To The Elephant

The first article, Putting Ethnographic Writing, showed some good perspective on how to observe another culture through your own bias and previous experiences of that cultures as well as improving your writing throughout the process. Before I had read this article I had no idea what the term ethnographic writing meant. Now I know that Ethnographic writing is how you write about real people in their cultures and customs. Ethnographic can, as the article mentioned, “make you think about ethics (how you’re presenting information, how that information might affect people if made public, being as accurate as you can) and knowledge (what it is you really know at the end of the project and how you present that knowledge without sounding more confident than you should)”. I think this type of analysis can really help you to create creatively as well and bring a genuine depiction of a character as well as give you an understanding of a character other than what you know. As the article had stated, “ it can improve your understanding of people and their ways of thinking/talking; it can improve the lives of the people you write about; it can help you reflect on your own positions within cultures”. This is good advice for researching cultures. Something else I found was interesting was when the article said, “we adopt a stance that’s both distanced (observing) and interactive (participatory), and good ethno- graphic writing emerges from the juxtaposition of those stances”. I am learning about this in my other class, how one can create a bias on a particular subject based on their past experiences and I thought this was good to consider as you play the “observer” role as a writer. 

Im not really sure what the purpose of reading this article was other than to get us to think deeper about a particular character as you consider their culture and what makes them them. I liked getting my brain in that mode, developing the back story of a person and figuring out why they do what they do.  Not sure if this was the purpose but it’s what I learned. 

The second Article, Participant Observation as a Data Collection Method, I mainly just skimmed over it. I recognized that it had a lot of helpful information about observing your particular subject and how to collect data to benefit you in your writing. It discussed how it was important to play the “observer” role and said, “Observations enable the researcher to describe existing situations using the five senses, providing a "written photograph" of the situation under study”.  It then discussed “fieldwork” and how, “Fieldwork involves "active looking, improving memory, informal interviewing, writing detailed field notes, and perhaps most importantly, patience" and went on with different techniques. It discussed the pros and cons of observation work and getting access to different information. These two articles paired well together but they were a little boring and not very inspiring.