Thanks to the COM352 students for contributing a bunch of new pages! I'll be moving these pages into the main area of the wiki soon.

From UMassWiki

Traditional ethnographers have tended to study far-away, exotic communities, such as tribes in the Philippines or Indonesia. Recently, however, people have begun studying communities “at home” – i.e., communities to which they, themselves, belong. What are the advantages and disadvantages of “insider ethnography”? Your contribution can also be an insightful comment of your peers’ analyses, or, better yet, a combination of original insights and feedback.

Jackie

When traditional ethnographers study far-away communities, it is easy for them to pick out unique elements of the cultures because the environment is so new and unfamiliar to them. In contrast, the task of identifying individual features of a culture during the process of “insider ethnography” is challenging because the ethnographer knows no other way of life. When I first arrived in Ghana, I could immediately distinguish the common type of dress among Ghanaians (at least within a particular region of the country). Many of them wore brightly-colored and intricately-patterned fabric, with the designs varying between men and women.

(This is an image I got from Google because I could not find a way to insert one of my own photographs here...)

I recognized this aspect of Ghanaian culture because it was, to my “western eyes,” easily recognizable and different from what I was accustomed to seeing. Over time, I learned that different colors and patterns represent different moods, events, or meanings, and eventually I could draw conclusions based on a person’s outfit. It would be much harder for me to summarize the “typical dress” of students here at UMass, because, on the surface, what we wear is “normal” to me and not necessarily unique. We sport jeans, shorts, skirts, t-shirts, and sweaters. Why do we dress the way we do? On first thought, I would answer that our style of clothing is comfortable. However, if an ethnographer truly took the time to analyze our dress, he or she might determine that women are free in what they wear because women are (mostly) politically liberated here, which is an explanation that I would have overlooked. Our clothing is also reflective of our climate here in New England, which is another element of this home community that I take for granted. Thus probably one of the biggest disadvantages of insider ethnography is that it can be challenging (though it is not impossible) to view one’s own culture or home community with the eye of an outsider, something one has never previously had to do and for which one does not have an immediate instinct.

There are also advantages to this type of “insider” study. Members of communities do not always trust outsiders, regardless of their intentions. When I researched the history of the slave trade in Ghana, not everyone wanted to discuss the issue with me. Regardless of the purposes of my research, some of the individuals I encountered felt reluctant to speak with a white person about the atrocities that white people perpetuated on their ancestors. Also, community members might want to portray their culture in a way that they think will be most attractive to outsiders, and therefore not always be entirely honest in their interactions with ethnographers. If I were completing some sort of historical study here at UMass, I already possess the advantages of having established connections with professors and community members as well as a thorough knowledge of my campus and the resources available to me. Further, I know what to do, culturally, to obtain the information I need. I understand that professors have office hours, and that they like to be addressed as “Professor so-and-so.” This knowledge might seem totally basic, but it is cultural cues like these that outsiders need to figure out before they can even begin to effectively interact with their subjects.

With these advantages and disadvantages, it is clear that the most successful ethnographer will try to act as both an insider and an outsider, observing as much as possible and also being as sensitive as possible to the situations he or she encounters.

Bart

The concept of ethnography is very interesting when considering one’s own culture. First of all, I’m not sure that study of ethnography is possible without experiencing other cultures first-hand. Ethnography is not interesting or useful unless differences between cultures are revealed through the study and many of these differences are not apparent until difference is experienced. For example, I did not realize many of the peculiarities that made up my own culture until I lived in China. Many concepts that I thought to be human were in fact cultural.

Second of all, it might be possible that the study of ethnography is in itself a cultural concept. There has not always been interest in other cultures. For example, many of the Chinese people that I met did not really care about my home culture; they were instead more intent on telling me how I should interpret the peculiarities of Chinese culture. I know that when we have visitors in the United States, we are often very interested in how things are in their home country. Asking Chinese people about the ethnography of their own culture might not only be difficult because they live and grew up in this culture, but also because they might not even have an interest in characterizing their own culture. For them, it is not culture, it is just how it is. If I were to have come back with any thoughts on Chinese culture, it would probably be that China is more concerned with its appearance rather than actually doing something. For example, many of the college students that I met were intent on telling me that every college student could speak English. The problem was that English for Chinese college students is what Latin is for American college students. They believe that it’s just a bunch of memorization and that nobody actually speaks it as their native language. Every one of the “English” teachers that I met was Chinese and could barely speak English. But to the Chinese government and many of the Chinese people, it is only important that they can make the claim that they can all speak “English”, rather than just emphasizing good training in English for those that want to take it.

There is a certain amount of critical thinking involved in being an ethnographer and an even greater amount of critical thinking required for “insider ethnography”. This critical thinking is very important to western education, but not important in Chinese education. If one is to analyze one’s own culture, he/she must remove themselves and question every aspect of their daily lives. This first step, to question, is not even in the mind-set of most Chinese people. They ask: why question? Why question when all it leads to is conflict? Why should I be the source of conflict when we are all working to together to achieve a better China, where every speaks the international language of “English” and are fully integrated into the developed world?

It is because of this lack of critical thinking that I gave up on asking Chinese people about their own culture. The Great Leap Forward and the protest at Tiananmen Square never happened. It wasn’t just that Chinese people didn’t believe that they happened, but they could not see why they would have happened. They did not see the point of protest or of causing conflict. The only aspect that they would talk about were the different dialects of Chinese, but this conversation only went to the point where they would say that there were different words for the same thing. There was little to no conversation about the actual cultural differences between areas with right or wrong qualification. There were differences in food, language, and attire, but differences in concepts that are more interesting to us “ethnographers” were not discussed. Without discussing these concepts, one cannot be an “insider ethnographer”.

I am currently taking a capstone course for ComCol called "The Ethnography of Us" in which our projects will be ethnographies of some aspect of the culture of learning at UMass. This question, then, was particularly interesting to me. I’ll use my experience and my ongoing research as examples through which to explain my views on insider ethnography.

Advantages

A major advantage of insider ethnography is that as a cultural insider, you have access to information an outsider can never have. For example, if a professor decided she wanted to write an ethnography of the culture of learning at UMass—the project I’ll be undertaking—she could enroll in classes, study with her fellow undergraduate students, hang out in the student union and the library, etc., but because of her differing age and role, she is not likely to get an entirely comprehensive picture of UMass. When she asks students, how do you like your classes?, they may not be as straightforward and honest with her as they would be with another student. She would not be part of the ritualized “discourse of complaint” at UMass in the same way a typical undergraduate student is.

(A really interesting book is “My Freshman Year,” by Rebekah Nathan, in which a social anthropology professor took a year of sabbatical and basically went ‘undercover’ for a year to live in the dorms, eat in the dining halls and take classes as a freshman in order to write a book about it. It raises some interesting questions about the ethics of her research methods, and some of the conclusions she draws are a bit too broadly generalized, but so many of her observations really resonated with me... Great read, and it really calls to light issues surrounding insider ethnography. In this case, Nathan’s age—about 50—kept her from ever truly being an insider, although few students asked about her past.)

-Sahar: I've read this book too. As I was reading your first paragraph here under "advantages" I was thinking of inserting a little explanation of the book, but then I saw you already did that! It's a very interesting read, if anyone is curious. It takes place at a large state college and sometimes you have to stop and remind yourself it's not UMASS. Actually, another book that can be viewed as an ethnography of college is "I am Charlotte Simmons" by Tom Wolfe. It's an incredibly interesting novel about a small town girl who goes to college and lets say "learns about the world" in getting "corrupted" by it.

In contrast, I, as a fellow student and peer, am privy to conversations and situations that professors would never see. People speak to me candidly, complain avidly, are honest about whether or not they have done an assignment or put a lot of work into it. The traditional power structure that places professors in a role of authority may discourage full honesty and disclosure, because we have been conditioned all our lives to make teachers see us in a favorable light (whether or not we subscribe to this, the pressure is certainly there—good grades, good letters of rec, etc).

Being an “insider” in my ethnography also allows me to use my own experiences as a UMass undergraduate student as a springboard for my inquiries and observations. I already have a sense of what is important to students, what they talk about, where we congregate, what the ‘social norms’ are… I don’t have to spend the time learning how to fit into the culture that an anthropologist studying a foreign culture would have to take.

Disadvantages

A disadvantage is that it can be difficult to “defamiliarize the familiar,” something that I have found challenging in my course. When I take field notes during participant observation, how much do I need to take down? Can I assume knowledge of “classroom,” “lecture hall,” “iBook,” “AIM,” “Facebook,” “professor,” “TA,” etc.? As Jackie points out, if I were writing this for a Ghanaian audience, the concept of “office hours” would be unfamiliar. The intricacies of “Facebook” may be alien to most of our parents (I can only hope).

Defamiliarizing the familiar is important because even when the audience for our research is familiar with terms and conventions, examining them as an outsider may reveal deeper social codings and tacit norms which say a lot about the culture of undergraduate learning at UMass.

Additional thoughts

Bart makes a good point that it is difficult to see or truly notice differences "until difference is experienced.” As I’m sure we all did, I found that my experience abroad, in which I reevaluated everything I encountered to try and decode the “culture” in which I was living, gave me a critical eye and the ability to put on an outsider’s lens to examine what’s going on here at home.

However, I have to say that I disagree with Bart when he says: "Ethnography is not interesting or useful unless differences between cultures are revealed through the study." Let me offer some examples of what my capstone course hopes to address, which are not necessarily revealing differences between cultures: “What makes a good class?” (i.e. what is the “common sense” among students about good and bad classes) “How does having a job influence students’ education and ability to be involved and engaged on campus?” “Causes and effects of rude behavior in class” “Is there a ‘culture of underachievement’ at UMass? If so, what creates it, how is it manifested, and in which kinds of classes is it less present?” “Is ComCol actually challenging? If so, why or why not?” “How should gen eds be restructured?” “What is wrong with Dean’s Book?” etc.

These will not necessary reveal differences between cultures, but they will hopefully be able to identify the “common sense” of UMass students and improve our learning experiences while here—or at least, offer suggested interventions that will improve the learning experiences of UMass students in the future.

‘Culture’ again

Then again, you could argue that such projects would effectively be revealing differences in culture—differences between the culture of undergraduate students and the culture of faculty, or parents, or administrators. Part of the premise of the course I’m taking is that we hope to address the question, “What do students and professors (or administrators) need to know about one another?”

As an example, think for a moment of a professor you’ve had who thinks that HIS CLASS (or her class) IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING. You know the type—the ones that assign tons of reading and homework, expect you to do it all, and don’t seem to realize that their expectations are unrealistic. That professor may not realize that most of us are working up to 20 hours a week, taking at least 15 credits (many of us more), involved in extracurricular activities, etc. They may also believe we love their subject as much as they do and are eager to learn about it, and not realize that we are enrolled in their class because it was the only upper-level (insert major here) class that fit into our schedule and we need it to graduate.

The professor’s “culture” is distinctly different from our “culture” as undergraduate students. Yet one would not need to leave the United States, or even Massachusetts, to figure this out—although it is helpful to have experienced drastic difference, as Bart, Jackie and I all did, in order to notice details about our home culture that we took for granted. It gives us the chance to look through the lens of an “outsider,” and perhaps ask ourselves, “What would my friends in Ghana/China/South Africa find surprising about this experience?”

So once again, I wind up calling into question what “culture” is and how it is defined… go figure.

Rachael

I took an anthropology class when I was a freshman and we read the book, Nest in the Wind by Martha Ward which is an outsider’s encounter of an island in the Pacific. The book explained this anthropologist’s field work and the difficulties that she ran into while abroad. One disadvantage that was mentioned in the context of the book was that she was not initially trusted by the people of Pohnpei. I believe this to be the largest disadvantage to being an outsider observing a new culture. The amount of information that an outsider can obtain is limited in order to protect the culture. Insider’s have the advantage of knowing the true culture with no reservations. Although being an insider may make it harder for the person to decide what aspects of a culture are worth noting and analyzing whereas an outsider as mentioned by previous student’s responses makes the culturally unique aspects of life a lot more evident since the outsider is not used to them.

I think there is further advantage for the people of the culture that the outsider originated from. The outsider has a cultural vocabulary that the culture he/she is from understands. So analyzing a new culture is done in that language and so one culture is related to another and the outsider’s original culture can enjoy learning about the new culture. As we have spoken about in class, it is up to the reader how to interpret the new culture through reading the outsider’s own interpretation. An insider can write about their own culture in their own cultural vocabulary but other cultures cannot benefit from this unless translated.

In my opinion the best way to study a new culture would be a very open-minded outsider that respects the culture and spend a lot of time in the culture. This way you get the advantages of the outsider and being able to pick out relevant cultural information and explain it in a language others will understand. As long as the outsider is respectful and proactively involves themselves in the culture I think a lot of the “insider” information could be obtained. It is an interesting tradeoff, and is really dependent on the effort of the observer.

Sahar

First, I want to mention that I agree with Bart about the notion of ethnography itself being a cultural concept. This was the first thought that popped into my head when I read Raz’s initial assignment. I agree that there are some cultures, and some points in history, where this study was not important, even when it was recognized. That is, people may recognize that there are other cultures beside their own, but there honestly may be no interest in studying theirs or any other, no value placed on this. As Bart said “they may not have an interest in characterizing their own culture.” That, as Americans, we place value, or at least interest, on studying other cultures may be an American cultural concept on its own. With this in mind, I’ll move on to our culturally viewed advantages and disadvantages of insider ethnography.

In considering the advantages and disadvantages of insider ethnography, I believe the first issue to consider is how difficult it is to step back from a society in which one is fully integrated and perhaps has never been outside. This is a point Jackie brought up and something Raz has been trying to get us to do all semester. First, we had to analyze something about our host cultures that they would see as normal and may strike us as abnormal. Then we had to analyze something in our home culture and try to understand the knowledge an outsider would not take for granted, the implications he would not understand. This is obviously a much more difficult task, to question every aspect of our culture to decide whether it is universally understood or not. There is another danger here, which Donald Rumsfeld so eloquently stated: "There are known knowns. These are things we known we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unkowns. There are things we don't know we don't know." Applying this to insider ethnography, the point is that as hard as we try, and as thoroughly as we search and analyze, there is a possibility that we missed something, something that we could never understand would look different to an outsider unless we were one. This is our "unknown unknown," something we couldn't predict as a culture difference even if we tried.

I disagree a bit with Racheal, though, about the advantage of an insider having the trust of the community. Of course, an outsider just waltzing in, not paying attention to local cutoms and local social interactions will have a difficult time gaining trust. Even a moderately sensitive outsider will have some trouble with this. But if you are really trying to be an outside ethnographer, there probably is a correct way to approach a culture and its people, a way to be smart enough about it that once you need someone to trust you, it is already there. That is, come into the culture cautiously, and immediately begin observing and adapting the social rituals of the people. It would probably help to not try to question this building trust or put any weight on it until it is completely built, until the people are comfortable with the notion of trusting you. This method takes some patience and a lot of active effort to integrate, in a sense, into the culture, but I think it’s possible. The point is, I wouldn’t call it a disadvantage of an outsider, as I think the right approach would void it. This is the same issue Jackie talks about- and yes, I would call it an advantage of insider ethnography, not in the sense that these trust connections are impossible to make for an outsider, but difficult, and for an insider they may already be established.

I see knowledge of the culture in being able to pick out the right pathways to an end as a slightly different issue. This is where Jackie spoke about knowing that professors hold office hours, or how to address professors. Certainly, a base knowledge about these methods, as an insider would have, is very helpful, but I think the same principle applies as it did to the trust issue- if an outsider holds off on attempting these goals until he understand the society and its methods better, the task should be just as easy as for an insider. Again, it’s an advantage of an insider but doesn’t have to be a disadvantage of an outsider (aside from a temporal disadvantage).

[Some cheesey closing sentence that I’m not actually going to write because I think it takes away from the tone of discussion and inserts a tone of finality that comes with formal essays.]

Alison

The task of studying your own culture is certainly very difficult. Without proper and thoughtful observation, it is even hard to study a foreign culture. The first action one takes would be to compare the foreign culture to their own, saying what is the same and what is different. The initial reaction is to automatically compare instead of just see a culture for what it is as a single entity, separate from the rest. We do this because culture is something that is, although learned, deeply rooted within human beings.

Naturally the aspects of a culture that stick out are those that are different from our own. For this reason it is easy to pick out unique elements as Jackie stated because of the obvious differences. In Wayland where I live shops, grocery stores, and even liquor stores are open on Sundays, where in Spain I immediately noticed everything shuts down. Where I studied in Spain, Sundays were a day of rest and relaxation with family and friends. So why then in our culture is everything open? Is it because we do not value rest? Are we so concerned with using every hour in every day that we need everything to function even on Sunday because otherwise we will go crazy? I think when examining the work ethic and academic/professional values, Spaniards are much more relaxed and focused on interaction and verbal communication. Without trying to generalize too much, Americans feel an enormous amount of pressure to be independent, ambitious, and hardworking. The working culture has changed so that even when you have a day off, you can be contacted by a coworker on your pager or cellphone. "Our minds are constantly on the job." Perhaps this laid back attitude is rooted in the education systems. In Spain education is free, whereas in the US education is very expensive. Americans feel a lot of pressure to do well and get good grades because their money/future depends on it. An outsider needs to understand and be aware of these differences to understand these drastic differences in attitudes, values, and behavior.

Although, as Jackie pointed out, it is difficult to do this type of insider study, there are advantages. If someone can push through the challenges and difficulties of analyzing their own culture, they can truly start to make sense of, and come to very interesting conclusions about that given culture. All in all it is very important that an ethnographer be as critical as possible, whether they be an insider or outsider. Either way the topic is very interesting as Bart mentioned because aspects of life we think are "worldwide" turn out to be completely rooted in culture. Up until recently, I always assumed that in general people got married first and then had kids. When I was much younger I also used to assume everyone wanted to get married! I realized that I have been painted a picture of how "things work" but this picture is certainly not accepted worldwide. Other people from other cultures may have a totally different picture. I agree with Bart, as he summarizes this whole idea well when he says "For them, it is not culture, it is just how it is."

Scott

It seems that the first problem with identifying insider vs outsider ethnography is how exactly we are defining culture. How culture is being defined is effectively defining who exactly is an insider and who is an outsider. Since the former seems to have already evaded us all in the first assignment, it seems as though the terms insider and outsider are equally untelling and ambiguous. For example, I don’t think anyone would deny that an American man or women living in and studying a low-income neighborhood in an Egpyptian city is an outsider. How would we categorize a wealthy Egyptian man or women studying in the same low-income neighborhood, however? If we are to take nationality as the sole determinant of an insider or an outsider than certainly the researcher would be an insider. Would they truly understand the social and cultural realities of the particular neighborhood if all of their own life experiences are drastically different, however? One could identify a variety of factors that could result in someone being either an insider or an outsider, i.e. nationality, gender, age, social class, occupation, regional affiliation, etc. Each of such categorizations comes with its own cultural understanding that those not belonging to the particular categorization may not be aware of. Thus, the idea that there are true insiders and outsiders is a fallacy. To a certain degree, the researcher is always on the outside.

Deciding which factors are insider or outsider determinants is also extremely relative depending on the culture being studied. For example, an American women studying village X in the US might find that gender has different effects on her ability to do research than it would for a Yemeni women performing a similar study on Village Y in Yemen. The cultural role which women play in the respective villages could be extremely significant in determining how successful each researcher is able to gather information.

Finally, ethnography is always flawed in the sense that the methodology develops a sense of artificiality that can result in the research pool playing to inherent cultural values in a manner which may or may not be realistic. For example, if it is understood that the researcher is attempting to study a specific aspect of a local culture, regardless of how foreign it may or may not be, the possibility of the researched community presenting certain elements as they wish for them to be portrayed is high. Though, depending on the degree to which the researcher is either inside or outside of the specific culture, they may be able to identify the artificiality, this still says nothing as to how the action might occur if the researcher were not present.