Auto-ethnography

If ethnography is the patient observation, recording and interviewing about the meaning of what is observed, auto-ethnography has some difficulties. Observing our own selves and lives presents challenges. An outsider ethnographer comes with their own package of assumptions and has to put these to one side to enter into the spirit of what is happening. The assumptions of the auto-ethnographer about themselves and their own life and motivations is perhaps too entrenched to achieve this. We are not asking for objectivity to be achieved - turning one's own subjective self into an object is probably impossible. In grammar, the reflexive verb has the same subject and object (such as "I enjoy myself") so we term this way of thinking as reflexivity. Equally, we cannot observe ourselves, but can observe our reflections (through video, tape, or channeled through other people's eyes. So we call this discussion "reflective".

Ethnography built its roots on the social anthropology of far away places, quickly colonised by the sociology of the near at hand. Ethnographers were generally strangers to what they were observing, who tried to make friends to view things as though from inside. The anthropologist Hortense Powdermaker made this her title of her autobiography: Stranger and Friend (1966). 'Native' ethnographers who knew matters from the inside were likely to make fewer assumptions but had to learn how to think out of the box, and not be institutionalised by the context in which they had been brought up. Their focus may have been on their own culture, but was broader than being on their own role within it.

Auto-ethnography is sometimes used in place of autobiography or memoir, so I will clarify the difference. An autobiography attempts to record ones life, from memory, in chronological order. Details might be checked with others, and with documents. Depending on the audience, some details are likely to be censored, and others spun to shed best light on the subject. Words have social and legal consequences, which the wise autobiographer thinks through. This of course is anathema in ethnography where all detail, observed and spoken, play a part in the whole picture.

Whether auto-ethnography is possible I am putting on hold for the moment. Rather I am laying ground rules for robust study of one's own role and performance in life and in work. Then we can judge its viability.

The auto-ethnographer can remove the problem of autobiography by concentrating on those things which would be censored. The details of course are not for publication, and a mixture of anonymity and fiction could provide a comfort zone. For example, a group could discuss anonymous fictional accounts rooted in the censored incident with the ground rule that the author does not self identify. An author can feel distanced from the fictional account and even comment without embarrassment alongside fellows. The group can then draw general conclusions across the accounts discussed.

The autobiographer writes 'self' without 'other'. The ethnographer tries to study 'other' with as little self as possible. The auto-ethnographer needs to learn to treat self as other and lay on one side presuppositions, assumptions, status, self esteem etc. Some guidance may help.

• it may help to arrange to be interviewed, to tape, by an experienced interviewer (experienced on the topic and in interviewing). The interview needs to be probing, hard edged, challenging. The transcript is the subject through the eyes of another.
• it may help to ask others to write anonymously an account of the subject on the prescribed topic. For example, a Headteacher asked her staff for accounts of how they perceived her management style. Ensuring that these are anonymous and cannot be used managerially adds to their authenticity.
• The use of an administrator to ensure texts such as emails are properly anonymised will be essential - otherwise it constitutes an ethical threat.

Phenomenology.
Much appears to be but is not necessarily so. A philosophical position rooted in not making presuppositions has been called phenomenology, the study of appearances or manifestations. Our self esteem is such a set of appearances: in making them the centre of study, we have to learn to 'bracket out' any presuppositions about ourselves and seek for an open mind. Our internalised understandings and stereotypes get in the way of having an open mind, so we need to get back to 'the things themselves', without its mental spin in our heads. So far, this strategy can have benefit in auto-ethnography when personal point of view is consistently bracketed away to leave raw data, as opposed to interpretation. In the end, it may be all interpretation, but to be able to study the way we interpret events is itself instructive. After Schutz, the study of our everyday experience of x or y became popular. It works best with phenomena without concrete existence. To study a chair requires observation. To study our experience of using a chair, or quality in chairs takes it to another level. Quality is a phenomenon that we find meaningful; but quality cannot be distilled into a test-tube. So phenomenology is highly relevant to our wish to research of everyday experiences of work, play, or domesticity. We can separate the thing itself from our interpretations of it; both offer insights.

Personality.
For auto-ethnography, we might dig a little into what kind of a person we are. Personality research has clustered its many points into five umbrella 'traits' - these might be our starting point. I use the OCEAN mnemonic:

• O - am I open to persuasion? or are my ideas fixed? if I am between, what is fixed and what is open? Can I trust my judgements? or am I self-centred and over-confident (false self esteem)?
  
• C- am I conscientious? or lazy? does conscientious mean 'doing one's duty' or 'doing as I am told'? does this leave time for personal creativity?
• E - am I extroverted, or introverted? do I prefer company to being alone? in company, do I need to dominate? do I want everyone to know my opinions? do I want people to agree with me? Or am I fearful of being contradicted and prefer to keep my council? Where in between am I?
• A - am I agreeable or disagreeable? If agreeable, am I prepared to disagree with another over a matter of fact or opinion? Will I stand up for truth and justice? If I am disagreeable, do I just like to argue for the sake of it? Am I cynical and dismissive of the efforts of others?
• N - am I neurotic (that is, excessively anxious, worried about everything) or so laid back I never bother to get out of bed? Where in between to I plot myself - what worries me, what can I accept with reasonable relaxation? How fearful of the past and future am I? Can I enjoy the present?

Working in a team: The Belbin test
Am I a leader/organiser? content to be a follower or foot-soldier? am I the ideas person? am I pernicity about detail? Do I finish what I start? am I a saboteur? Is the balanced person a mixture of all these?

Self-definition - how do I define myself?
Identity
How do I define my identity? By nation, colour, religion, football team? Family, work, relationships? Try to summarise your identity in a sentence. Which parts give you the greatest satisfaction and self esteem? With give you the least of both?

Criticality
Am I critical of the state of the world? The injustices, the divisions between rich and poor, the haves and the have nots. Do I think the status quo should be changed for the greater good even if I am privileged in it?

Summing up
To research one's self, life and work requires us to draw on detailed observations, some of which could come from video, and some from other people. There has to be a strong 'other people' element. A critical friend can work with the individual in new schemes, the discussion becoming data. The principle of allowing no assumptions to be unexamined should be maintained throughout. This will also reveal insights into how we view and interpret our world, and what motivates our point of view.

There is a benefit. The researcher may be a teacher with 20 years of experience. This has strengths and weaknesses - an understanding perhaps about educational processes, perhaps, but assumptions that are socialised but unhelpful, parochial 'the way we do it here' attitudes which prevents change. The aim will be to distill the good whilst understanding and eliminating the unhelpful.

Epistemology

Epistemology is the study of how we know what we know (or claim to know). It contains the roots therefore of whether knowledge and research is reliable and believable. Knowledge evolves, so is never absolute. Knowledge of science in 1900 was very different from science knowledge in 2000, and scientists are constantly updating it. This applies to all disciplines.

• Skepticism lies at the heart of epistemology, constant questioning of evidence and interpretation. Knowledge claims should never be taken for granted but always doubted, tested and deconstructed in order to build a more secure version of that knowledge.
• Objectivity simply means we can touch and feel the object, and can therefore measure it. Science is based on measurement, and through description searches for hypotheses. Measurements are not always meaningful, as we know too well in education - we need to be skeptical about what is measured, why and how. In quantitative questionnaires, for example, what is asked and what is not asked is important. Also, the truth is not always found in majority opinion, as Galileo once understood.
  
• Knowledge is in fact no more than a truth claim, which may be reliable and may be not. The concept of 'truth' suffers from the same problems as 'knowledge' - it is a fallible claim that someone makes, and must be tested.
• As individuals, we have a basic foundation of beliefs we believe to be true. This is called foundationalism.
  
• Not all knowledge is measurable. You cannot measure quality, but only perceptions of quality. Research that we call qualitative looks for reliable strategies in different ways.
  
• Perceptual knowledge tries to make sense of what we see, hear, taste, smell and feel. We see an object as a tree, an oak, a table. We can be tricked or mistaken. We can have hallucinations. We look therefore to justify our sense perception, to make absolutely sure.
• A priori arguments or assumptions are things taken as true at the start. If we meet a four footed creature we make the a priori assumption it is an animal. It may be a statue, or a robot, so we are not always right. Our conceptual system labels things in order to help us make rapid identifications. Our concepts might become stereotypes which emphasise similarities but mask differences. Racism for example is rooted in negative stereotypes.
• Moral knowledge. A positivist would say that there is no such thing as moral knowledge or ethics, since they are not observable or measurable. Most would hold however that this is a travesty. That genocide is morally wrong would generally be held as a meaningful statement. There is however great diversity in what counts as ethical - ranging from rational judgements to the application of moral laws in scriptures. Few today would recognize as moral demands in my own upbringing not to shop on a Sunday, and not to enter a pub.
• Religious knowledge, or knowledge about God is a next step, and of course is problematic and controversial. What place do we give to religious experience? Is a phenomenology possible? And can the believers interpretation of religious experience ever be bracketed out to reveal the 'pure' experience? Probably not. Is there a link between mysticism and mental disorder? What is the link between drug-induced mysticism, fasting induced hallucinations, and other religious/psychological phenomena?
  
• Feminist Epistemology presumes that positivism is a male obsession with black-white, where the reality is grey (or pink/green or whatever, richer and more interesting. Many qualitative approaches owe their early development to feminist research where understanding human experience is given greater value than experiment.
• Social Epistemology addresses what counts as knowledge of society and social relationships.
• Procedural Epistemology explores the construction of simple rational arguments as the basis of computer AI (artificial Intelligence).
  
• Hermeneutics as Epistemology emphasises that all we have is interpretation, and we need sharp and critical tools to interpret these interpretations. In this case (and this is widely found today) epistemology is less about the absolute justification of knowledge/ what is true, and more about the refining of our rational processes. This is a stark recognition that we know little or nothing in any hard sense, and we assume a great deal. We started with skepticism, and completing the circle, this is where we end. Recognizing that we can be sure of nothing, we have to make a convincing case which persuades others to see things as we do.
  

Stephen Bigger, 2010

Reference:
Greco, G and Sosa, E (eds) The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology Basil Blackwell, 1999.

Muslim Pupils Empowerment

A former student has developed this programme to educate Muslim pupils and students about Islam - it is worth a look.
http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/violentextremism/toolkitforschools/downloads/Toolkit-OMPEP-June%202009%5B1%5D.pdf

Critical Ethnography

Just reading Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics and Performance by D Soyini Madison from the University of North Carolina (published by Sage, 2005). She is an anthropologist ethnographer interested in human rights, traditional religious practices, myth, and performance She has done fieldwork in Ghana and Italy. Former Fulbright Scholar, and Rockefeller Foundation Fellow. All of the above themes feature in my various blogs and publications.

First thing to say, this is an excellent book, a must-read for anyone involved in qualitative research. This blog will summarise some main points which interest me. It was written with postgraduate students in mind so is clearly written and well structured. I am reviewing as I read so this post will evolve until finished over the next few days.

What is critical ethnography?
Basically it is ethnography with political intent. It combines the process of observation and data collection (anthropological ethnography) with critical studies, a process of asking questions critical of the status quo and society in general, therefore having an interest in transformational politics, human rights, equity and so on. It begins, she says, with researchers recognising their social responsibilities to address injustice. The researcher takes a position within the research. Some attempt to be 'objective' observers: whether anyone can be objective about anything is hugely problematic, so to resolve this post-positivist research focuses on understandings and human interactions instead. The critical researcher takes an ethical position on abuse of power in the status quo, exposing abuses, seeking out the voices of the oppressed, and working with all sides to propose new ways of political and social working.

Ethnography has had a long history in social anthropology and sociology, a researcher patiently observing and recording, interviewing participants to unravel different points of view. Ethnography is thus focused on 'The Other' and is non-self-centred. There should be no theory-practice divide. Critical ethnography is the performance of critical theory, or critical theory in action.

Research methods.
Chapter 2 emphasises the importance of research methods, as contrasted with "deep hanging out". She describes how critical theory involves her line of questioning (interview schedules), different kinds of questions to be asked, and how to code the transcripts. This is extremely useful for anyone learning how to research-interview well. The types of questions suggested will provide much richer data for the researcher. Chapter three illustrates using examples.

Chapter 4 deals with ethics. After a survey of the usual philosophers, she tries to get to grips with an interesting facet, based around the notion of Other. Ethnography, she holds, consists of a research studying 'Other' - other people's customs, points of view, ways of thinking. Any researcher engaging with qualitative research must take the 'other' very seriously indeed. It is too easy to impose one's own ideas on to the data and make the line of questioning too narrow. Madison emphasises the importance of voices of the researched, and the importance of asking the right questions, about rights, propriety, equity, power distribution and abuses and so on. She uses the work of Maria Lugones, on 'Loving Perception'. Lugones uses the metaphor of 'world traveller' as we travel through difference, unfamiliarity and alienation, taking us out of our comfort zone. This takes skill and understanding which is accumulated gradually. In the same way a researcher has to tune into other people's ideas and points of view and get over their unfamiliarity. We may approach these with stereotypes, even caricatures, in mind. One seeks to feel at ease, 'humanly bonded', finding some link that sparks a new relationship. We should, she says, be enough at ease to be playful, experimental, creative. Lugones contrasts arrogant perception (feeling we are superior) to 'loving perception (feeling we are bonded with the interviewees). In this love and caring should lie ethics, not a code to be followed, but a principle to honour.

Chapter 5 is about merging methods with ethics, encouraging openness, dialogue and conceptual accuracy. Chapter 6 has 3 case studies involving marginalised groups. Chapter 7, Performance Ethnography deals with performance (e.g. theatre) as experience, social behaviour, language and identity. Following Victor Turner she deals with performativity, process and cultural politics. Then a section deals with staging ethnography - the possibilities of theatre.

Chapter 8 gives examples of how to write it up. Four useful terms are writing as... relational, evocative, embodied and consequential. Relational means recognizing a relationship between writer and reader, the writer communicating with the reader and trying to enrich them. The opposite is writing to impress, egotistical writing. Evocative means that the writing evokes strong feelings, memories and associations that are powerful to readers as well as writers. Embodied recognizes that the whole body writes, and critical writing interconnects the body with others, the reader engaging with the text with all their senses feeling a sense of engagement and (non-sexual) arousal. Consequential means that writing should break through comfort zones and engage with political struggle, and thus have personal and social consequences.

Finally, chapter 9 gives 3 more case studies, one on cultural performance as fieldwork, one on oral history as performance, and the last on communitas, breach and redressive action (after Victor Turner).

A very thought-provoking book.

Post under construction. To be continued

Children learning from literature

This is a draft of a paper accepted for publication. Any comments welcome.
http://sites.google.com/site/literature4learning/

Abstract

This article asks how children might benefit from stories in their general education. It distinguishes between story for entertainment and stories for learning. Stories not only can be memorable, but can stimulate a child reader to think intellectually, socially, morally and spiritually if they are encouraged and taught how to do this. It argues that the reading of stories is part of critical education and introduces the idea of embodied learning. We conclude by asking whether stories are valuable as just stories, or whether there needs also to be some pedagogical purpose.

Sex, maternity and paternity in Genesis

Readers might be interested in my parallel blog, a critical conversation about the Bible. You will find a Genesis thread on
http://4004bce.blogspot.com/2009/12/sex-maternity-and-paternity.html
You might also be interested in my edited book, Creating the Old Testament: The Emergence of the Hebrew Bible (Basil Blackwell).

Liminality and Victor Turner.

Published in the Journal of Beliefs and Values (vol 30 number 2, August 2009, pages 209-212) is a paper on Victor Turner, liminality and ciltural performance. It can be found at http://eprints.worc.ac.uk/565/ Victor Turner noticed as an anthropologist how performance marked a change of status (e.g. from childhood to adulthood), the performance itself being an in-between state. He applied this later to performance generally, where a carnival or play puts people into this liminal (=threshold) state after which they emerge changed.
See also the thread 'victor turner'.