Strategies for representing ethnographic data

1. Representing ethnographic data in traditional scholarly form

Scientific writing of whatever length typically includes several key elements usually set out in a conventional order. (Berg, 2004, pp. 299-317, provides a very clear exposition of the principles of writing a scholarly ethnographic paper; see also Creswell, 1994, pp. 193-208.)

• A title is a direct description of what the report is about; it should not be overly ‘cute’ or ‘clever’, although an ethnographic report may use in its title a colorful quote from someone in the study community.
• An abstract is a brief (100-200 words) overview of the research that features the most important findings and mentions the methods by which data were collected and analyzed and closes with a statement of the implications of the major findings. There is little or no explanation or illustrative detail in the abstract (which in a book-length work may be replaced by a preface of rela­tively greater length and involving a little more detail).
• An introduction orients the reader/listener to the study; it includes a state­ment explaining (and perhaps justifying) the main research questions and an overview of the key issues that will be discussed.
• A literature review critically examines the published materials relevant to the research (substantively, methodologically, and theoretically); special empha­sis is given to the studies that have the most direct bearing on the report at hand. The literature review is usually also the place where the author’s own theoretical framework is explained and justified.
• A methodological review describes the author’s procedures for data collec­tion and analysis. The research setting may also be described in some detail; this element in the review is of particular importance in ethnographic research, since characteristics of the setting will be directly relevant to what is said to go on there.
• A report of findings or results links the study at hand in some way to the research questions posed in the introduction and to the issues that emerged from the literature review.
• A concluding discussion summarizes the main findings, fits the research into the literature, and suggests directions for future research.
• References, notes, appendices are explanatory materials supplemental to the main body of the text. Depending on the preference of journal editors or book publishers, notes may be part of the text, placed at the foot of a page, or grouped at the end of a chapter (or of an entire book). In any case, notes must never convey substantive material that could just as well be in the text; ref­erences are to all cited material (although there may be a separate section of ‘works not cited but consulted by the researcher’ with the editor’s approval) and must follow the standard form of the journal or publishing firm. Appended materials might include charts or tables, copies of original documents, pho­tos, or any other matter that supports the main elements of the text.

2. Other ways of representing ethnographic data in writing

Although ethnography is a science, it is different in many ways from the ‘hard’ sciences (which are based on an experimental model of research and strive for strict objectivity through quantified data analysis). Ethnographers after all are often participant observers in the lives of the people they study; they bring a degree of subjectivity to the subject that would be considered inappropriate in a science like chemistry or physics. The traditional scientific style of writing has always been something of a straitjacket for the ethnographer who is, after all, try­ing to represent the lived experiences of real people. Gradually finding release from the confines of strict scientific writing, ethnographers have in recent years been experimenting with various forms of ‘alternative’ ethnographic writing, employing to one degree or another the forms of literature and the other arts in order to achieve a more expressive representation of the lived experiences of the people they study. There are increasing numbers of ethnographic reports that take the form of personal (‘reflexive’) narratives (i.e. the private diary achieving pub­lic form), short stories, novels, poems, or plays. These literary-influenced works fall into several main categories (sometimes referred to as ‘tales’). (Van Maanen, 1988, is the standard reference for the discussion of ethnographic ‘tales’. See also Sparkes, 2002, for an interesting alternative take on this same material.)

• Realist tales are characterized by extensive, closely edited quotations from the people who have been observed or interviewed with the intention of help­ing the reader ‘hear’ the actual voices of the people whose lives are being represented. Realist tales demonstrate a marked absence of the author, who disappears behind the words, actions, and (presumed) thoughts of the people he or she has studied. The realist tale has long and deep roots in ethnographic representation, with the work of Malinowski (1922) in the Trobriand Islands the classic example. In realist tales, the fieldworker is required to be a ‘sober, civil, legal, dry, serious, dedicated transcriber of the world studied’ (van Maanen, 1988, p. 55).
• Confessional tales are those in which the researcher steps forward and becomes a fully realized character in his or her narrative. The act of con­ducting participant observation research is described along with the descrip­tion of the community under study. Confessional tales rarely stand alone; rather, confessional passages are typically inserted into conventional realist narratives. Manuals elaborating on how to conduct ethnographic research are often rich in confessional tales, as authors frequently use their own fieldwork experiences as cautionary material (see, e.g., Agar, 1980).
• Autoethnography, or the ‘narrative of self’, is a hybrid literary form in which the researcher uses his or her own personal experience as the basis of analy­sis. Autoethnographies are characterized by dramatic recall, strong metaphors, vivid characters, unusual phrasings, and the holding back of inter­pretation so as to invite the reader to relive the emotions experienced by the author. Ellis (1995), for example, has written an extended narrative dealing with the death of a significant other in her life, and the ways in which she dealt with being his caregiver. The details are highly particular to the case at hand, but Ellis’s narrative style carefully links these specific concerns to gen­eral themes of life, death, and loss in our society. (See Ellis and Bochner, 1996, pp. 49-200, for a discussion and further case examples of autoethno­graphic representations.)
• Poetic representations are forms of expression typical of the community under study that are employed to give the reader a sense of how those people ‘see’ the world around them. For example, Richardson (1992) constructed a five-page poem about the life of an unmarried, Southern, rural, Christian woman from a poor family. The poem was based on a thirty-six-page inter­view transcript and was composed with careful attention to the voice, tone, rhythms, and diction of a person of this woman’s time, place, and social sta­tion. Moreover, the poem used only the lady’s own words.
• Ethnodrama is the transformation of data into theater scripts or performance pieces, which may include dance, mime, or other forms of expressive performance. For example, Mienczakowski (1996) sought to enhance com­munity understanding of mental health and addiction issues. To that end, he created two plays based on his ethnographic research. The plays were performed at sites calculated to allow them to reach their optimal target audi­ences. Cast members included people drawn from the health professions as well as students of theater.
• Fiction is any literary form in which the setting and the people who were studied in that setting are represented fictionally (e.g. use of composite char­acters, setting characters in hypothetical events, attributing revelatory interior monologues to people when the researcher could not possibly have heard the original discourse). Fiction is sometimes employed for ethical reasons (the better to disguise the identities of people who might be compromised if they were too readily identified by conventionally ‘objective’ writing), sometimes to make a better link between the experiences of the study community and more universal concerns. My own account of research among mentally retarded adults (Angrosino, 1998) is an example of the trans­lation of ethnographic data into the form of short stories. (See Banks and Banks, 1998, for a detailed critical discussion of the theory and method of fictional representation; this volume also contains several examples of ethno­graphic reporting translated into fictional terms.) In light of several recent controversies that have made front-page news, it should be stressed that when we speak of fictional representations of ethnographic data, it does not mean that we are talking about making things up and disguising them as facts. Fictional representation merely refers to the use of the techniques of literary fiction, rather than the conventions of academic prose, to tell a story; by gen­eral consensus, works of ethnographic fiction are clearly labeled as such.

It should be clear that these various forms of alternative ethnographic writing have the potential to reach audiences beyond the scholarly community. (See Richardson, 1990, perhaps the most frequently cited discussion of this issue.) As such, they may be less rigorous than we have grown used to in terms of their literature reviews or their explications of methodology and theory. But on the other hand, they can reach and move people and teach them about the experiences of others in ways that would never be possible with the standard scientific mono­graph, which is, after all, read only by other initiated scientists.

3. Beyond the written word

The filmed documentary has long been seen as a valid way to represent ethno­graphic data, although film production requires a set of highly specialized skills that are not often mastered by social science researchers. That situation may change now that video recording equipment has become such a familiar part of our technological landscape. Ethnographers might also think of expressive, fictional films in addition to objective documentaries, much as ‘alternative’ ethnographic writers have learned to use poetic or other fictional literary means to go beyond the, sometimes sterile, images typical of scientific writing. (See Heider, 1976, a relatively early, but still highly influential introduction to the use of film in ethnographic research.)

By the same token, the increasing popularity of digital photographic equipment has made it possible not only to produce high-quality images but also to dissem­inate them far more widely than was ever imagined. The posting of both text and images on the Internet is now a very real possibility for ethnographers. As was once the case with film, such web-based representations are still generally thought of as adjuncts to scholarly publication, although that situation may also change as more and more people have access to the web and seem to prefer it to other means of communication (see Bird, 2003). The museum or other visual display/exhibit is another way to represent ethnographic data in a vivid and widely appealing format (see Nanda, 2002).

It is beyond the scope of this book to describe in detail the how-to of these non-written forms of ethnographic representation, but the reader is urged to con­sider their possibilities for their own research. It is still a good idea to master first the skills of solid, traditional scientific writing. But then allow yourself to think about – and carry out – something more creative.

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