Tubioli+Ethnography+Reading+2

Donielle Tubioli Ethnography (p.27-47) Back (to personal page)

In the text for Ethnography, it shares an important point about being an ethnographer and observing others around us. When studying, ethnographers often have insight as to what they think is true, “hunches”, these are either supported or denied when the study takes place. For example, in the CLUE project one of my understandings is that although students are very busy with classes and course work, they still manage to take time out of the day to do other extracurricular activities such as going to club meetings. This was in fact supported when we recorded time diaries of several students. In the book ethnography it says how these “hunches” are compared to the findings of other researchers, which is true. Ideas or predictions are better supported when there is evidence to back it up. By posting to our wikis for our CLUE projects, we can compare our time diaries with other findings and find that the “hunch” was true.

Also in Ethnography it discusses the questions that ethnographers ask. It is never a //why// question, instead it asks who, what, when, where, how. The goal for ethnography is to figure out //what// is happening. In CLUE we are asked to look at time diaries of several students, as well as pictures of rooms where students spend their time whether it be their dorms, student lounges, dining halls, or the Rec center. We are trying to discover trends and observe what is happening. We are asking ourselves, “What is this place being used for?” or “ Who (what type of people) live/ go to these places?”.

Another point I wish to point out in ethnography is when it talked about observations and the importance of analyzing what is shown, not what is //not// being shown. This is important to remember because in our CLUE project, we do not want to go down the path of ethnocentrism. I like how a story is provided about the turtle and the fish to illustrate the importance of this. In other words, if you question students about their room saying, “Is your room messy because you don’t know how to be organized?” or “ Is your room messy because you don’t have time to keep it clean?”, you might not get a response that is useful because the person may respond saying “No, its not because I’m unorganized and its not because I’m busy. Then the response is focused on what is not the reason, rather than what is. Maybe the person just likes to be messy because messy to them is being organized, but because you focused on what isn’t, they failed to tell you what is.