Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes by Robert M. Emerson

Author:Robert M. Emerson [Emerson, Robert M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780226206868
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2011-09-15T05:00:00+00:00

Here, the researcher offers “improved a little” as his own characterization of the youth’s recent period of probation. In doing so, he is clearly repeating the view of the probation officer, since a bit later in the notes, the latter characterized the report in just these terms. But, in uncritically taking over a member’s description in this way, the researcher treats “improved a little” as a fact, failing to appreciate its character as a formulation. He also neglects considering both how the probation officer interpreted “progress” and “improvement” and what “facts” or developments she attended to in making these determinations. Furthermore, treating “improved a little” as a “fact,” rather than as a formulation, ignores the possibility that this meaning was constructed in a specific context for a particular reason; for example, the probation officer may have been sensitive to the youth’s presence and, in order to keep up the latter’s morale, offered this characterization to tone down a more negative evaluation.11

In general, it is particularly tempting to privilege descriptions provided by official documents, viewing them as a simple record of relevant “facts” recorded in transparent and unproblematic ways. But ethnographically, it is more useful to recognize that descriptions incorporated into such documents are both highly selective and rife with formulations. A probation report and recommendation, for example, is not a simple factual record of a youth’s behavior but, rather, a highly selective summary and interpretation that reduces complex and often contested events to one particular form. Thus, rather than simply treating reports as objective records, an ethnographer should seek to understand how such documents are constructed, read, and interpreted by members. In practice, this requires looking closely at what members see as significant in a report, how they characterize its “gist” or “bottom line”; it also requires writing fieldnotes that recount both what is in the document (and, if possible, what gets left out) and how the member interprets and responds to it.12

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