September 2012
49 posts
August 2012
41 posts
“Whatever sense we have on how things stand with someone else’s inner life, we gain it through their expressions, not through some magical intrusion into their consciousness.”
—Geertz (1986)
culturalbytes - Tricia Wang: Writing Live Fieldnotes: Towards a More Open Ethnography →
culturalbyt.es
I wrote this post originally on Ethnography Matters.
I just returned from fieldwork in China. I’m excited to share a new way I’ve been writing ethnographic fieldnotes, called live fieldnoting. I spoke about live fieldnoting in a recent interview with Fast Company that also …
Have You Noticed The Emerging of Professional Visual Anthropology? Now You Can Be An Anthropologist Even If You Can't Read And Write! →
mootee.typepad.com
In photography, the smallest thing can become a big subject, an insignificant human detail can become a leitmotif. We see and we make seen as a witness to the world around us; the event, in its natural activity, generates an organic rhythm of forms.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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Ethnography & Easy Escalating
Torvarken recently ran into an…ethnographic situation. On an escalator. Sometimes these things just happen.
Recently, a trip into Saluhallen in Lund, with our sights on the second floor Systembolaget (a government-ran alcoholic beverage store) set forth the following ethnographic analysis on human interaction with technological artifacts, in this case the relationship between us and a new escalator.
The Scene
We passed through the sleek new entrance, flagged on either side by small, cozy, chrome-and-chalkboard lunch counters and restaurant-ettes, and nearing the end of the single hall, we hung a hard left and approached the escalators. Distracted, our conversation came to an abrupt halt, our feet shuffling to reverse the forward momentum and redirect it with a sway to the left—the escalator to the right, our intended path, was on its way down, down, down. Thrown, we backpedaled and looked around to finally take in the environment we had casually auto-piloted through. We laughed self-consciously at our mistake —who messes up an escalator?—and started up the ‘correct’ left elevator. We surprised ourselves by a repeat performance on the way down.
What was wrong with us, failing at moving stairs? As we realized that the escalators were ‘switched’, that is, up on the left, down on the right, we were made less self-conscious but were left wondering…were we theonly ones making this mistake? And perhaps more interesting, why did the answer to the problem seem so obvious—why was ‘up to the right’ normal and the reverse unnatural?
Time for a quick and dirty ethnography.
Despite the small visual cues laid out to direct the traffic—green LED arrows up and red bars down at the base of the escalator, as well as a ~1 meter long white arrow floor sticker pointing to the front of the ascending stair— individuals were tripping over themselves to take the ‘right’ way up.
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UX KID: How Children Search the Internet with Keyword Interfaces →
ux-kid.tumblr.com
(Allison Druin)
Data collection methods
Our data collection methods were qualitative, in-home interviews with both parents and children. The parent interviews were designed to be short discussions away from the computer. The children were interviewed at their home computer and asked to show…
reading "Dude, You're a Fag", part II: homophobia or misogyny?
so c.j. pascoe writes this whole ethnography about masculinity in american (us) high school and focuses on the way masculinity is created through acts that may or may not attach to the male body. it is a very readable piece and i would highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in critical ethnography. there is a great chapter on “compulsive heterosexuality” that’s worth reading. however, i found it a bit lacking in one department and that was the connection to radical feminist thought. don’t get me wrong, pascoe does have some radicalism in there (she even cites jefferys many times to illustrate her points!). but when we get down to her theoretical underpinnings, it’s pretty obv that she hasn’t made the final leap.
she does concede that gender is made up of relational and institutional practices- it is not merely a personal narrative and projection that we will into existence (despite how much you truly believe in “lady brains”). of course, the focus of this ethnography is not just the institutional practice of heterosexuality as defining for young men’s identities as “real men”, which takes the form of “getting girls”, school rites of passage like homecoming and dances, the lack of anti-sexual harassment policies and enforcement in school, etc., but the ethnography mainly focuses on defining factor to the relational aspect of gender for boys: homophobia.
she writes, “homophobia is indeed a central mechanism in the making of contemporary American adolescent masculinity… fag is not only an identity linked to homosexual boys but an identity that can temporarily adhere to heterosexual boys as well. the fag trope is also a racialized disciplinary mechanism.”
but the specter of the fag, as she describes it, isn’t really about homosexuality. that’s why it can “adhere” to het boys, too. “male homosexuality is not pathologized, but gay male effeminacy is. the lack of masculinity is the problem, not the sexual practice or orientation” [italics hers].
hmm, that sounds an awful like misogyny, doesn’t it?
An Ethnographer's Winning Hand →
ideacouture.com
The greatest minds in social theory…in card form! Shuffle up Durkheim, Haraway, Foucault, Douglas, and Adorno (among others) during any project, while sitting on the subway, or fieldworking at the grocery store.
Collect ‘em, trade ‘em, reference ‘em. Throw ‘em in the poker deck just for kicks. Whatever it may be, print, cut, and carry the greatest minds around with you - an excellent addition to any ethnographer’s toolbox.
Backpacker Ethnography →
scribd.com
Abstract: This paper presents an ethnographic study of the travel culture of internationalbackpackers. Their sociodemographic characteristics are described, the contours of a con-cept of tourism culture are delineated, and on that basis, that of backpackers is outlined, with particular focus on the key phenomenon of road status. The analysis of backpackertourism as a culture furthers the comprehension of change within the phenomenon.Examples of factors of change include the guidebooks, the short-term backpackers, and inparticular the internet. This study demonstrates the merit of a dynamic concept of culture where culture takes place whenever activated by social circumstances. Keywords: backpackers,budget travelers, travel culture, concepts of culture, ethnography. Copyright 2003 Elsevier Ltd. Allrights reserved.
“Ethnographies are portraits of diversity in an increasingly homogeneous world.”
—John Van Maanen (1988)
THE SECRET MUSEUM OF MANKIND →
ian.macky.net
The Secret Museum of Mankind is a book that was published in 1935 in 5 volumes:1. America 2. Africa 3. Asia 4. Europe 5. Oceania. The book contains ethnographic photography of native people from around the world.What makes this book such a secret is that it has no author, no editor, no copyright information, no index, no credits, no dates for any of the images and even more strange is that the publisher “Manhattan House” seems to be an utter fabrication. Some images have been identified as bad reproductions from such books as J.A. Hammerton’s Peoples of All Nations (1922) and Sir Harry Hamilton Johnston and Leslie Haden Guest’s The World of To-Day (1907) but this suggestion is not conclusive. The captions are at times derogatory, subjective and inaccurate which will hopefully encourage an authentic exploration of the book. Download the entire publication for free and please give THE STILL your feedback.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” – Mark Twain”
—(via redhotchilimecca)
Ethnography for user experience →
experientia.com
In three essays John Payne, Principal of Moment’s Experience Design practice, reflects on his workshop, Ethnography for User Experience, and their field research with Occupy Wall Street.
Payne was recently asked by IxDA NY’s local leadership to lead a workshop on Ethnography for User Experience. His goal was to provide the attendees, a group of 25 interaction designers, some working principles of ethnography that they could adapt to their day-to-day design work; in essence, to help them shape a more “ethnograph-ish” approach to user experience design.
As he prepared the workshop materials, Payne suggested to the IxDA organizers that Zuccotti Park (or Liberty Square, depending on your persuasion) might be a good research site. For the uninitiated, this is the nexus of the global Occupy Wall Street movement. Ground Zero for “We are the 99%.” At that point, in early November, Payne hadn’t yet visited the park, but everything he was reading and hearing about it made it seem an ideal (if perhaps a bit risky) site for a group of eager workshop attendees to get some real-world experience putting ethnographic principles into practice.
They took on the task of trying to understand how the occupiers communicated and coordinated within the group and with other occupy sites around the world. Their design goal was to gather information to inform the design of digital products that could help that communication and coordination process.
Photographer Antony Pappone captures daily life in Burkina Faso with extraordinary portraits.
Frameworks for affinity diagrams! →
palojono.blogspot.com
Recording ethnographic observations: Six useful frameworks
