Begin the ethnographic research with a personal inventory

It is often said that the one piece of equipment that an ethnographic researcher ultimately relies on is him or herself. It is all very well to enter the field fully loaded with cameras, tape recorders, laptop computers, and so on. But in the last analysis, participant observation means that you as a researcher are interacting on a daily basis with the people being studied. It is therefore critically important for you to begin with an understanding of yourself. What kind of person are you? What types of situations do you find congenial, and which would be abhorrent? Some things are obvious: if you are highly sensitive to cold, then choosing to do fieldwork among the Inuit in northern Alaska is probably a bad idea, even if you

find Inuit culture fascinating to read about. Other factors are less obvious: if you are a person who greatly values privacy, then you might do well to select a study community in which the people recognize and respect that same value. It is, of course, possible for most people to adapt to most conditions. But given the lim­ited amount of time and financial resources that most of us have at our disposal, why not choose to do research under circumstances in which you have at least a fighting chance of fitting in? If the process of forcing yourself to adapt takes up more time and effort than the process of collecting data about the community you are studying, then participant observation is just not serving its intended purpose.

It is therefore important that you begin with a candid assessment of yourself. Check especially the following points:

• your emotional and attitudinal state;
• your physical and mental health (and the health of anyone you may be tak­ing with you to the field);
• your areas of competence and incompetence;
• your ability to set aside preconceptions about people, behaviors, or social and political situations.

Some personal factors are under your control and you can modify them so that you can fit into a study community. Your hairstyle, choice of jewelry or bodily adornments, clothing, or tone of voice can all be adjusted if need be. On the other hand, there are things we can’t do much about: our gender, our relative age, our perceived racial or ethnic category. If such distinctions are important in the study community, then you may need to think twice about inserting yourself into that culture. You may think that people in the community are wrong in their approach to gender or racial relations, but remember that your main job is that of a researcher, not a social reformer or a missionary. (Even though ‘critical’ ethnog­raphers, discussed in an earlier chapter, do consider themselves to be social reformers, they typically become advocates for positions held by the communi­ties with which they become identified. They do not arrive in a community with their own agenda, which they then seek to impose on the people they study.) In sum, do not choose a field site in which you become the object of discussion and contention.

Source: Angrosino Michael (2008), Doing Ethnographic and Observational Research, SAGE Publications Ltd; 1st edition.