Comments…
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We don’t need to travel to an exotic land to observe a culture
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There are subcultures of society everywhere
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Observation is an art.
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Pay close attention to all parts of the environment
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Be ethical. CONSENT IS usually NECESSARY
Devil’s Bait by Leslie Jamison
“This gathering is something like an AA meeting or a Quaker service: between speakers, people occasionally just walk up to the podium and start sharing. Or else they do it in their chairs, hunched over to get a better look at each other’s limbs. They swap cell phone photos. I hear a man tell a woman: ‘I live in a bare apartment near wprk; don’t have much else.’ I hear her reply: ‘But you still work?’”
“I discover that the people who can’t help whispering during lectures are the ones I want to talk to; that the coffee station is useful because it’s a good place to meet people, and becaue drinking coffee means I’ll have to keep going to the bathroom, which is an even better place to meet people. The people I meet don’t look disfigured at first glance. But up close, they reveal all kinds of scars and bumps and scabs. They are covered in records–fossils or ruins–of the open, oozing things that once were.”