Ethnography in The EverydaySimone Belli1
Kathleen A. Steeves2
Patrick G. Watson2
1Yachay Tech, Ecuador2McMaster University, Canada
Assignment
Go south of the conference site and conduct a ‘spot ethnography’ in a multicultural
supermarket
Spend (about) two hours in the field, in an effort to ‘demystify’ ethnography
Background
Belli - Social Psychology of Emotions; Human-Computer Interaction; Innovation;
Multimodal Analysis of Socio-Tech
Steeves - Sociology of Religions; Interactionism; Deities; Women in Clergyhood
Watson - Sociology of Knowledge; Science, Technology and Society; Evidence in
Socio-Legal Studies; Ethnomethodology & Ethnography
Starting Points…?
Interest in video and ethnography - could we record some aspects of
supermarket interaction that avail themselves to analysis?
Could we examine the multi-modality of supermarket interaction through cross-
cultural exchanges?
Could we examine mobilizations/manifestations of culture in an institution
claiming unique multicultural status?
Everyday
Culture
Language as a Cultural Marker
Linguistic Landscapes
(Shohamy, 2010)
Everyday Culture
Assumptions (or lack thereof) of
mundane cultural competences
such as identifying points of
payment
Everyday Culture
Complexities of culture like
assumptions about
understandings of trade and
commerce
Everyday Culture
Different cultures, different orientations to space and
objects
Advisors for different use of the same place.
Everyday Culture
English and Mandarin together to
sell the same product.
This linguistic landscape only
appears in selected points, not
everywhere.
Commerce and
conventions
Everyday Culture
Everyday Culture
Step by step directions for consumption
Pay, then eat.
Shopping
Culture
Specific Practices In Food
Selection
Tasting, smelling, etc.
The customer's expertise
But where does the
camera go when the
shopper raises his
head from the
melons?
Ethnographic Culture?
Ethnography as the ‘view from mars’, ‘finding the strange in the everyday’, ‘the
world in a grain of sand’, etc…
Ethnographic culture as an abdication of ‘local’ or ‘domestic’ culture - partaking
in a series of ‘culturally strange’ activities such as awkwardly observing,
videoing, note-taking, occupying shopping space while not conducting shopping
activities, etc…
Abdication of conventional Ethnographic culture – no no recourse to
gatekeepers, no interaction with respondents, no IRB, etc...
Overt / Covert Video
Noticing a customer having an
awkward (i.e. ethnographically
interesting) interaction with a
shop worker
“Whoa! Did you see that look of
disgust?”
Overt / Covert Video
Unawkwardly observing the next
interaction: The quest to recover
some aspect of the next
interaction discreetly...
Overt / Covert Video
Interacting as a shopper
“When we do our science we think and speak scientifically.
When we move around the mundane world, we speak and
think commonsensically. Such classification systems are
normative, regulative, and hence pre-structure the world for
us, but in ways which enable us to make it our own.”
(Anderson & Sharrock, 1993, p. 147, emphasis original)
Conclusions
Everyday markers of culture, but also markers that indicate areas where an
assumed shared culture has (evidently) gone missing
But Ethnographer-in-Culture is a distinctly non-everyday experience - even this
ethnography is a departure from conventional ethnographic norms/culture
A-Welcomed Ethnography (not welcomed, not unwelcomed)
Is ‘demystifying’ ethnography even a desirable outcome, or should ethnography
always feel strange, even for experienced ethnographers?
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