Poor Brandon Stanton, he’s an urban internet celebrity. Now he can’t be a proper…are we qualifying him as an ethnographer? He certainly seems to do a lot of what the ethnography video, “Getting People to Talk”, espouses. “I don’t want to be the best at telling a story about humanity, I want to be the best at telling a story about the person who’s right in front of me right now.” This quote from him in the interview seems to best exemplify the kind of response that ethnography wants to elicit at first, before drawing it out to a broader conclusion. While HONY has his commenters to do that, it is up to us as ethnographers to draw conclusions ourselves while still presenting our interviewee’s opinions and stories accurately to the best of our abilities.
When the ethnography video discusses getting over the nervousness of talking to strangers, they alight upon that only for a moment. Indeed, this must be a concern for many in our class. We aren’t all a talkative bunch. All the ethnographers discussing their work appeared to be pretty extroverted people, which isn’t always the case. As for “I’m not selling anything, can you tell me about your jeans?” That certainly comes off as a canvasser or creepy, I’m not surprised people didn’t want to talk to him. I assume for the most part that our Issue of New York post will be about someone specific, that we don’t have to flag down. He treated it almost like speed dating, and I wasn’t sure what the end goal of that experiment was, other than to grab sound bites from people. Our work from what we’ve been told will be a little different.
Another interesting point: ethnography as a philosophical orientation. What on earth was that woman talking about? I understand that she loves her craft, but I far more identified with her acknowledgment that ethnography can be used to gather intel for marketing rather than how it exists as a philosophical orientation. Would love to discuss that more in class. That totally floored me. It actually reminded me of when Isaac was talking about universal truths in class- social science never seemed to me to be very spiritual, but maybe I’m wrong. How does philosophy fit into social science? General question.
A fascinating portion was about exploring people’s space and artifacts. I believe this is the best way to acquire the truth from someone, especially if, as Chris Finlay pointed out, they may not be aware of the whole truth. I never considered the necessity of being with people in their relevant, meaningful spaces. How this will fit into the issues we work with remains to be seen, but I think the use of artifacts can be as vital as they claim. After all, fortunately or no, we are all attached to our things. Material goods often lend insight into a person’s life. I’ve seen that in literature and reality.
I loved the emphasis on getting them to sign the release form. Incredible. As funny as it was, consent is important and I’m glad that they touched upon that.
The surprise portion was interesting too. Hiding one’s surprise will be difficult, but if it will interfere with the person’s storytelling, it must be done. I end with the concept that they did as well: make people sing. When people are at their most comfortable, when a rapport has been built, that is when the good stuff will happen. As for watching other interviewers at work, I’m sure that you (Professor Rogers) have much to offer us in the way of prior experience and maybe some horror stories to share as that poor man Jeremy Alexis with all his nodding!
I share some of your skepticism of her definition of ethnography. In some ways I agree with it and in other ways I don’t. It would be great if you bring these issues up in class.