Developing a New Major

quickie quiz – jot down definition of ethnography and culture

* positivism (quantitative, lab work, objective, truth is objective and bias free and value-neutral, develop generalizable rules for causation, do research from a distance, it’s all about the researcher)
* qualitative (naturalistic, interpretive, truth is socially constructed, get involved with participants, get them to talk about how they understand things, create shared understanding, all about the subjects, do participant observer – do what they do)
* critical theoretical (truth is arbitrary and defined by the people with power who oppress others, interested in helping people change their situation

watch the video for a little more insight into these research paradigms

one of hte first steps of a research project = think of questions you want to answer

that’s what we did with the mini-project on wed – our question was how do we decide what to do on winter break
we have to think about our big research question – I’ll say that a lot during the semester – every project has one or two big questions
and then a variety of sub questions or sub topics that dvelop as you begin to dig into the topic

thinking about your topic is the subject of the first chapter of the book
it’s tough to come up with questions that we can answer – in a semester, with our resources, using ethnographic methods like we’re going to learn’

you may come up with great research questions – just not ones we can do because they take too long or there’s not enough info yet – I had a friend who wanted to study representations of Asians on prime time broadcast tv shows one season – there weren’t any asian characters so nothing to study – we want to be careful you don’t runinto that problem

so the first thing to remember when doing a project, starting a project is to think, reflect – while starting project and asyou go on – buecase you have to make the connections between what you see in your data and the research question, you have to think about how much data you need, about how you’re going to organize your story

couple of aspects of qualitative research
-    it’s naturalistic – we study people in their normal situations, not in a lab. We want them to do whatever it is they normally do
-    we try to take an “emic” perspective – we try to get into the participant’s world so we can write from their point of view, not just our own perspective
-    we’re interested in social truth – not science or historical facts like water is h2o or george Washington was the 1st president —  social truth is a product of the people involved, it’s socially constructed and what you think you know, what you think you see, what you think you understand about  a situation may not be how other people see it or understand it – why we want multiple data sources, multiple inputs and sometimes we go back to our sources and say here’s what i think i saw, here’s what it meant to me – does it mean the same thing to you — and sometimes their understanding (their socially constructed reality) has changed because htey’ve had new experiences and why you have to think about what in your experiences might be coloring your interpretation – this is part of the emic perspective – we need to try to understand the participant’s reality, process it thru our reality and try to convey that understanding to a reader
-    example – the vacation pictures we looked at one semester – - what it meant to students, to me, might be totally different, and what they meant to the family in the pics might have a still different meaning
-    goal of qual research then is to create a shared understanding – by getting involved, asking questions – ask them what stuff means to them (it’s a tough question to ask – don’t want to seem combative), tell them what you’ve seen and what you think it means and see if they agree

so notice in our definition of qualitative we’ve worked hard to make sure the border between it and quantitative are clear
definition doesn’t specificy any specific methods
but the kinds of data are almost always going to be words – people you’re talking to, people you’re overhearing, your thoughts about what you see – and things you see, smell, feel

one way we’re going to get into the participant’s point of view is by using ethnography
ch2 is all about ethnography – good quickie overview, some interesting details

• Franz Boas is the father of ethnography (he says everything is important when studying culture, collect lots of stuff, lots of different kinds of data, all cultures similarly developed – just different)
• central idea in ethnography is culture – the way things are done in a community, the way things or , the way things are understood by the community members, cultures is embodied in community practices and beliefs (beliefs have to be expressed in some way for researcher to see them of course)
• naturalistic – study culture in it’s normal setting. you don’t bring everyone to the lab, researcher goes to the community, hangs out in the environment
• interpret culture means report meaning, not isoalted physical happenings, (clifford Geertz = thick description which considers that there are lots of things going on in any culture below the surface, things not always evident/visible)
• descriptive – Geertz = thick description which considers that there are lots of things going on in any culture below the surface, things not always evident/visible) – what makes qual research fun to read

watch this video – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55UaEtm2ldM –wrestling, lumberjack match -  make it full screen – what’s going on – what are the rules? the purpose? (dn’t have to watch the whole thing – it’s about 7 minutes)

not watch this video – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epW2j86VDwA – machinima from SL – make it full screen – what’s happening?

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