writing ethnography pdf essay

Several students commented that the experience was their favorite of their entire academic career. ‘Stop bitching’ follows. In addition, when conducting observations they need to look at the subculture afresh and describe elements they have taken for granted. The ethnographic project will help loosen the ties of Euroamerican ethnocentrism even if what you study is part of that dominant culture. I connect Brooklyn with who I am and who I am becoming like every hair on my head, it’s just natural. In the classroom, you can show students they are already involved and invested in subcultures but investigating these different versions and helping them recognize that they have an immediate investment in the ethnographic research and potential to develop their perspectives. She achieves this balance in her writing by using multiple voices, starting and restarting to establish her point of view through both analysis and storytelling. Sheila was very quiet and often kept to herself in class, although she was always the one to participate in a thoughtful way when the rest of the class was unprepared or silent. She was constantly trying to balance her family’s goals for her with figuring out where her own talents and ambitions were. Kelly’s dialogue with Brooklyn, incorporating her memories, aspirations and hopes for the future, was touching for the whole class to hear. Projects vary as much as individuals do, sometimes inviting new emotional insight and sometimes producing equally meaningful insight about the individual’s role in society. Considering my goals for the assignment, Sheila’s writing became increasingly critical and experimental, allowing her to express herself on multiple levels. In this chapter, I will offer an analysis of the autoethnography assignment and give detailed consideration to student examples from my classroom. During the process of conducting qualitative research, interacting with his audience and sharing his subculture with classmates, his writing gained dimension and richness and became part of the process rather than simply a product of it. Her gestures are flowing and have movement like a mob boss. We go through the questions and I know he loves to talk about his lifestyle and former adventures as a graffiti artist. In preparation for her project, Sheila conducted interviewed her father, brother, sister, and two friends who were also involved in drag racing. writing papers for your college classes. It’s dark out, with a little light coming from the street lights that line my block. In her paper, Kelly looked through the lens of her family—people with strong artistic abilities and a desire to be free from the housing projects where they lived. I have no clue. The fast-paced dialogue, the unfamiliar vocabulary and the nature of the activities interested Sheila and her classmates. Revised on June 19, 2020. Writing Sample 1 Ethnographic Research Paper Pdf This Is An. With my pen and pad in hand, I take a seat on the stoop in front of my house. ‘What is that about?’ I ponder. … I could see from the pictures that I found of the family how things really used to be and he misses that. Sheila’s piece was informed by a sensitivity to character and surroundings, to identities and the positionality of herself and those otherwise involved in the subculture. The two writers reflect on subcultures that involve family members, giving an immediacy to the writing and analysis. Sheila had always been present but not involved in the activities surrounding it. These kinds of papers entail putting course content into conversation with The benefit in all projects was that the students created large amounts of critical writing, and many student projects allowed an engagement with an aspect of a larger community and an opportunity to analyze their positionality in these communities. Asking students to draw on visceral experiences as well as textual evidence complicates their analysis and keeps them constantly involved in what is being communicated. She believes the work should: make a substantive contribution, have aesthetic merit, have reflexivity, make an impact, and express a reality (254). It’s a special one that only mothers can do or just the women in my family, and I know I already have it, people told me. Instead, there is a showdown with police right in front of her house, people flee, and nobody ever gets to drive. It was mostly the domain of the men in her family, and while she was not a direct observer or participant in the racing, the drag racers, their friends, and the conversations and lives of her father and brother affected every aspect of Sheila’s daily life. However, his attitude evolved when he was asked to engage in the autoethnographic inquiry project. The ethnographic experience takes us out of ourselves. Throughout the piece, she clearly establishes a point of view, which she emphasizes in many of her works about autoethnography, “I think that sociology can be emotional, personal, therapeutic, interesting, engaging, evocative, reflexive, helpful, concrete, and connected to the world of everyday experience” (120). What happened that night was the catalyst for Sheila’s paper and her final performance piece. Through his paper, he questioned why hunting was so important to him. “A story’s ‘validity’ can be judged by whether it evokes in readers a feeling that the experience described is authentic and lifelike, believable and possible; the story’s generalizability can be judged by whether it speaks to readers about their experience” (133). Each aspect of the project is conducted as a separate assignment, and students are asked to amass the data in a portfolio and create a final autoethnographic piece of writing that draws on their accumulated research and analyzes the process of creating the materials and writing the paper. Students also are asked to interview at least two people who hold different positions in the subculture in order to get different perspectives. At the end of the semester, after grades had been submitted, I asked students to do an anonymous freewrite that reflected on their experiences in the class, including the topic, projects and texts. Kelly’s reflective observation paints a picture of the connection she has with her surroundings as well as how she struggles to bridge the gaps. In her piece “Evaluating Ethnography,” Laurel Richardson examines the divide that has persisted between literary and scientific writing (253). Well I believe that I am for helping him with cramps, so I think he can do this for me. When conducting autoethnographic research, as opposed to traditional ethnographic research, students are somewhat empowered in that their personal involvement enables them to start out with a certain amount of knowledge about the subculture they are investigating. They also have the option of interviewing or surveying people outside of the subculture to incorporate more positions on it. Here I give an overview of the student projects, excerpts from their writing and analysis of the process of each student. the essay-writing process, when you are trying to develop a feel for the key ideas and debates surrounding a particular topic. You may become so caught up in the personalities and events It is important to remember, Jones says, that all of these texts are partial views and that is OK: “You can’t do it all, you need to do a version” (760). Often the process leads them to ideas and feelings they have never fully analyzed before. 6 . I walk to the window in front of my house, and I see a crowd of over fifteen people. Throughout her transcripts of interviews, she commented on her need to brush up her interviewing skills, always maintaining a dialogue with herself and with her readers. In her reflection, Sheila was surprised by how eager those around her had been to share what they knew about drag racing and how excited her own father had been to have her watch and take an interest in what was going. Quickly I run back to my room to get my camera, but when I reach back to the window in the front of my house, no one is there.…, It’s brisk and very cold. Previous involvement in or attachment to the subculture gives students a vested interest in the project, a sense of authority, and a position from which to analyze. option to present their creative elements and discuss their papers, the class often was lead to tears, laughter, and grave silence. I think it’s really me searching for the true me. She thought it would be a great opportunity to participate, but with a degree of distance. He consistently showed he was simply not interested through both his body language and his participation. She was reserved but very energetic in her own way, usually sitting to the side of the room in a zippered hoodie, smiling the smile of someone who always did her work and fully understood what was going on but didn’t let others know that. She notes criticism of autoethnography and advocates for performance that not only expresses but employs mimesis, poesis and kinesis, moving from a stage of recognition to action, as performance scholars such as Victor Turner and Dwight Conquergood have suggested. This often has the effect of increasing students’ understanding and involvement in the subculture and produces a new appreciation for an activity that perhaps had been an unexamined part of their lives outside the classroom. In this way, Richardson intends to show the related nature of scientific research and creative expression. Everything she was and everything she could have been. When Kelly decided to focus on Brooklyn, she was able to deal simultaneously with her family and where she had been raised. When looking at this personal writing, he wants abundant concrete detail, structurally complex narratives, emotional credibility, a tale of two selves, and ethical self-consciousness (270-71). In each case, students can pursue a topic that interests them and increase their understanding of the subculture while staying within their comfort zone. While not all projects will be as intimate, this is not the point. Starting the project, Sheila had hesitation and curiosity. After her performance of the fast-paced language, she stopped to explain to her classmates what the words meant and where they had come into play in her observation of the evening of the drag race. He explained described to the class that he found out deer hunting was a way for him to bond with his children as well, and he shared their pictures with me on his way out of class on the last day, his pride in his family obvious in his expression. Ethnography, descriptive study of a particular human society or the process of making such a study. They have the opportunity to practice interviewing skills and writing questions to elicit the best information for their projects. The opposite problem also occurs: students get so excited about a project that they want to go way above and beyond requirements with their research. This kind of work can be engaged on many different personal levels and have varied meaning for each participant. Putting Ethnographic Writing in Context by Seth Kahn This essay is a chapter in Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 2, a peer-reviewed open textbook series for the writing classroom. Autoethnographic analysis in this case includes interviewing other members of the subculture, conducting field observation, analyzing textual materials, investigating histories, and engaging in self-reflection. Arthur Bochner responds to Richardson in “Criteria Against Ourselves” and sets up his own evaluation criteria for what he terms “alternative ethnography,” another name often assigned to ethnography that deviates from traditional social science norms. Sheila had always wanted to know more about the subculture but found she had no real excuse to enter it. She did observations in the areas surrounding where she grew up and drew on texts that reflected on the nature of home to develop her final project. A comprehensive study of a culture, an ethnography informs its reader through narrative immersion, often using sensory detail and storytelling techniques alongside objective description and traditional interview style. One of them is very loud and active. The critical writing in all of its varieties that emerged from students demonstrates that there is a good deal of potential in the mixing of qualitative inquiry and personal writing. I always knew that one day I would be writing about Brooklyn, I just didn’t know how soon. “Ethnography” means, literally, a portrait (graph) of a group of people (ethnos). For her presentation, Kelly decided to do a spoken-word poem that explored her feelings for her home and her family while also showing her struggles to identify who she is and negotiate this with her environment. Although always present, she never really asked any of the people in her house or in her family what it was all about and managed to avoid ever watching it happen. I’ve been asking him if a race will ever happen before my project is due, so I know that he’s happy I can get off his back. Short Essay Research Paper Research papers address a topic that is chosen by the student or assigned by the instructor. Again, because of time constraints, they are not required to do this. When students are made aware of their presence in already-constructed texts and the places they currently hold in the subcultures they are investigating, this kind of project can be more organic. “The inner workings of the self must be investigated in reciprocal relationship with the other: concrete action, dialogue, emotion, and thinking are featured, but they are represented within relationships and institutions, very much impacted by history, social structure, and culture, which themselves are dialectically revealed through action, thought, and language” (133). He looks at me as if I am crazy. Contemporary ethnography is based almost entirely on fieldwork and requires the complete immersion of the anthropologist in the culture and everyday life of the people who are the subject of the study. Her her brother, her father and their large friend group, which spent a lot of time at Sheila’s home, engaged in drag racing. The word “ethnography” also refers to the written report of the research that the ethnographer produces afterwards. I am a little hesitant to approach my mother to do the interview, especially while she’s watching the news, but I should get it done since it is due tomorrow. Academia.edu is a platform for academics to share research papers. ... As a reader, the thickness of ethnographic writing can seem like a liability at first. Overwhelmingly, students appreciated the opportunity to pursue personally meaningful subjects and share their insights with classmates. There’s a race going on tonight,’ my father says grinning. For this reason, in my own classroom I have decided that a form of autoethnography provides one of the clearest ways not only to analyze a subculture or aspect of society but also to investigate one’s involvement in that community. Interviewing and conducting observations both empowers them and decenters them from their own experience, forcing them into a position of questioning and representation to an intended audience (their instructor and their classmates, who will see this writing at multiple stages). Recounting episodes from her childhood, talking through her father and brother and mother’s perspective, Kelly was able to give a picture of an identity in flux—a person who had difficult interactions with drug dealers, was a high achiever in school, and struggled to earn family approval with academic achievements. I was dual thinking at the time, I could clearly remember when he suggested that journalism wasn’t for me, and this interview proved that for him. Ethnographic Research Paper Handbook Of Ethnography Sage Methods. She began her piece like a much older person reflecting on childhood experiences: In the piece, Kelly embodies her environment and analyzes her relationship to her surroundings by looking at Brooklyn as a home, something that cares for her and something that keeps calling her back, inviting but also disingenuous. Charles is an example of a student who realized something about his own community by engaging in personal writing that gave him the ability to analyze his subculture and communicate the depth of the experience to his obviously moved peers and instructor. I start off with the questions and he grows sleepy. My dad is sitting down on the opposite side of the stoop, so all of the guys stand around him. Any documents related to the subculture are analyzed and reviewed so that students can work from both written history and their own experiences. In recent years, social scientists have sought a more inclusive model that allows for relaxing some of the rigid scientific constraints of ethnography in favor of the impact of more literary forms. Anthropologists James Spradley and David McCurdy answer the question concisely when they say, “A good writer must be a good eth- nographer” (4). He looks at the television while he is talking to me and always has that know it all, catch me if you can smile on. She was free within me, the youth that just disappears after a while, without saying goodbye. The scent of cigarettes fill my nostrils. Published on March 13, 2020 by Jack Caulfield. It was a thoughtful reflection of the changing nature of her subculture and her changing place in it: while she would always maintain a connection to Brooklyn, she didn’t know if Brooklyn would always be there for her. This project is interesting for a number of reasons, not least of which is that Sheila’s family, participating in illegal drag racing, never actually gets to race. You gotta put the money up.’ he screamed. Through numerous conversations with Kelly, I came to understand her ambivalence about college and her difficulty in negotiating her situation. He continued the tradition with his two little girls, enjoying the ritual of waiting to get deer in their sights but often going home without firing a shot. She sees someone else with every question, I was a new person, and maybe I was her. Student project topics have included “cosplay” (costumed role-playing), singles culture, and specific academic clubs. To conclude, in this essay I have analysed a small part of the possible advantages and disadvantages of adopting an ethnographic approach to the study of society. They were on the sidewalk when I first came out to observe, now they’re practically in the middle of the street.…. As a class, we tried to plan for the inevitable, including unwilling or reticent interview subjects, cancellations, and restricted access to field sites. My suggestion is that we have an obligation to prepare our students by devising courses that can allow them to engage in personally relevant research and then share it with larger audiences. The performance engaged her peers and made them consider how their classmate had come to be involved in this subculture and what that meant. Narrative Ethnography Jaber F. Gubrium James A. Holstein O nce upon a time, stories were told and written for what they were about. My favorite example of the personal performance projects leading to new insight is the case of Charles, a middle-aged man with a military background who sat among the otherwise traditional students in my Rhetoric 243 class at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the fall of 2006. 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