The Nature of Ethnography

I took an interesting anthropology class this semester called Field Methods in Ethnography. The goal of the class is to give future anthropologists an insight into how ethnographic research is performed in the field. Talk about an eye-opener. The way the professor has the class structured, there are a few lectures at the beginning of the semester, then the rest of the semester consists of two independent, out-of-class, research projects and presentations. Even though I did not find the class to be “hard,” I can honestly say it's like being thrown to the wolves. I understand now why cultural anthropologists consider fieldwork a trial by fire. I expected to run into problems. My husband took this same class last year, and he had problems too. But it seemed as if everything went wrong for me, and for most of my classmates as well. But it was the struggles that made the ending feel like such a huge accomplishment.

I thoroughly enjoyed this class. And I managed to learn a lot in the process—about qualitative research, about the subculture I chose to study, and about myself in particular. The hardest part was not choosing a subculture, or finding an informant, or even standing up to present my results, like it was for some people in my class. No, the hardest part was, like the professor warned us, showing the informant the final paper. When you do cultural fieldwork, you begin as an outsider looking in. Although the ideal is to eventually understand a culture the way the members perceive it, this ideal is impossible to fully achieve. Then, when you present your research findings, you have to portray yourself as an expert (this is true in any field). By handing a paper over to a member of the group whose culture is examined in the paper, I personally felt like an impostor. The informant knows I am not an expert, yet I have just portrayed myself as such in the paper. On top of that, most ethnographic papers have a somewhat personal slant. Writing of any kind feels like an expression on oneself. So to have to write in a personal tone and then have someone critically read it is very unnerving.

In spite of everything, I came away from this class feeling like I had accomplished something. Which is better than you can say about most classes. I loved being able to choose my own research and come to my own conclusions. If students had more classes like this, we would end up with a much more engaged citizenship. Isn't that supposed to be one of the functions of college to begin with?