You know what Google Suggest is.  It is that thing that happens when you start typing in Google and suggestions for possible searches appear as you type.  The way it works is that Google’s algorithms predict the search you most likely want to see using “data about the overall popularity of various searches”  (direct quote from Google).  If you think about it, there is something important here.  Google Suggest can tell us what Americans are searching for, what they are seeking.  Every once in a while something comes along that reminds you that you know nothing about what other people are thinking.  Google Suggest is just that thing.

Let’s start with “should I”…

…if you are asking Google, the answer is “probably not”.  “Should I worry” gives the opposite result…

…if you are asking Google, the answer is “definitely”.

The common searches for why things are the way they are…

Mail on Columbus Day.  Honestly, hadn’t crossed my mind.

What are Americans thinking of buying?  Not what I would have expected…

Same goes for a query about where is…

…the GEICO gecko – seriously?  C’mon, pull it together.

Things get interesting for searches on famous figures such as the President…

…other famous people with interesting results include God.

People are invoking God all the time in their searches.  In America, God has wives covered, but apparently not husbands, so we turn to the next best thing – Google…

What do American’s like?  All sorts of things.

I like turtles too.  I had a pet turtle growing up, but it probably would not have been at the top of my list.

What are Americans afraid of?

…Chinese people and pre-pubescent women.  Not my first guesses.

What do people think about ethnic groups in America?

I have to wrap it up, but I thought I would finish up with what Americans are wondering about fat people.

Isn’t that God’s truth?

]]> http://experiencinginformation.wordpress.com/2009/12/23/don-norman-on-ethnography-and-innovation/ Wed, 23 Dec 2009 20:43:18 +0000 James Kalbach http://experiencinginformation.wordpress.com/2009/12/23/don-norman-on-ethnography-and-innovation/

Don Norman has a provocative article on his site about ethnography and design research. See “Technology First, Needs Last“. He gets right to the point, summarizing his basic premise in the first sentence:

I’ve come to a disconcerting conclusion: design research is great when it comes to improving existing product categories but essentially useless when it comes to new, innovative breakthroughs.

He goes on:

Myth: Use ethnographic observational studies to discover hidden, unmet needs. To achieve major conceptual breakthroughs, we should do ethnographic field study to understand the hidden unmet needs of our potential customers. Right or wrong? It all sounds logical: study people. Discover hidden, unmet needs. Fulfill those needs, and leap ahead of the competition, producing yet another wondrous advance.

[…]

But the real question is how much all this [design research] helps products? Very little. In fact, let me try to be even more provocative: although the deep and rich study of people’s lives is useful for incremental innovation, history shows that this is not how the brilliant, earth-shattering, revolutionary innovations come about.

He claims to have done some kind of investigation to arrive at this opinion:

I reached this conclusion through examination of a range of product innovations, most especially looking at those major conceptual breakthroughs that have had huge impact upon society as well as the more common, mundane small, continual improvements. Call one conceptual breakthrough, the other incremental. Although we would prefer to believe that conceptual breakthroughs occur because of a detailed consideration of human needs, especially fundamental but unspoken hidden needs so beloved by the design research community, the fact is that it simply doesn’t happen. New conceptual breakthroughs are invariably driven by the development of new technologies

Interestingly enough, I had just finished reading an article in the Harvard Business Review called “The Innovator’s DNA” (Dec 2009) by Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and Clayton Christensen. After extensive research of top executives, the authors identify five key qualities that separate innovative leaders from the non-so-innovative leaders: associating, questioning, experimenting, and networking, and observing. Regarding the latter—observing—Scott Cook, founder of Intuit, has this to say:

Often the surprises that lead to new business ideas come from watching other people work and live their lives.

A.G. Lafley, former CEO of Proctor and Gamble, is generally seen as a leading innovator amongst executives. He writes about how direct observation of customer behavior has lead to greater innovation at P&G in his book The Game Changer:

P&G spends more time living with people in their homes, shopping with them in stores, and being part of their lives. This total immersion leads to richer consumer insights, which helps identify innovation opportunities that are often missed by traditional research.

You’ve probably heard short sound bites like this before. For sure, such snippets alone don’t disprove Norman’s thesis. But if you look around a little more, you’ll find other contradictory evidence.

For instance, Indi Young, author of Mental Models, also has a recent posting that is somewhat related to this topic. See “Support Intentions, Not Existing Workflows”. Indi concludes:

When you spend time with people who might become someone you produce a service or a product for, concentrate on finding these underlying intentions. Deliberately jump past the details of how they execute something currently and spend time instead asking them what’s behind this step. What are they trying to accomplish besides the step itself? Frequently, people haven’t really thought past the steps, and your conversation turns into more of a psychotherapy session, helping the person work through the underlying issues and describe them for you. When this happens, you know you’re on the right track. With the results of several conversations like this, you can guide your organization into areas you hadn’t previously considered or been consciously aware of. This direction leads to services and products that support what a person really intends to do and makes their life smoother. And that is a very attractive proposition to most of us.

More formally, consider the results of the study “Ideation for product innovation: What are the best methods?” by Robert Cooper and Scott Edgett (2008, Stage-Gate). Ethnography emerged as the #1 method to foster innovation and creativity in organizations. The authors write:

Ethnography is ranked #1 of all methods among users, with a strong effectiveness score of 6.8 out of 10. (For comparison, the average effectiveness score for all 18 methods is 5.6, with a standard deviation of 0.73; so a score of 6.8 is, relatively speaking, “strong.”) The method provides perhaps the greatest insights and depth of knowledge into users’ unmet and unarticulated needs, applications, and problems of all the ideation approaches we studied, according to users.

Finally, the work of Sarah Miller Caldicott really flies in the face of what Norman is trying to say. She is the author of the book  Innovate Like Edison: The Five-Step System for Breakthrough Business Success, co-authored with Michael J. Gelb (Dutton Penguin, 2007), as well as the great-grandniece of Thomas Edison. She did a first-ever analysis of hundreds of thousands of documents in Edison’s collection in Menlo Park, NJ over the course of an intense three-year study.

Caldicott’s recent white paper for Strategyn is directly relevant to the debate of the effectiveness of needs versus technology: “Ideas first or needs-first: What would Edison say?”. In it she writes:

Edison learned a valuable lesson with this failure. He realized that his approach to innovation was somehow faulty. He began reshaping his efforts by redefining what success would need to look like for one of his inventions, and he decided that success was now going to be a function of utility; that is, a function of the ability to satisfy a customer need or a marketplace need. He said, “Anything that won’t sell, I don’t want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success.

[…]

He recognized that simply bringing hundreds of ideas to market would result in many failures. Being a man who was focused on efficiency and success, failure was an unattractive proposition. Edison realized that by understanding customer needs first, he could invent useful products more efficiently than he could otherwise.

It would also appear that Edison did a type of ethnographic observation in inventing the light bulb:

Edison’s trained teams visited people in their homes and watched how they used their current lighting products— kerosene, whale oil, and gas. The goal was to figure out what consumption chain jobs to consider and how to address them. This process enabled Edison to gain insight into all these critical jobs. From there, Edison worked with numerous employee teams to develop products that would address the consumption chain jobs. Products like the electric circuit, the on-off wall switch, the fuse box, electric meters, and dynamos that could power the entire lighting system were all invented. Edison received over 40 patents for these inventions. Yes, Edison invented the lightbulb, but within three years he also invented the entire system of electrical power distribution, along with the world’s first central power station. That’s fast, even by modern standards.

Here again, Edison’s needs-first approach enabled him to identify a large market and guided his research and development efforts. He was able to come up with a revolutionary lighting solution and address all the consumption chain jobs required to bring this solution to market. Because he kept his focus on exactly what customers needed, he could hone his product development timetable and production timetable very efficiently.

Caldicott concludes:

If your company wants to take a page out of Edison’s innovation playbook, it should start by discarding ideas-first thinking and adopt an effective needs-first approach to innovation. This crucial lesson enabled Edison to pioneer the creation of six industries and lead the United States to a century of prosperity—a feat that has not been duplicated since.

Compare this to Norman’s contention about how Edison worked:

Edison launched his first phonograph company within months of his invention: he never questioned the need.

Overall, it seems other examinations of innovation have proven the exact opposite of what Norman claims in his article. There is indeed a wealth of evidence that people’s needs can and should precede technology. And frankly, Norman’s “examination” seems more of the back-of-the-napkin type with several errors.

But does Norman have a point? Well, I guess it’s always good for us design researchers to step back and question our own practices. But I think there are two key arguments that speak against Norman’s main point:

• First, there much more evidence from much more rigorous studies to suggest that ethnographic techniques and understanding people’s needs has preceded technical invention in the past.
• Second, Norman seems to forget that there are different types of innovation, not just product innovation. There’s also process innovation, organizational innovation, business model innovation, and strategy innovation. The equation isn’t as simple as: research needs, then develop technologies (or vice-versa), as Norman suggests.

I’d actually argue that it’s better to understand customer needs before creating the strategy that allows technologists to start working on a given technology or not. That is: needs > strategy > technology. So needs do precede technology.

Everett Rogers, author of Diffusions of Innovations—the “bible” in innovation diffusion literature—also indicates that needs identification precedes the entire innovation process. In Chapter 4, “The Generation of Innovation,” he outlines six phases, the first of which is “recognizing a problem or need.” He writes:

The innovation-development process often begins with recognition of a problem or need, which stimulates research and development activities designed to create an innovation to solve the problem or need. (p. 137)

And later, in the discussion on “compatibility” as a factor of adoption rates, he writes:

One indication of the compatibility of an innovation is the degree to which it meets a felt need. Change agents seek to determine the needs of their clients and then to recommend innovations that fulfill these needs. Determining felt needs is not a simple matter, however. Change agents must have a high degree of empathy and rapport with their clients in order to assess their needs accurately. Informal probing in interpersonal contacts with individual clients, client advisory committees to change agencies, and surveys of clients are sometimes used to determine needs for innovations. (p. 146)

So innovations that are conceived around user needs from the very beginning (i.e., BEFORE technology) have a higher chance of adoption and therefore a higher chance of success. Norman alludes to Roger’s work saying:

The path of diffusion of innovation has been well studied, well documented. Most radical innovations fail. Those that succeed can take decades before they are successful.

But that’s the point: innovators generally want to increase their chances of succeeding from the beginning, even if only marginally. Needs identification up front helps with that, at least according to Rogers (among others).

Perhaps a quote from Scott Berkun, author of The Myths of Innovation, can shed some light onto this whole debate. He says:

Successful innovators spend as much time understanding the people they are designing for, their beliefs, feelings, values, and needs, as they do the technologies they’re using to build innovations, and the book offers the fundamentals on how to do this. So, the superiority of your mousetrap is sure nice in an ivory-tower setting, but if people—customers—can’t see why it’s superior, then the superiority is just your opinion. And sadly, I don’t know anyone who has made millions solely on the superiority of their own opinion.

Ultimately, I believe it’s not an either-or question, nor is it a first-last question. It’s a question of balance. This is what the HBR article “The Innovators DNA” suggests as well as detailed studies like those of Sarah Miller Caldicott. But since technology already gets so much attention, Norman’s basic claim “technology first, needs last” is in the end a more harmful perspective than helpful.

I  met Dave this week and he’ll be riding my bus 2 days a week for the foreseeable future.  He’s a young guy, kind of lean and not so tall. Twice a week Dave attends 12 step meetings then takes two buses to the hospital for treatment. He doesn’t work, he can’t work. He says he ” has issues”

Dave Attends his court ordered 12 step programs because he got arrested driving under the influence of narcotics. ” They help me stay numb, he told me.” he also told me he hasn’t been doing drugs for a long time, but once he got started he liked the way it made him feel.

So that’s dave in a nutshell….  doesn’t sound like much? Well yeah I’d have to agree. I did however leave out a few details.   Dave is 26 years old and a veteran of the U.S Army Airborne Rangers. The pain he’s trying to mask is a missing limb lost in Iraq. I’m assuming it was from an IED but I’ve never asked him and the hospital I take him to is the VA.  Dave has been “home” for 2 years but honestly I wonder if you ever come home from experiences like he’s had.

The small VA hospital in the valley had been in decline patient wise for a long time.  George Bush and his mythical link of Al Qaida to Iraq has made their business boom again. Now I take a mixture of older vets of wars long gone by and seated next to them new vets starting their road to recovery at the hospital.  I hope their is some guidance going on their but I doubt it. People own their experiences and the experiences of one war don’t always translate well to the next war.   I’m a vet, but not a war veteran so I find a large disconnect from these vets. They have lived and put into practice that which I only trained for.  There is only one small thing I do for them. The entrance to the hospital is about 500 yds down from the bus stop. I always drive them down to the gate and pick up anybody along the fence who might be walking towards my stop.  Just when you think shit has got you down think of Dave.. super Dave?  Why do I call him Super? Author Chris Crutcher once wrote  in a book ” Superman’s not brave, he’s invulnerable. You can’t be invulnerable and be brave. It’s people like you and me who do stuff eventhough we know we can be hurt, we are the brave ones.- “Angus Bethune.” Dave is the brave one.  I wish him peace and joy on Earth….

I’ll be taking a break from the blog for the Holidays so I’ll do a blog on Wednesday and then be back after New Years.  Thanks to everyone reading…  frankly I’m shocked people are reading it at all but I’m extremely grateful.

Happy Holidays be safe and remember if your gonna drink think about taking some of the MTA’s all night free bus service on Christmas and New Years.  Also if your going to the Rose Parade let the Gold line be your savior from mass traffic.

Technology is an amazing thing; it allows people who don’t have natural talent for something to appear as if they are experts (if they have the right equipment). Take Photoshop, for example. We can take a photo, add filters, superimpose other things onto the photo and in the end create something that looks as if we actually knew what we were doing when we took the picture in the first place.

Similar things have happened in music. We have programs like GarageBand that can make a person sound as if he has a whole orchestra at his disposal. And these types of programs are available to anyone…almost. As I got into the tech field and ultimately online learning, it was obvious that not everyone had the same access to the benefits that technology offers. Unlike what we would like to think, it is less a racial barrier than an economic one. Just the same, the barrier is still there and as my professional career developed I realized my goal was to use my technical ability to level the playing field in any way I could. I was becoming a technical champion for those less fortunate.

I have devoted several past posts to my entry into Second Life and also how the House of Flames came to be. I also don’t typically cross my House of Flames blog posts with my academic blog (http://flameheartsol.wordpress.com) but in this case, the paths begin to converge. For those not aware, I am about to embark on a dissertation about how virtually performing musicians create an identity and how deeply the performer is embedded in their virtual persona. This has been an outgrowth of my interests in music and technology, as well as an understanding of why some people need to perform in a virtual space…what makes it their passion.

As much as I have been enamored with live performance in Second Life, I have had an awakening about the technology that makes this possible. The streams, the video, the bitrates, the file formats…it has become my Passion…and this is from someone who has come to the passion party late in life. This issue of being able to broadcast in real time from one corner of the globe to another—to create audiences where there weren’t any—it enables people of average means to have above average abilities. But what about the people who aren’t of average means?

Any book might have been a compelling jolt out of the academic ambivalence that precedes (and prevents) my dissertation, but it happened to be Conflict, Violence, and Displacement in Indonesia, published last year by the Cornell Southeast Asia Program, and edited by Eva-Lotta E. Hedman. I was surprised to find it at Aksara on my last trip to Jakarta so I picked it up, not least because I had dinner once with Eva-Lotta here in Banda Aceh a few years ago and should familiarize myself with her work. The cover has a terrific photograph that for me perfectly captures the inherent tension between structure and agency that animates so much anthropological debate. This woman IDP returning home to Halmahera from her displacement in Ternate in 2002 is decidedly *not* interested in the policeman’s direction, but she probably doesn’t have much choice or where else to go.

The back cover states the book’s mission: “This volume foregrounds the dynamics of displacement and the experiences of internal refugees uprooted by conflict and violence in Indonesia.” In doing so, Hedman hopes to achieve a threefold intervention, described in the last paragraph of the Introduction (p.27):

1. Instead of a focus on explaining violence and conflict in Indonesia, which has the unfortunate–some might say unavoidable–byproduct of displacement, this book highlights displacement itself as an actual mode of governmentality. She invokes Agamben’s “state of exception” theory here.
2. Instead of reducing Indonesia to one case study in a global comparative analysis of sectarian or communal violence, terrorism, or failed states, this book allows for a deeper and multi-layered analysis within Indonesia’s borders, which has more diverse comparative material on “conflict, violence, and displacement” than most other nation-states could claim.
3. Instead of situating this book within discourses of the emergent and well-funded transnational humanitarian industry, concerned with describing the distribution of conflict and violence and prescribing solutions for it, an industry that arguably reflects and reproduces “a more pervasive/violence discourse, … this volume serves as a reminder that the very processes involved in the production of knowledge about displacement cannot, by definition, remain somehow outside or above politics.” (p.27)

Each “intervention” grips and excites me, but each in their own particular way. I’ll start with the second one, because that poses no disagreement. I’ve accepted that in some elite institutions regional studies may be unfashionable second tier academia, but I think of myself as an Indonesianist, so I enthusiastically support Hedman’s claim that a more fine-grained analysis of Indonesia at the nation-state and regional levels precedes, and supersedes, global comparison. Anthropologists, at least in a Boasian tradition, have the least problem with getting “intensely local,” multi-sited theoretical developments aside, so at least in my discipline I don’t have to apologize for putting regional and thematic issues on an equal footing. I love this book already because it’s all about Indonesia! It even has two chapters about Aceh!

The first “intervention” drags me back, kicking and screaming, to my anthropological training. I think I was assigned Agamben in at least two courses, and the “state of exception” (also a highlight in Walter Benjamin’s work) is a powerful analytic deployed frequently in contemporary ethnography. It’s not that I think it’s wrong; rather, my day-to-day work in Aceh over the years has not encouraged, broadly speaking, a discursive analytical framework. Foucault & friends do not come easy to begin with, and I have to flex the brain a few times to “get it.” When I first read Hedman’s Introduction, I thought her writing was strange, excessive, and strident… even as I found myself agreeing with her. Writing about late Soekarno-era military adventures along the nation’s borders, here is an excerpt that stands out:

The West New Guinea and Konfrontasi campaigns served, in distinct ways, to shape the social (re)production of state borders and national space in Indonesia through militarized conflict, violence, and displacement. In the case of the West New Guinea campaign… it prompted a creeping militarization of the long border with Papua New Guinea and the emergence of a growing and, eventual, so-called ‘protracted refugee situation’ across this border, thus anchoring Jakarta’s claims to the last remnants of the (former) Dutch East Indies colonial territory in new lived experiences of political boundaries and violent geographies on Indonesia’s easternmost frontier. … The undeclared border war known as Konfrontasi prompted a new consciousness of the border between Indonesia and Malaysia and the wider social and economic effects thereof, as ‘people from across the border came to be viewed as outsiders rather than relatives.’ (p.12)

Violence and displacement not only consolidate national boundaries but are also productive of national consciousness among displaced populations at Indonesia’s most distant frontiers. I get it. I’ve even written papers like this. It’s just been awhile. Like I said, any decent ethnography may have (re)oriented me (natch!) back to my discipline’s theoretical for-granteds, but I am grateful that this one did the job.

I take issue with the third “intervention,” and only partly because it kicks me where it counts. She writes: “The mobilization of a massive transnational ‘humanitarian’ machinery, with its own considerable complex of national and international, governmental and non-governmental, resources, networks, and discourses, has propelled an entire industry focused on ‘conflict and violence in Indonesia,’ including the so-called mapping of conflict and violence, the search for conflict intervention mechanisms, and the design of peace and conflict resolution programs.” Such efforts, she says, arguably reflect and reproduce “a more pervasive conflict/violence discourse ‘grounded in a set of institutions that promotes its persistence.’” (p.27) At the end of the line there she is quoting from a book I haven’t heard of before, by Paul Brass, titled Theft of an Idol: Text and Context in the Representation of Collective Violence, published in 1997 by Princeton University Press. After a quick browse online, here is how the publisher describes the book, which is an ethnography of communal violence in northern India:  

Brass shows how, out of many possible interpretations applicable to these incidents, government and the media select those that support existing relations of power in state and society…some incidents remain localized while others are fit into broader frameworks of meaning, thereby becoming useful for upholders of dominant ideologies. Incessant talk about violence and its implications in these circumstances contributes to its persistence rather than its reduction. Such treatment serves in fact to mask the causes of violence, displace the victims from the center of attention, and divert society’s gaze from those responsible for its endemic character.

OK now let’s compare Hedman’s words and her reference point with my current job. I work for World Bank Indonesia’s Conflict and Development team (read: massive transnational ‘humanitarian’ machinery…focused on ‘conflict and violence in Indonesia,’). My job is to support The Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution Studies at Syiah Kuala University, which receives much of its funding from the World Bank (read: the search for conflict intervention mechanisms, and the design of peace and conflict resolution programs). Our signature product is the Aceh Peace Monitoring Update, which relies on a newspaper monitoring methodology to map conflict and violence in Aceh since early 2005 (read: including the so-called mapping of conflict and violence). In Hedman’s own chapter, “Back to the Barracks: Relokasi Pengungsi in Post-Tsunami Aceh,” she cites one of these monitoring updates (when it was still called the Aceh Conflict Monitoring Update, and still produced directly by the World Bank). It’s not unlikely that the critique in her Introduction is directed squarely at my employer and its publications. In a word: Ouch!

It’s not like she is the only one to make this critique. There is a blooming critical literature in the social sciences about humanitarianism, Mariella Pandolfi’s “mobile sovereign” and all that, wherein the state of exception figures heavily as well. The problem with this critique though is that it sets up a straw man figure of the (faceless) Humanitarian, and if that is your image, then The Bank is such an easy and obvious target. In that conversation, structure beats agency every time, with a knockout punch, except it’s rigged! I prefer the more productive tension illustrated on the book cover.

So in an effort to balance Hedman’s third intervention, I just want to say two things. The first is that these conversations and critiques also take place within the humanitarian industry itself. Humanitarians might possibly be the most reflexive professionals around, after anthropologists of course. The second is that humanitarians are not (only) cylon machinery. One could argue perhaps that some are more “interpellated by structures of power and domination” than, say, some critical anthropologists think that they’re not, but they’ve got agency in there somewhere (In Jakarta, for example, I choose Starbucks over Oh-La-La). Humanitarians also have lives, and frustrations, and lovers, and even moral commitments, and well, experience, that are ethnographically rich, and that is something still missing from this critical literature.

I should add, now that I’ve got that off my chest, that Hedman is partially right. My office does not have total neutrality and autonomy when it writes a peace monitoring update, but I think most of us are aware of that. There are subtle and blunt forces that shape the content, style, and language of those reports. The details of such forces are indeed ethnographically rich; I savor them actually (because the process is so fascinating), even as they frustrate and compel me/us to self-censor. The net effect favors, though hardly explicitly and certainly not intentionally, an assemblage of powerful interests. This is what draws me to the Paul Brass book, in due time; I don’t think I’ll find that one at Aksara.

There is so much more to write, to fill in the details of the previous two paragraphs just for example, but that’s beyond the scope of this post. Regarding this wonderful new book that got my head ticking again, I’ve only really addressed the Introduction, but there is a great collection of chapters, and so far I’ve read the two excellent Aceh chapters (Hedman wrote one about the early and decisive days for managing the tsunami IDPs, Ed Aspinall wrote the other one about three major waves of conflict IDPs between 1998 and 2005). I am really looking forward to the last chapter which is about ghosts with trauma and a haunting drakula in post-conflict North Maluku. But for now, I’ve got my own chapter to write, for another book, and I’m hoping this conversation here serves as an inspiration.

]]> http://mtbond.wordpress.com/2009/12/18/dr-chap-clark-menlo-park-pres/ Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:41:25 +0000 Matt Bond http://mtbond.wordpress.com/2009/12/18/dr-chap-clark-menlo-park-pres/

As a part of our on-going effort to train and equip volunteer leaders, parents, and the broader community, this fall we invited Dr. Chap Clark from Fuller Theological Seminary to visit Menlo Park and share on the subject of the world and culture of teenagers.  The author of, “HURT – Inside the World of Today’s Teenagers,” Dr. Clark is also the Vice Provost and professor of youth, family and culture at Fuller, Senior Editor of Youthworker Journal, and founder of ParenTeen and HURT Seminars.  Chap is a legend in youth ministry and has spent his life caring for students and equipping the church to do the same.  He also hopelessly loves the Kansas City Chiefs and only agreed to visit if we promised not to plan a speaking event early-afternoon Sunday so he could watch the Chiefs game on TV.

The following message is in 3 parts and took place on Saturday night at 700 Santa Cruz Ave, Menlo Park.  The audience is made up of volunteer youth leaders from MPPC and other churches, parents, and community leaders from various schools and organizations.

today was an interesting day on my bus. I broke down.  Usually breakdowns are nice but not today and let me tell you why.   My new run is unique in that for the 1st part of the day I drive a heavy high load line, then I get a quick 30 minute break and go out to the lightest line in the Valley. The lightest line has an hour headway ( meaning the next bus after me doesn’t come for an hour after me) So when you break down like that they have no option but to force you to roll late. I was 35 minutes late and people get mad.

This one irate guy got on pissed that I was late. He was loud in my face and willing to challenge me. I could of gotten  all big dog and challenged him back but that presents a problem.  Once I go there my hand is forced, I pretty much am inviting a confrontation.  If I decided to bark like a big dog I have to be prepared for the consequences, we could end up fighting, that leaves me in a bad position in so many ways. I could get my assed kicked or I could get in real trouble from the company, either way I’m screwed. But I’ve developed a tactic that works well to defuse these situations

When faced with angry emotional, irate, pissed off people I like to yawn.  I’ve learned people don’t know how to react to someone yawning in their face.  99.9 % of the time it defuses the situation.  I guess they think I’m unfazed or bored with their rant.  So as this guy was screaming at me today. I  just   “YAAAAAAWWWWWWWWwwNNNnnnnnnnned. and sure enough it worked.  Just as in defensive driving, you always want to leave yourself options the same applies to interpersonal skills. I don’t want to force an altercation. If it happens I will protect myself and open a can of whoop ass but why go there off the bat and force my hand?  Here is the thing once you get all in someones face you can’t back down but by yawning I leave all avenues open, if it works great, if not then I can still go all big.

In life you always want to leave as many options on the table as possible, it just gives you choices. That pissed guy was transit dependent he left himself no options but the bus and to be pissed when I was late. I left myself as many options as possible for as long as possible and therefore was way more flexible in the moment…..  so needless to say  the yawn worked. He gave me a dumbfounded look and sat down… Mr. farebox= winner.

by the way it took me 1 hour and 30 minutes to make up the 35 late minutes…. that was some serious high speed bus driving…

have a good weekend.  Next week I’m going to tell you about the tragic guy I’ll call Dave. He’s been riding my bus this week and his story is tale of burden our country has put on him.

After a long hiatus while I finished up my semester (my second-last at Penn!) I’m back at eartotheground.

On Sunday, I had the privilege of playing in my synagogue’s klezmer band for the début performance of the Philadelphia sher at our annual Chanukah party.  The sher is a traditional Eastern European/Ashkenazi Jewish social dance in 2/4 time for four couples, with an accompanying set of tunes. Eastern European Jews who came to the United States brought it with them, and by the early twentieth century, Philadelphia had its own characteristic sher medley, as did New York and other major cities.

The sher was hugely popular at weddings and other social events and quickly became beloved by the Philadelphia Jewish community and beyond, eventually becoming the preeminent American sher medley. Unfortunately, widespread performance of the sher died out by the 1960s due to the pressures of Israeli music and dance, assimilation and suburbanization. It is kept alive in klezmer circles at events like KlezKamp, but not often performed at everyday parties and events.

Over the last few months, the Simcha Band, Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmann and the Religious Life Committee of Kol Tzedek, and I put together a grant application to the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia’s Kehillah of Center City to fund an exciting community-based project built around the sher–and we received $2200 from them for this project and a concurrent prayer leader training program!

Sherri Cohen, the Simcha Band’s trombonist, and I have been taking lessons with the eminent klezmer trumpeter Susan Watts, whose family has deep roots in Philadelphia’s Jewish music scene, and learning the sher.  Naomi Segal, a member of Kol Tzedek, re-learned the sher (which she danced as a kid growing up in Philly) and taught it to the congregation on Sunday.  People had a great time dancing it and the band (featuring Susan and her mom, fantastic drummer Elaine Hoffman Watts) certainly had a great time playing it.

Right now we’re recruiting volunteers from Kol Tzedek, the Philly Jewish community, and beyond to help with this project.  Community members can get involved in any number of ways:

• Coming to Kol Tzedek events where we will be performing the sher (TBA here, or if you get in touch with me)
• Learning how to perform it with the Simcha Band
• Volunteering to learn the dance and teach it to others in the area
• Getting involved in the historical and archival research on the sher and on klezmer in Philly that I’ll be conducting beginning next month
• Conducting oral interviews about Philly’s Jewish music scene with members of the Philly Jewish community
• Designing the final web archive, where we will be storing educational materials, video, audio, sheet music and historical and ethnographic information about the sher

By April, we hope to have:

• Published (online and in hard copy) the sher music, recordings, performance notes, video of events at which it was performed, instructional video, and a history/ethnography of the Philadelphia sher.
• Performed and taught the Philadelphia sher medley at area Jewish events and simchas, along with a short historical presentation.
• Established a foothold for the Philly sher as a meaningful, living, breathing part of Philadelphia Jewish life, and self-sustaining methods for its transmission to future generations of musicians, dancers and partygoers.

There might also be a documentary film somewhere in there, depending on how things go.  Stay tuned for the launch of the official Philadelphia Sher Project blog within the next week or so, with photos, video and audio of this year’s Chanukah festivities!  Drop me an email or comment here if you want to get involved with this project at any level.

A class at Columbia University explores the confluence of human rights and technology. Interestingly, there is a topic titled “Web 2.0: Transcending Boundaries.”

The latest issue of Body & Society is now out.

Contents:

Yasmin Gunaratnam.

Auditory Space, Ethics and Hospitality: ‘Noise’, Alterity and Care at the End of Life.
Body & Society 2009 15: 1-19. [Abstract] [PDF] [References] [Request Permission]

Peter E.S. Freund.

Social Synaesthesia: Expressive Bodies, Embodied Charisma.
Body & Society 2009 15: 21-31. [Abstract] [PDF] [References] [Request Permission]

Magdalena Harris.

Injecting, Infection, Illness: Abjection and Hepatitis C Stigma.
Body & Society 2009 15: 33-51. [Abstract] [PDF] [References] [Request Permission]

Céline Lafontaine.

Regenerative Medicine’s Immortal Body: From the Fight against Ageing to the Extension of Longevity.
Body & Society 2009 15: 53-71. [Abstract] [PDF] [References] [Request Permission]

Cressida J. Heyes.

Diagnosing Culture: Body Dysmorphic Disorder and Cosmetic Surgery.
Body & Society 2009 15: 73-93. [Abstract] [PDF] [References] [Request Permission]

Cecilia Åsberg and Jennifer Lum.

PharmAD-ventures: A Feminist Analysis of the Pharmacological Imaginary of Alzheimer’s Disease.
Body & Society 2009 15: 95-117. [Abstract] [PDF] [References] [Request Permission]

Dale C. Spencer.

Habit(us), Body Techniques and Body Callusing: An Ethnography of Mixed Martial Arts.
Body & Society 2009 15: 119-143. [Abstract] [PDF] [References] [Request Permission]

Juljan Krause.

Book Review: Analytical Psychology and German Classical Aesthetics: Goethe, Schiller and Jung by Paul Bishop London: Routledge, 2008, vol. 1: The Development of the Personality, pp. xiv, 233, ISBN 978—1-583—91809—8; vol. 2: The Constellation of the Self, pp. viii, 248, ISBN 978—0-415—43029—6.
Body & Society 2009 15: 145-149. [PDF] [References] [Request Permission]

Thanks to Reviewers.
Body & Society 2009 15: 151-154. [PDF] [Request Permission]

Index to Volume 15, 2009.
Body & Society 2009 15: 155-156. [PDF] [Request Permission]

Design Ethnography:

Like Anthropology, But Less Conflicted

Academic anthropology is the unholy love child of natural science and colonialism, and is burdened with the resulting identity issues that one might expect from such a union. It is a discipline “severely divided and deeply troubled in its self-identity… torn and fragmented, [anthropology] has lost its professional confidence as the Science of Man” (Eriksen, 2005, p. 34) Its origins leave it effectively crippled, frozen in self doubt, unwilling to adapt to the changes globalism has wrought on the landscape. The power of anthropology, its tool set for collecting rich description, is not lost to the world, however. Design ethnography, born of anthropology’s field work practice, offers a new discipline lacking the identity issues plaguing academic anthropology. To understand why this is the case, however, it first is necessary to examine the birth of anthropology.

I. A Brief History of Anthropology

The historical beginnings of anthropological thought are nearly impossible to trace. Each anthropologist “has his or her own notion of the most relevant point at which to begin the story” (Barnard, 2000, p. 27). Margaret Hodgen (1964) argued that the Greek historian Herodotus was the originator of much anthropological thought. More recent publications have pointed to Muslim scholar Abū Rayhān Bīrūnī as the first true anthropologist for his extensive study of the Indian subcontinent using the hallmark method of anthropology: participant observation (Ahmed, 1984). Regardless of whether anthropology began with social contract theory, as Barnard (2000) argues, it is generally agreed upon that academic anthropology as we know it “grew out of the intersection of European discovery, colonialism, and natural science” in the mid nineteenth century (Monagham, 2000).

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution had profound impact on intellectual discourse during the 1860s. According to Stocking (1963), “the publication of the Origin in 1859 focused a whole range of developing knowledge in the biological and historical sciences on the question of the origin and antiquity of mankind and of human civilization” (p. 784). In keeping with this intellectual climate, Edward Tylor, “interested in reconstructing stages of social and cultural evolution,” produced one of the first works of academic anthropology (Monagham, 2000, p. 1). Tylor’s Primitive Culture introduced the modern idea of culture (Eriksen, 2005) as a “complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (Tylor, 1871, p. 1). Tylor’s contemporaries were natural scientists as well as anthropologists: Lewis Henry Morgan produced monographs on both the American beaver and the Iroquois tribe. As Eriksen writes, these early anthropologists “respected no institutional boundaries between university subjects in their quest for knowledge” (2005, p. 2). However, it is not so much the interdisciplinary approach these men took to understanding that distinguishes them from later anthropologists; rather, it is the methods by which they collected the information they analyzed that sets them apart. Tylor traveled little after the journey that produced the notes for his first book; future theories on the nature of humanity were built instead from study of the accounts of others and archeological artifacts. This willingness to make use of information that did not come from personal participant observation is a noteworthy point in the evolution of academic anthropology; “until the late nineteenth century the ethnographer and the anthropologist, the describer/translator of custom and the builder of general theories about humanity, were distinct” (Clifford, 1983, p. 123).

This distinction between the ethnographer as the field researcher and the anthropologist as the developer of theories on humanity began to dissolve at the end of the nineteenth century. Anthropologists began to enter the field themselves to conduct their own ethnographies from which to build theoretical frameworks. According to Clifford, “the new fieldworkers sharply distinguished themselves from the earlier “men on the spot,” the missionary, the administrator, the trader, and the traveller, whose knowledge of indigenous peoples, they argued, was not informed by the best scientific hypotheses or a sufficient neutrality” (Clifford, 1983, p. 121). In particular, Franz Boas’s appearance on the scene “marks the beginning of an important phase in the development of British ethnographic method: the collection of data by academically trained natural scientists defining themselves as anthropologists, and involved also in the formulation and evaluation of anthropological theory” (Stocking, 1992, p. 20). However, while the “move toward professional ethnography was underway,” Clifford states, “the establishment of intensive participant-observation as a professional norm would have to await the Malinowskian cohort” (Clifford, 1983, p. 122). The work of Bronislaw Malinowski, bound together (perhaps irrevocably) the role of anthropologist and ethnographer; the ethnographer took on the theory building role of the anthropologist in addition to the role of observer. The task of the ethnographer had become, Malinowski writes, “the integration of all the details observed, the achievement of a sociological synthesis of all the various, relevant symptoms…the Ethnographer has to construct the picture of the big institution, very much as the physicist constructs his theory from the experimental data” (1961 [1922], pp. 83-84).

Much of the anthropology taking place at this point was salvage anthropology; a rush to document “primitive” Non-Western societies “being destroyed with the advance of civilization” (Grimshaw, 2001, p. 23). Malinowski bemoans the disappearance of the native, writing in his forward to Argonauts, “at the very moment when [anthropology] begins to put its workshop in order, to forge its proper tools, to start ready for work on its appointed task, the material of its study melts away with hopeless rapidity” (Malinowski, 1961 [1922], p. xv). In this spirit, naturalist A. C. Haddon organized an expedition to the Torres Straight Islands; his team strove “to record the customs and practices of native peoples before they died out” (Grimshaw, Viisualizing Anthropology, 2004).

The focus of anthropology on the native began to shift after the Second World War as colonialism disintegrated. By then, Franz Boas and his followers had successfully won the argument that “culture rather than race determined behavior” (Patterson, 2001, p. 55). As anthropology progressed through the second half of the twentieth century, anthropologists began looking at groups within their own societies in addition to the exotic other. But regardless of whom an anthropologist studies today or in the future, Monagrahm writes, “anthropology continues to be firmly rooted in the descriptive richness that comes out of the specific encounters anthropologists have with particular peoples and places” (2000, p. 2).

II. Academic Anthropology to Design Ethnography: The Escape from Science and Colonialism

A. Clarifications and Overview

But what is ethnography to anthropology? The confusion stems, perhaps, from the numerous applications of the word ethnography within anthropology. Ethnography is something that anthropologists do-it is a tool that is used for gathering information about humanity. It is “characterized by long term intense interaction with relatively small groups of people” (Monagham, 2000, p. 26). An ethnography is also something that an anthropologist may write-a description of a people at a particular time and place. The matter is further confused by the shifting of roles within anthropology. Since Malinowski, the ethnographer has co-opted the role of anthropologist-an ethnographer now not only collects stories of the people but also analyzes them for meaning. The previously separate roles of fieldworker and theorist were fused into one (Grimshaw, 2001, p. 20). Because of this fusion in twentieth century anthropology, in this paper I treat the ethnographer and the academic anthropologist as one and the same, and refer to them as anthropologists. Design ethnography, however, is distinct discipline, separate from academic anthropology. The next few sections of this essay address the advent and growth of this design ethnography as a discipline, as well as its relationship to academic anthropology.

“Modern anthropology,” Grimshaw writes, “has always had a problem of professional legitimation” (2001, p. 19). This perceived lack of legitimacy has its roots in the origins of anthropology: colonialism and natural science. The former, anthropology strives to distance itself from, the latter, anthropology strives to become. Anthropology as a discipline has tried so hard to be something other than what it is that it has ceased to be useful. “Anthropology should have changed the world,” Erikson writes, “yet the subject is almost invisible in the public sphere outside the academy” (2005, p. 1). Design ethnography has evolved as a discipline in response to anthropology’s withdrawal from public discourse-it takes the best of anthropology and moves it forward, comfortable in its origin, strengths, and limitations, the confident adult to anthropology’s angsty teenager. Design ethnographers “usurp many elements of traditional ethnography, but bend, twist and transform them to suit our purpose: to define and design” (Salvador & Mateas, 1997). Design ethnography transforms the scientific fragility of anthropology into an understanding of the value of an ethnographer’s a point of view; it breaks completely with the power relationship remaining from anthropology’s colonial origin by developing a method that is deeply collaborative and encourages dialogue. Each of these transformations will be addressed in the following two sections.

B. Design Ethnography: Not Rocket Science

“Anthropology occupies the uneasy space between the sciences and the humanities,” Pool postulates (2005, p. 6). This unease is apparent in the generations of anthropologists who have focused their efforts on making the discipline as scientific as possible. Malinowski was particularly a proponent of the development of anthropology as a true science. In his foreword to Argonauts, he trumpets, that it has been proven “beyond doubt that scientific, methodic inquiry can give us results far more abundance and of better quality than those of even the best amateur’s work” (Malinowski, 1961 [1922], p. xv). The historical significance of science within anthropology coupled with the inherent subjectivity of its primary data gathering method has led to a deep anxiety within the discipline, the fear “that the outside world might discover ‘the fragility of the scientific precepts’ fundamental to the subject” (Eriksen, 2005, p. 1).

This anthropological obsession with scientific validity has caused many an anthropologist’s work to be discredited for being insufficiently objective in his or her observations. Clifford (1983) writes, “Cushing’s long first-hand study of the Zunis, his quasi-absorption into their way of life, ‘raised awkward problems of verification and accountability’… Cushing’s intuitive, excessively personal understanding of the Zuni could not confer scientific authority” (p. 123). Margaret Mead, too, was criticized for her closeness to her work. “She was perceived as … too engaged to be properly scientific” (Eriksen, 2005, p. 3). Anthropologists prefer “the natural scientist’s documentary, observational stance” (Clifford, 1983). Design ethnography, in contrast, is less concerned with the truth of the observations and more concerned with the usefulness of the insight. Colin Burns captured this when he said, “I don’t give a shit about being representative. I want to work with people who will help me think better” (Burns, 2009). A design ethnographer is not seeking truth, scientific or otherwise; after all, everyone lies all the time. Instead, a design ethnographer is in the points of view game, soliciting useful perspectives on the subject at hand (Macaulay, 2009). And one of the most useful perspectives on the subject at hand is the design ethnographer’s own point of view. An ethnographer’s point of view “constitutes a resource [she] should openly draw upon in [her] interpretations (Monagham, 2000, p. 29). Design ethnography recognizes that an essential component of the product a design ethnographer is peddling is the design ethnographer themselves. This acceptance of a degree of subjectivity is not necessarily unique to design ethnography-in the latter half of the twentieth century many anthropologists became significantly “anti-scientistic,” moving away from image of the anthropologist as an impartial, objective observer (Eriksen, 2005). However, anthropologists as a whole are “inept at organizing and immersing themselves in their own rituals” (Eriksen, 2005, p. 13), something that weakens the discipline by removing its most accessible resources. Design ethnography, conversely, exploits the perspective of the fieldworker, creating a more powerful tool for problem solving.

C. Collaboration: Distinguishing Between Applied Anthropology and Design Ethnography

If design ethnography is the ethnographic tool set applied to problem solving as Salvador and Mateas (1997) assert, then isn’t it just a fancy name for applied anthropology? After all, applied anthropology is anthropology directed towards solving practical problems. (Van Willigen, 2002). In the regard that both design ethnography and applied anthropology are focused on developing solutions, they are quite similar. However, they are distinct in a significant way: applied anthropology is practiced in the model of traditional anthropology, in which a lone anthropologist ventures out into the place of the “Others”, to “to grasp the native’s point of view, his relation to life, to realise his vision of his world” (Malinowski, 1961 [1922]) before leaving the field to analyze and synthesize his observations. It is a monologue, a specter of colonial modes of representation, “an exercise in power and control” (Monagham, 2000, p. 29). Design ethnography, on the other hand, is deeply collaborative. A design ethnographer “actively encourages … others to participate in the process and in so doing, will fundamentally expand their way of seeing” (Cheskin Group). The backbone of ethnography is dialogue (Monagham, 2000).

The tension between the applied anthropologists and the people they were representing is nowhere more apparent than in development anthropology during the mid twentieth century. Development anthropology grew from “imperial expansion and colonialism,” in which the colonizers were “‘rational agents of progress and development’” (Van Willigen, 2002, p. 68). This view birthed modernization theory, the idea that natives should be industrialized and urbanized out of their “primitive” ways (Van Willigen, 2002). Patterson writes

Millikan and Rostow provided a blueprint for the interdisciplinary development and modernization studies that were carried out by social scientists, including anthropologists, in Asia, Africa, and Latin America during the 1950s and 1960s. American foreign aid programs should, in their view, combine economic and political agendas to develop the infrastructures of underdeveloped countries and to support the export-oriented sectors of the local elites in order to promote capitalist modernity and to create “an environment in which societies which directly or indirectly menace ours will not evolve” (Patterson, 2001, p. 116).

Notably, the countries at the focus of many of these studies did not agree with this assessment. Many of the newly independent nations in Africa and Asia advocated instead an approach of non-interference in the affairs of other nations (Patterson, 2001). “In other words,” Patterson writes, “there was a fundamental difference of opinion between the American advocates of modernization and the leaders of the non-aligned nations of Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America” about how anthropologists should approach the “problem” of underdevelopment (Patterson, 2001).

While the issue of the lack of dialogue in applied anthropology is thrown into starkest relief when seen through the lens of development anthropology, it is also readily apparent in medical anthropology. Medical anthropology “draws upon social, cultural, biological, and linguistic anthropology to better understand those factors which influence health and well being (broadly defined), the experience and distribution of illness, the prevention and treatment of sickness, healing processes, the social relations of therapy management, and the cultural importance and utilization of pluralistic medical systems” (Society for Medical Anthropology, 2009). However, in spite of this enormous potential to alleviate suffering, medical anthropology has by and large failed to make significant impact. The primary reason for this is lack of communication. In order for interdisciplinary collaboration to be productive, both parties must have “respect and mutual understanding of the assumptions and approaches of the other discipline” (Pool, 2005, p. 1). This is often missing from medical anthropology projects because the anthropologists “failed to communicate with medical professionals” (Pool, 2005, p. 1). Hemmings writes, “Anthropologists have typically assumed the patient’s perspective rather than that of the doctor… The stereotyping attitude of anthropologists to doctors has often produced poor communication between them” (2005, p. 98). Success for medical anthropology comes only when the anthropologist assumes the role of a facilitator in addition to an observer: “Stein (1985) argued that he had been most successful with doctors when he did not try to change them, but instead helped them to see their own meanings and constructs that they brought to and imposed on their clinical practice” (Hemmings, 2005). It is in this mode of facilitator that the design ethnographer lives. In addition to actively encouraging participation from all involved parties, a design ethnographer “helps all stakeholders understand the questions and the role research can play” (Cheskin Group, p. 14). A design ethnographer “[makes] connections. They take the leap from research to strategy and innovation, working collaboratively … to solve complex problems” (Cheskin Group, p. 17). The focus on collaboration between stakeholders distinguishes design ethnography from applied anthropology; this dialogue helps the design ethnographer to develop more appropriate and applicable solutions to challenging problems.

III. Modern Storytelling: Design Ethnography in Industry

Because of the extreme importance of communication to a design ethnographer’s work, they have moved beyond simple text, which is the traditional (and nearly exclusive) mode of transmitting information in academic anthropology. Academic anthropology “offers little by way of an understanding of the contemporary world in which visual media play such a central role” (Grimshaw, Ethnographer’s Eye: Ways of Seeing in Anthropology, 2001, p. 2). Design ethnography, by contrast, is focused on “engaging people concretely, for example, within films as subjects and collaborators” (Grimshaw, Ethnographer’s Eye: Ways of Seeing in Anthropology, 2001, p. 3). This engagement is crucial in industry, where time to transmit information is often short. The design ethnographer must function as a storyteller in addition to an observer.

This role as storyteller is particularly apparent in the case of Intel’s design of the Intel Reader. The Intel Reader is a “mobile device that takes pictures of text, translates the image into digital text by using optical character recognition (OCR) technology, and reads the text aloud by using text-to-speech (TTS) software,” designed to help users with visual or other disabilities lead independent lives (Chan, Foss, & Poisner, 2009). The process began, as many ethnographic processes began, with listening. Chan writes:

When we started developing the Intel Reader we talked with end users who allowed us to gain insight into their needs, and who gave us the opportunity to hear how they use current technology in their everyday lives. To obtain a deeper understanding for end-user needs, we began with usage research. As part of this phase, we interviewed targeted users, followed them through a day in their lives, and observed their daily challenges at home and at work, and asked for their insights on the challenges of daily living (Chan, Foss, & Poisner, 2009).

Following the interaction with targeted users, the team began to develop composited personas from the key characteristics of the people they interviewed. This technique showcases the design ethnographer’s role as storyteller-it is “a way to make sense of complexity” (Cheskin Group, p. 4), to “translate large amounts of data into concise and compelling findings” (Cheskin Group, p. 17). Initially there were 30 characters, but from that the team distilled 5 personas. The process of distilling the user research into compelling and digestible stories gave the team the insight they needed to produce a design specification. “[The research] highlighted for us the three key elements for a reading device: accuracy, convenience, and discretion. The device needs to accurately capture information; it needs to be easy to use anywhere, anytime; and it must allow users to maintain privacy in their everyday tasks” (Cheskin Group).

Another example of ethnography in use in industry, Miller Beer’s quest to ascertain how their user base was different from Budweiser’s, showcases design ethnography’s willingness to embrace visual forms of communication, such as film, that are eschewed by traditional anthropology. Taylor writes on the subject, the perception that “‘when anthropologists begin to dedicate a large part of their time to ethnographic films it is usually because they have lost confidence in their own ideas’-is surely part and parcel of an abhorrence of imagery in general” (Taylor, 1996). Design ethnographers take a more pragmatic approach: Emma Gilding and Johanna Shapira of OgilvyDiscovery spent hours or days at a time filming their participants in their native habitats. Tischer writes:

Subjects agree to allow videographers to follow them for a day or longer, documenting the minutiae of everyday life and gathering information on everything from emotional engagement with a product to environmental cues on its place in the home and the psyche of the user. After an initial awkwardness, the camera typically seems to fade away, allowing an extraordinary candor. “There’s something really incredible about someone asking you to tell your story for eight hours,” says Shapira. “It can almost become a confessional experience for people.” (Tischler, 2007, p. 1)

Shapira and Gilding’s team analyzed the seventy hours of video footage of men in bars drinking Miller Lite down to twenty minutes of key insight; they found that Miller Lite was a social drink, while Budweiser was purchased by those drinking alone. Additionally, the team discovered that the average Miller Lite drinker was more comfortable emoting than his Budweiser-swilling compatriot. This insight allowed them to develop a series of commercials specifically tailored to Miller’s user base, “a hilarious series of ads that cut from a Miller Lite drinker’s weird experiences in the world–getting caught in the subway taking money from a blind musician’s guitar case, or hitching a ride in the desert with a deranged trucker–to shots of him regaling friends with tales over a brew” (Tischler, 2007, p. 2). The team credits the video footage with helping them pin the tone of the advertisements exactly; “‘It let us bring a level of verisimilitude to the execution that was just terrific’” (Tischler, 2007, p. 2).

It is the rich interaction ethnographers have with participants and other stakeholders that gives ethnographic results that “level of verisimilitude”. By building a deeply collaborative practice and embracing new forms of media to aid in storytelling and the presentation of “thick description”, design ethnography offers to the world what academic anthropology should have offered, but did not; a powerful tool for understanding ourselves and improving the world.

WorksCited

Ahmed, A. S. (1984). Al-Beruni: The First Anthropologist. RAIN , 9-10.

Barnard, A. (2000). History & Theory in Anthropology. Port Chester: Cambridge University Press.

Burns, C. (2009, September 28). BRAINS Sucking & Seeing Bells MOVIES FOGS & ETHNOGRAPHY & Rabbits. (C. Burns, Performer) MDes Studio at the University of Dundee, Dundee, Angus, UK.

Chan, S., Foss, B., & Poisner, D. (2009, December 2). Designing the Intel Reader. Retrieved December 14, 2009, from Dr. Dobb’s: http://www.ddj.com/architect/222000377

Cheskin Group. (n.d.). Ethnography and Design . Retrieved December 10, 2009, from Cheskin Added Value: http://www.cheskin.com/cms/files/i/articles//28__Cheskin_AIGA_ethnography_primer.pdf

Clifford, J. (1983). On Ethnographic Authority. Representations , 118-146.

Eriksen, T. H. (2005). Engaging Anthropology. Oxford: Berg Publishers.

Grimshaw, A. (2001). Ethnographer’s Eye: Ways of Seeing in Anthropology. Port Chester: Cambridge University Press.

Grimshaw, A. (2004). Viisualizing Anthropology. Bristol: Intellect Books.

Hemmings, C. P. (2005). Rethinking Medical Anthropology: How Anthropology is Failing Medicine. Anthropology & Medicine , 91-103.

Hodgen, M. T. (1964). Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Macaulay, C. (2009, September 23). Week 2 Lecture. (C. Macaulay, Performer) MDE Studio at the University of Dundee, Dundee, Angus, UK.

Malinowski, B. (1961 [1922]). Argonauts of the Western Pacific. New York: E.P. Dutton.

Monagham, J. (2000). Social and Cultural Anthropology: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Patterson, T. C. (2001). A Social History of Anthropology in the United States. Oxford: Berg Publishers.

Pool, R. (2005). Medical Anthropology. Berkshire: McGrawHill Education.

Salvador, T., & Mateas, M. (1997). Design Ethnography: Using Custom Ethnographic Techniques to Develop New Product Concepts. Retrieved 12 14, 2009, from CHI 97: http://www.sigchi.org/chi97/proceedings/tutorial/ts.htm

Society for Medical Anthropology. (2009). What is Medical Anthropology? Retrieved December 12, 2009, from Society for Medical Anthropology: http://www.medanthro.net/definition.html

Stocking, G. W. (1963). Matthew Arnold, E. B. Tylor, and the Uses of Invention. American Anthropologist , 783-799.

Stocking, G. W. (1992). The ethnographer’s magic and other essays in the history of anthropology. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Taylor, L. (1996). Iconophobia: How Anthropology Lost It at the Movies. Transition , 64-88.

Tischler, L. (2007, December 19). Every Move You Make . Retrieved December 14, 2009, from Fast Company: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/81/everymove.html?page=0%2C0

Tylor, E. B. (1871). Primitive culture: researches into thevdevelopment of mythology, philosophy, religion, art, and custom. London: John Murray.

Van Willigen, J. (2002). Applied Anthropology: An Introduction. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group.

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Design Ethnography:

Like Anthropology, But Less Conflicted

Academic anthropology is the unholy love child of natural science and colonialism, and is burdened with the resulting identity issues that one might expect from such a union. It is a discipline “severely divided and deeply troubled in its self-identity… torn and fragmented, [anthropology] has lost its professional confidence as the Science of Man” (Eriksen, 2005, p. 34) Its origins leave it effectively crippled, frozen in self doubt, unwilling to adapt to the changes globalism has wrought on the landscape. The power of anthropology, its tool set for collecting rich description, is not lost to the world, however. Design ethnography, born of anthropology’s field work practice, offers a new discipline lacking the identity issues plaguing academic anthropology. To understand why this is the case, however, it first is necessary to examine the birth of anthropology.

I. A Brief History of Anthropology

The historical beginnings of anthropological thought are nearly impossible to trace. Each anthropologist “has his or her own notion of the most relevant point at which to begin the story” (Barnard, 2000, p. 27). Margaret Hodgen (1964) argued that the Greek historian Herodotus was the originator of much anthropological thought. More recent publications have pointed to Muslim scholar Abū Rayhān Bīrūnī as the first true anthropologist for his extensive study of the Indian subcontinent using the hallmark method of anthropology: participant observation (Ahmed, 1984). Regardless of whether anthropology began with social contract theory, as Barnard (2000) argues, it is generally agreed upon that academic anthropology as we know it “grew out of the intersection of European discovery, colonialism, and natural science” in the mid nineteenth century (Monagham, 2000).

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution had profound impact on intellectual discourse during the 1860s. According to Stocking (1963), “the publication of the Origin in 1859 focused a whole range of developing knowledge in the biological and historical sciences on the question of the origin and antiquity of mankind and of human civilization” (p. 784). In keeping with this intellectual climate, Edward Tylor, “interested in reconstructing stages of social and cultural evolution,” produced one of the first works of academic anthropology (Monagham, 2000, p. 1). Tylor’s Primitive Culture introduced the modern idea of culture (Eriksen, 2005) as a “complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (Tylor, 1871, p. 1). Tylor’s contemporaries were natural scientists as well as anthropologists: Lewis Henry Morgan produced monographs on both the American beaver and the Iroquois tribe. As Eriksen writes, these early anthropologists “respected no institutional boundaries between university subjects in their quest for knowledge” (2005, p. 2). However, it is not so much the interdisciplinary approach these men took to understanding that distinguishes them from later anthropologists; rather, it is the methods by which they collected the information they analyzed that sets them apart. Tylor traveled little after the journey that produced the notes for his first book; future theories on the nature of humanity were built instead from study of the accounts of others and archeological artifacts. This willingness to make use of information that did not come from personal participant observation is a noteworthy point in the evolution of academic anthropology; “until the late nineteenth century the ethnographer and the anthropologist, the describer/translator of custom and the builder of general theories about humanity, were distinct” (Clifford, 1983, p. 123).

This distinction between the ethnographer as the field researcher and the anthropologist as the developer of theories on humanity began to dissolve at the end of the nineteenth century. Anthropologists began to enter the field themselves to conduct their own ethnographies from which to build theoretical frameworks. According to Clifford, “the new fieldworkers sharply distinguished themselves from the earlier “men on the spot,” the missionary, the administrator, the trader, and the traveller, whose knowledge of indigenous peoples, they argued, was not informed by the best scientific hypotheses or a sufficient neutrality” (Clifford, 1983, p. 121). In particular, Franz Boas’s appearance on the scene “marks the beginning of an important phase in the development of British ethnographic method: the collection of data by academically trained natural scientists defining themselves as anthropologists, and involved also in the formulation and evaluation of anthropological theory” (Stocking, 1992, p. 20). However, while the “move toward professional ethnography was underway,” Clifford states, “the establishment of intensive participant-observation as a professional norm would have to await the Malinowskian cohort” (Clifford, 1983, p. 122). The work of Bronislaw Malinowski, bound together (perhaps irrevocably) the role of anthropologist and ethnographer; the ethnographer took on the theory building role of the anthropologist in addition to the role of observer. The task of the ethnographer had become, Malinowski writes, “the integration of all the details observed, the achievement of a sociological synthesis of all the various, relevant symptoms…the Ethnographer has to construct the picture of the big institution, very much as the physicist constructs his theory from the experimental data” (1961 [1922], pp. 83-84).

Much of the anthropology taking place at this point was salvage anthropology; a rush to document “primitive” Non-Western societies “being destroyed with the advance of civilization” (Grimshaw, 2001, p. 23). Malinowski bemoans the disappearance of the native, writing in his forward to Argonauts, “at the very moment when [anthropology] begins to put its workshop in order, to forge its proper tools, to start ready for work on its appointed task, the material of its study melts away with hopeless rapidity” (Malinowski, 1961 [1922], p. xv). In this spirit, naturalist A. C. Haddon organized an expedition to the Torres Straight Islands; his team strove “to record the customs and practices of native peoples before they died out” (Grimshaw, Viisualizing Anthropology, 2004).

The focus of anthropology on the native began to shift after the Second World War as colonialism disintegrated. By then, Franz Boas and his followers had successfully won the argument that “culture rather than race determined behavior” (Patterson, 2001, p. 55). As anthropology progressed through the second half of the twentieth century, anthropologists began looking at groups within their own societies in addition to the exotic other. But regardless of whom an anthropologist studies today or in the future, Monagrahm writes, “anthropology continues to be firmly rooted in the descriptive richness that comes out of the specific encounters anthropologists have with particular peoples and places” (2000, p. 2).

II. Academic Anthropology to Design Ethnography: The Escape from Science and Colonialism

A. Clarifications and Overview

But what is ethnography to anthropology? The confusion stems, perhaps, from the numerous applications of the word ethnography within anthropology. Ethnography is something that anthropologists do-it is a tool that is used for gathering information about humanity. It is “characterized by long term intense interaction with relatively small groups of people” (Monagham, 2000, p. 26). An ethnography is also something that an anthropologist may write-a description of a people at a particular time and place. The matter is further confused by the shifting of roles within anthropology. Since Malinowski, the ethnographer has co-opted the role of anthropologist-an ethnographer now not only collects stories of the people but also analyzes them for meaning. The previously separate roles of fieldworker and theorist were fused into one (Grimshaw, 2001, p. 20). Because of this fusion in twentieth century anthropology, in this paper I treat the ethnographer and the academic anthropologist as one and the same, and refer to them as anthropologists. Design ethnography, however, is distinct discipline, separate from academic anthropology. The next few sections of this essay address the advent and growth of this design ethnography as a discipline, as well as its relationship to academic anthropology.

“Modern anthropology,” Grimshaw writes, “has always had a problem of professional legitimation” (2001, p. 19). This perceived lack of legitimacy has its roots in the origins of anthropology: colonialism and natural science. The former, anthropology strives to distance itself from, the latter, anthropology strives to become. Anthropology as a discipline has tried so hard to be something other than what it is that it has ceased to be useful. “Anthropology should have changed the world,” Erikson writes, “yet the subject is almost invisible in the public sphere outside the academy” (2005, p. 1). Design ethnography has evolved as a discipline in response to anthropology’s withdrawal from public discourse-it takes the best of anthropology and moves it forward, comfortable in its origin, strengths, and limitations, the confident adult to anthropology’s angsty teenager. Design ethnographers “usurp many elements of traditional ethnography, but bend, twist and transform them to suit our purpose: to define and design” (Salvador & Mateas, 1997). Design ethnography transforms the scientific fragility of anthropology into an understanding of the value of an ethnographer’s a point of view; it breaks completely with the power relationship remaining from anthropology’s colonial origin by developing a method that is deeply collaborative and encourages dialogue. Each of these transformations will be addressed in the following two sections.

B. Design Ethnography: Not Rocket Science

“Anthropology occupies the uneasy space between the sciences and the humanities,” Pool postulates (2005, p. 6). This unease is apparent in the generations of anthropologists who have focused their efforts on making the discipline as scientific as possible. Malinowski was particularly a proponent of the development of anthropology as a true science. In his foreword to Argonauts, he trumpets, that it has been proven “beyond doubt that scientific, methodic inquiry can give us results far more abundance and of better quality than those of even the best amateur’s work” (Malinowski, 1961 [1922], p. xv). The historical significance of science within anthropology coupled with the inherent subjectivity of its primary data gathering method has led to a deep anxiety within the discipline, the fear “that the outside world might discover ‘the fragility of the scientific precepts’ fundamental to the subject” (Eriksen, 2005, p. 1).

This anthropological obsession with scientific validity has caused many an anthropologist’s work to be discredited for being insufficiently objective in his or her observations. Clifford (1983) writes, “Cushing’s long first-hand study of the Zunis, his quasi-absorption into their way of life, ‘raised awkward problems of verification and accountability’… Cushing’s intuitive, excessively personal understanding of the Zuni could not confer scientific authority” (p. 123). Margaret Mead, too, was criticized for her closeness to her work. “She was perceived as … too engaged to be properly scientific” (Eriksen, 2005, p. 3). Anthropologists prefer “the natural scientist’s documentary, observational stance” (Clifford, 1983). Design ethnography, in contrast, is less concerned with the truth of the observations and more concerned with the usefulness of the insight. Colin Burns captured this when he said, “I don’t give a shit about being representative. I want to work with people who will help me think better” (Burns, 2009). A design ethnographer is not seeking truth, scientific or otherwise; after all, everyone lies all the time. Instead, a design ethnographer is in the points of view game, soliciting useful perspectives on the subject at hand (Macaulay, 2009). And one of the most useful perspectives on the subject at hand is the design ethnographer’s own point of view. An ethnographer’s point of view “constitutes a resource [she] should openly draw upon in [her] interpretations (Monagham, 2000, p. 29). Design ethnography recognizes that an essential component of the product a design ethnographer is peddling is the design ethnographer themselves. This acceptance of a degree of subjectivity is not necessarily unique to design ethnography-in the latter half of the twentieth century many anthropologists became significantly “anti-scientistic,” moving away from image of the anthropologist as an impartial, objective observer (Eriksen, 2005). However, anthropologists as a whole are “inept at organizing and immersing themselves in their own rituals” (Eriksen, 2005, p. 13), something that weakens the discipline by removing its most accessible resources. Design ethnography, conversely, exploits the perspective of the fieldworker, creating a more powerful tool for problem solving.

C. Collaboration: Distinguishing Between Applied Anthropology and Design Ethnography

If design ethnography is the ethnographic tool set applied to problem solving as Salvador and Mateas (1997) assert, then isn’t it just a fancy name for applied anthropology? After all, applied anthropology is anthropology directed towards solving practical problems. (Van Willigen, 2002). In the regard that both design ethnography and applied anthropology are focused on developing solutions, they are quite similar. However, they are distinct in a significant way: applied anthropology is practiced in the model of traditional anthropology, in which a lone anthropologist ventures out into the place of the “Others”, to “to grasp the native’s point of view, his relation to life, to realise his vision of his world” (Malinowski, 1961 [1922]) before leaving the field to analyze and synthesize his observations. It is a monologue, a specter of colonial modes of representation, “an exercise in power and control” (Monagham, 2000, p. 29). Design ethnography, on the other hand, is deeply collaborative. A design ethnographer “actively encourages … others to participate in the process and in so doing, will fundamentally expand their way of seeing” (Cheskin Group). The backbone of ethnography is dialogue (Monagham, 2000).

The tension between the applied anthropologists and the people they were representing is nowhere more apparent than in development anthropology during the mid twentieth century. Development anthropology grew from “imperial expansion and colonialism,” in which the colonizers were “‘rational agents of progress and development’” (Van Willigen, 2002, p. 68). This view birthed modernization theory, the idea that natives should be industrialized and urbanized out of their “primitive” ways (Van Willigen, 2002). Patterson writes

Millikan and Rostow provided a blueprint for the interdisciplinary development and modernization studies that were carried out by social scientists, including anthropologists, in Asia, Africa, and Latin America during the 1950s and 1960s. American foreign aid programs should, in their view, combine economic and political agendas to develop the infrastructures of underdeveloped countries and to support the export-oriented sectors of the local elites in order to promote capitalist modernity and to create “an environment in which societies which directly or indirectly menace ours will not evolve” (Patterson, 2001, p. 116).

Notably, the countries at the focus of many of these studies did not agree with this assessment. Many of the newly independent nations in Africa and Asia advocated instead an approach of non-interference in the affairs of other nations (Patterson, 2001). “In other words,” Patterson writes, “there was a fundamental difference of opinion between the American advocates of modernization and the leaders of the non-aligned nations of Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America” about how anthropologists should approach the “problem” of underdevelopment (Patterson, 2001).

While the issue of the lack of dialogue in applied anthropology is thrown into starkest relief when seen through the lens of development anthropology, it is also readily apparent in medical anthropology. Medical anthropology “draws upon social, cultural, biological, and linguistic anthropology to better understand those factors which influence health and well being (broadly defined), the experience and distribution of illness, the prevention and treatment of sickness, healing processes, the social relations of therapy management, and the cultural importance and utilization of pluralistic medical systems” (Society for Medical Anthropology, 2009). However, in spite of this enormous potential to alleviate suffering, medical anthropology has by and large failed to make significant impact. The primary reason for this is lack of communication. In order for interdisciplinary collaboration to be productive, both parties must have “respect and mutual understanding of the assumptions and approaches of the other discipline” (Pool, 2005, p. 1). This is often missing from medical anthropology projects because the anthropologists “failed to communicate with medical professionals” (Pool, 2005, p. 1). Hemmings writes, “Anthropologists have typically assumed the patient’s perspective rather than that of the doctor… The stereotyping attitude of anthropologists to doctors has often produced poor communication between them” (2005, p. 98). Success for medical anthropology comes only when the anthropologist assumes the role of a facilitator in addition to an observer: “Stein (1985) argued that he had been most successful with doctors when he did not try to change them, but instead helped them to see their own meanings and constructs that they brought to and imposed on their clinical practice” (Hemmings, 2005). It is in this mode of facilitator that the design ethnographer lives. In addition to actively encouraging participation from all involved parties, a design ethnographer “helps all stakeholders understand the questions and the role research can play” (Cheskin Group, p. 14). A design ethnographer “[makes] connections. They take the leap from research to strategy and innovation, working collaboratively … to solve complex problems” (Cheskin Group, p. 17). The focus on collaboration between stakeholders distinguishes design ethnography from applied anthropology; this dialogue helps the design ethnographer to develop more appropriate and applicable solutions to challenging problems.

III. Modern Storytelling: Design Ethnography in Industry

Because of the extreme importance of communication to a design ethnographer’s work, they have moved beyond simple text, which is the traditional (and nearly exclusive) mode of transmitting information in academic anthropology. Academic anthropology “offers little by way of an understanding of the contemporary world in which visual media play such a central role” (Grimshaw, Ethnographer’s Eye: Ways of Seeing in Anthropology, 2001, p. 2). Design ethnography, by contrast, is focused on “engaging people concretely, for example, within films as subjects and collaborators” (Grimshaw, Ethnographer’s Eye: Ways of Seeing in Anthropology, 2001, p. 3). This engagement is crucial in industry, where time to transmit information is often short. The design ethnographer must function as a storyteller in addition to an observer.

This role as storyteller is particularly apparent in the case of Intel’s design of the Intel Reader. The Intel Reader is a “mobile device that takes pictures of text, translates the image into digital text by using optical character recognition (OCR) technology, and reads the text aloud by using text-to-speech (TTS) software,” designed to help users with visual or other disabilities lead independent lives (Chan, Foss, & Poisner, 2009). The process began, as many ethnographic processes began, with listening. Chan writes:

When we started developing the Intel Reader we talked with end users who allowed us to gain insight into their needs, and who gave us the opportunity to hear how they use current technology in their everyday lives. To obtain a deeper understanding for end-user needs, we began with usage research. As part of this phase, we interviewed targeted users, followed them through a day in their lives, and observed their daily challenges at home and at work, and asked for their insights on the challenges of daily living (Chan, Foss, & Poisner, 2009).

Following the interaction with targeted users, the team began to develop composited personas from the key characteristics of the people they interviewed. This technique showcases the design ethnographer’s role as storyteller-it is “a way to make sense of complexity” (Cheskin Group, p. 4), to “translate large amounts of data into concise and compelling findings” (Cheskin Group, p. 17). Initially there were 30 characters, but from that the team distilled 5 personas. The process of distilling the user research into compelling and digestible stories gave the team the insight they needed to produce a design specification. “[The research] highlighted for us the three key elements for a reading device: accuracy, convenience, and discretion. The device needs to accurately capture information; it needs to be easy to use anywhere, anytime; and it must allow users to maintain privacy in their everyday tasks” (Cheskin Group).

Another example of ethnography in use in industry, Miller Beer’s quest to ascertain how their user base was different from Budweiser’s, showcases design ethnography’s willingness to embrace visual forms of communication, such as film, that are eschewed by traditional anthropology. Taylor writes on the subject, the perception that “‘when anthropologists begin to dedicate a large part of their time to ethnographic films it is usually because they have lost confidence in their own ideas’-is surely part and parcel of an abhorrence of imagery in general” (Taylor, 1996). Design ethnographers take a more pragmatic approach: Emma Gilding and Johanna Shapira of OgilvyDiscovery spent hours or days at a time filming their participants in their native habitats. Tischer writes:

Subjects agree to allow videographers to follow them for a day or longer, documenting the minutiae of everyday life and gathering information on everything from emotional engagement with a product to environmental cues on its place in the home and the psyche of the user. After an initial awkwardness, the camera typically seems to fade away, allowing an extraordinary candor. “There’s something really incredible about someone asking you to tell your story for eight hours,” says Shapira. “It can almost become a confessional experience for people.” (Tischler, 2007, p. 1)

Shapira and Gilding’s team analyzed the seventy hours of video footage of men in bars drinking Miller Lite down to twenty minutes of key insight; they found that Miller Lite was a social drink, while Budweiser was purchased by those drinking alone. Additionally, the team discovered that the average Miller Lite drinker was more comfortable emoting than his Budweiser-swilling compatriot. This insight allowed them to develop a series of commercials specifically tailored to Miller’s user base, “a hilarious series of ads that cut from a Miller Lite drinker’s weird experiences in the world–getting caught in the subway taking money from a blind musician’s guitar case, or hitching a ride in the desert with a deranged trucker–to shots of him regaling friends with tales over a brew” (Tischler, 2007, p. 2). The team credits the video footage with helping them pin the tone of the advertisements exactly; “‘It let us bring a level of verisimilitude to the execution that was just terrific’” (Tischler, 2007, p. 2).

It is the rich interaction ethnographers have with participants and other stakeholders that gives ethnographic results that “level of verisimilitude”. By building a deeply collaborative practice and embracing new forms of media to aid in storytelling and the presentation of “thick description”, design ethnography offers to the world what academic anthropology should have offered, but did not; a powerful tool for understanding ourselves and improving the world.

WorksCited

Ahmed, A. S. (1984). Al-Beruni: The First Anthropologist. RAIN , 9-10.

Barnard, A. (2000). History & Theory in Anthropology. Port Chester: Cambridge University Press.

Burns, C. (2009, September 28). BRAINS Sucking & Seeing Bells MOVIES FOGS & ETHNOGRAPHY & Rabbits. (C. Burns, Performer) MDes Studio at the University of Dundee, Dundee, Angus, UK.

Chan, S., Foss, B., & Poisner, D. (2009, December 2). Designing the Intel Reader. Retrieved December 14, 2009, from Dr. Dobb’s: http://www.ddj.com/architect/222000377

Cheskin Group. (n.d.). Ethnography and Design . Retrieved December 10, 2009, from Cheskin Added Value: http://www.cheskin.com/cms/files/i/articles//28__Cheskin_AIGA_ethnography_primer.pdf

Clifford, J. (1983). On Ethnographic Authority. Representations , 118-146.

Eriksen, T. H. (2005). Engaging Anthropology. Oxford: Berg Publishers.

Grimshaw, A. (2001). Ethnographer’s Eye: Ways of Seeing in Anthropology. Port Chester: Cambridge University Press.

Grimshaw, A. (2004). Viisualizing Anthropology. Bristol: Intellect Books.

Hemmings, C. P. (2005). Rethinking Medical Anthropology: How Anthropology is Failing Medicine. Anthropology & Medicine , 91-103.

Hodgen, M. T. (1964). Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Macaulay, C. (2009, September 23). Week 2 Lecture. (C. Macaulay, Performer) MDE Studio at the University of Dundee, Dundee, Angus, UK.

Malinowski, B. (1961 [1922]). Argonauts of the Western Pacific. New York: E.P. Dutton.

Monagham, J. (2000). Social and Cultural Anthropology: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Patterson, T. C. (2001). A Social History of Anthropology in the United States. Oxford: Berg Publishers.

Pool, R. (2005). Medical Anthropology. Berkshire: McGrawHill Education.

Salvador, T., & Mateas, M. (1997). Design Ethnography: Using Custom Ethnographic Techniques to Develop New Product Concepts. Retrieved 12 14, 2009, from CHI 97: http://www.sigchi.org/chi97/proceedings/tutorial/ts.htm

Society for Medical Anthropology. (2009). What is Medical Anthropology? Retrieved December 12, 2009, from Society for Medical Anthropology: http://www.medanthro.net/definition.html

Stocking, G. W. (1963). Matthew Arnold, E. B. Tylor, and the Uses of Invention. American Anthropologist , 783-799.

Stocking, G. W. (1992). The ethnographer’s magic and other essays in the history of anthropology. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Taylor, L. (1996). Iconophobia: How Anthropology Lost It at the Movies. Transition , 64-88.

Tischler, L. (2007, December 19). Every Move You Make . Retrieved December 14, 2009, from Fast Company: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/81/everymove.html?page=0%2C0

Tylor, E. B. (1871). Primitive culture: researches into thevdevelopment of mythology, philosophy, religion, art, and custom. London: John Murray.

Van Willigen, J. (2002). Applied Anthropology: An Introduction. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group.

]]> http://rachelshadoan.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/and-now-for-something-no-one-will-want-to-read-or-design-ethnography-like-anthropology-but-less-conflicted/ Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:45:47 +0000 rachelshadoan http://rachelshadoan.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/and-now-for-something-no-one-will-want-to-read-or-design-ethnography-like-anthropology-but-less-conflicted/

Design Ethnography:

Like Anthropology, But Less Conflicted

Academic anthropology is the unholy love child of natural science and colonialism, and is burdened with the resulting identity issues that one might expect from such a union. It is a discipline “severely divided and deeply troubled in its self-identity… torn and fragmented, [anthropology] has lost its professional confidence as the Science of Man” (Eriksen, 2005, p. 34) Its origins leave it effectively crippled, frozen in self doubt, unwilling to adapt to the changes globalism has wrought on the landscape. The power of anthropology, its tool set for collecting rich description, is not lost to the world, however. Design ethnography, born of anthropology’s field work practice, offers a new discipline lacking the identity issues plaguing academic anthropology. To understand why this is the case, however, it first is necessary to examine the birth of anthropology.

I. A Brief History of Anthropology

The historical beginnings of anthropological thought are nearly impossible to trace. Each anthropologist “has his or her own notion of the most relevant point at which to begin the story” (Barnard, 2000, p. 27). Margaret Hodgen (1964) argued that the Greek historian Herodotus was the originator of much anthropological thought. More recent publications have pointed to Muslim scholar Abū Rayhān Bīrūnī as the first true anthropologist for his extensive study of the Indian subcontinent using the hallmark method of anthropology: participant observation (Ahmed, 1984). Regardless of whether anthropology began with social contract theory, as Barnard (2000) argues, it is generally agreed upon that academic anthropology as we know it “grew out of the intersection of European discovery, colonialism, and natural science” in the mid nineteenth century (Monagham, 2000).

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution had profound impact on intellectual discourse during the 1860s. According to Stocking (1963), “the publication of the Origin in 1859 focused a whole range of developing knowledge in the biological and historical sciences on the question of the origin and antiquity of mankind and of human civilization” (p. 784). In keeping with this intellectual climate, Edward Tylor, “interested in reconstructing stages of social and cultural evolution,” produced one of the first works of academic anthropology (Monagham, 2000, p. 1). Tylor’s Primitive Culture introduced the modern idea of culture (Eriksen, 2005) as a “complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (Tylor, 1871, p. 1). Tylor’s contemporaries were natural scientists as well as anthropologists: Lewis Henry Morgan produced monographs on both the American beaver and the Iroquois tribe. As Eriksen writes, these early anthropologists “respected no institutional boundaries between university subjects in their quest for knowledge” (2005, p. 2). However, it is not so much the interdisciplinary approach these men took to understanding that distinguishes them from later anthropologists; rather, it is the methods by which they collected the information they analyzed that sets them apart. Tylor traveled little after the journey that produced the notes for his first book; future theories on the nature of humanity were built instead from study of the accounts of others and archeological artifacts. This willingness to make use of information that did not come from personal participant observation is a noteworthy point in the evolution of academic anthropology; “until the late nineteenth century the ethnographer and the anthropologist, the describer/translator of custom and the builder of general theories about humanity, were distinct” (Clifford, 1983, p. 123).

This distinction between the ethnographer as the field researcher and the anthropologist as the developer of theories on humanity began to dissolve at the end of the nineteenth century. Anthropologists began to enter the field themselves to conduct their own ethnographies from which to build theoretical frameworks. According to Clifford, “the new fieldworkers sharply distinguished themselves from the earlier “men on the spot,” the missionary, the administrator, the trader, and the traveller, whose knowledge of indigenous peoples, they argued, was not informed by the best scientific hypotheses or a sufficient neutrality” (Clifford, 1983, p. 121). In particular, Franz Boas’s appearance on the scene “marks the beginning of an important phase in the development of British ethnographic method: the collection of data by academically trained natural scientists defining themselves as anthropologists, and involved also in the formulation and evaluation of anthropological theory” (Stocking, 1992, p. 20). However, while the “move toward professional ethnography was underway,” Clifford states, “the establishment of intensive participant-observation as a professional norm would have to await the Malinowskian cohort” (Clifford, 1983, p. 122). The work of Bronislaw Malinowski, bound together (perhaps irrevocably) the role of anthropologist and ethnographer; the ethnographer took on the theory building role of the anthropologist in addition to the role of observer. The task of the ethnographer had become, Malinowski writes, “the integration of all the details observed, the achievement of a sociological synthesis of all the various, relevant symptoms…the Ethnographer has to construct the picture of the big institution, very much as the physicist constructs his theory from the experimental data” (1961 [1922], pp. 83-84).

Much of the anthropology taking place at this point was salvage anthropology; a rush to document “primitive” Non-Western societies “being destroyed with the advance of civilization” (Grimshaw, 2001, p. 23). Malinowski bemoans the disappearance of the native, writing in his forward to Argonauts, “at the very moment when [anthropology] begins to put its workshop in order, to forge its proper tools, to start ready for work on its appointed task, the material of its study melts away with hopeless rapidity” (Malinowski, 1961 [1922], p. xv). In this spirit, naturalist A. C. Haddon organized an expedition to the Torres Straight Islands; his team strove “to record the customs and practices of native peoples before they died out” (Grimshaw, Viisualizing Anthropology, 2004).

The focus of anthropology on the native began to shift after the Second World War as colonialism disintegrated. By then, Franz Boas and his followers had successfully won the argument that “culture rather than race determined behavior” (Patterson, 2001, p. 55). As anthropology progressed through the second half of the twentieth century, anthropologists began looking at groups within their own societies in addition to the exotic other. But regardless of whom an anthropologist studies today or in the future, Monagrahm writes, “anthropology continues to be firmly rooted in the descriptive richness that comes out of the specific encounters anthropologists have with particular peoples and places” (2000, p. 2).

II. Academic Anthropology to Design Ethnography: The Escape from Science and Colonialism

A. Clarifications and Overview

But what is ethnography to anthropology? The confusion stems, perhaps, from the numerous applications of the word ethnography within anthropology. Ethnography is something that anthropologists do-it is a tool that is used for gathering information about humanity. It is “characterized by long term intense interaction with relatively small groups of people” (Monagham, 2000, p. 26). An ethnography is also something that an anthropologist may write-a description of a people at a particular time and place. The matter is further confused by the shifting of roles within anthropology. Since Malinowski, the ethnographer has co-opted the role of anthropologist-an ethnographer now not only collects stories of the people but also analyzes them for meaning. The previously separate roles of fieldworker and theorist were fused into one (Grimshaw, 2001, p. 20). Because of this fusion in twentieth century anthropology, in this paper I treat the ethnographer and the academic anthropologist as one and the same, and refer to them as anthropologists. Design ethnography, however, is distinct discipline, separate from academic anthropology. The next few sections of this essay address the advent and growth of this design ethnography as a discipline, as well as its relationship to academic anthropology.

“Modern anthropology,” Grimshaw writes, “has always had a problem of professional legitimation” (2001, p. 19). This perceived lack of legitimacy has its roots in the origins of anthropology: colonialism and natural science. The former, anthropology strives to distance itself from, the latter, anthropology strives to become. Anthropology as a discipline has tried so hard to be something other than what it is that it has ceased to be useful. “Anthropology should have changed the world,” Erikson writes, “yet the subject is almost invisible in the public sphere outside the academy” (2005, p. 1). Design ethnography has evolved as a discipline in response to anthropology’s withdrawal from public discourse-it takes the best of anthropology and moves it forward, comfortable in its origin, strengths, and limitations, the confident adult to anthropology’s angsty teenager. Design ethnographers “usurp many elements of traditional ethnography, but bend, twist and transform them to suit our purpose: to define and design” (Salvador & Mateas, 1997). Design ethnography transforms the scientific fragility of anthropology into an understanding of the value of an ethnographer’s a point of view; it breaks completely with the power relationship remaining from anthropology’s colonial origin by developing a method that is deeply collaborative and encourages dialogue. Each of these transformations will be addressed in the following two sections.

B. Design Ethnography: Not Rocket Science

“Anthropology occupies the uneasy space between the sciences and the humanities,” Pool postulates (2005, p. 6). This unease is apparent in the generations of anthropologists who have focused their efforts on making the discipline as scientific as possible. Malinowski was particularly a proponent of the development of anthropology as a true science. In his foreword to Argonauts, he trumpets, that it has been proven “beyond doubt that scientific, methodic inquiry can give us results far more abundance and of better quality than those of even the best amateur’s work” (Malinowski, 1961 [1922], p. xv). The historical significance of science within anthropology coupled with the inherent subjectivity of its primary data gathering method has led to a deep anxiety within the discipline, the fear “that the outside world might discover ‘the fragility of the scientific precepts’ fundamental to the subject” (Eriksen, 2005, p. 1).

This anthropological obsession with scientific validity has caused many an anthropologist’s work to be discredited for being insufficiently objective in his or her observations. Clifford (1983) writes, “Cushing’s long first-hand study of the Zunis, his quasi-absorption into their way of life, ‘raised awkward problems of verification and accountability’… Cushing’s intuitive, excessively personal understanding of the Zuni could not confer scientific authority” (p. 123). Margaret Mead, too, was criticized for her closeness to her work. “She was perceived as … too engaged to be properly scientific” (Eriksen, 2005, p. 3). Anthropologists prefer “the natural scientist’s documentary, observational stance” (Clifford, 1983). Design ethnography, in contrast, is less concerned with the truth of the observations and more concerned with the usefulness of the insight. Colin Burns captured this when he said, “I don’t give a shit about being representative. I want to work with people who will help me think better” (Burns, 2009). A design ethnographer is not seeking truth, scientific or otherwise; after all, everyone lies all the time. Instead, a design ethnographer is in the points of view game, soliciting useful perspectives on the subject at hand (Macaulay, 2009). And one of the most useful perspectives on the subject at hand is the design ethnographer’s own point of view. An ethnographer’s point of view “constitutes a resource [she] should openly draw upon in [her] interpretations (Monagham, 2000, p. 29). Design ethnography recognizes that an essential component of the product a design ethnographer is peddling is the design ethnographer themselves. This acceptance of a degree of subjectivity is not necessarily unique to design ethnography-in the latter half of the twentieth century many anthropologists became significantly “anti-scientistic,” moving away from image of the anthropologist as an impartial, objective observer (Eriksen, 2005). However, anthropologists as a whole are “inept at organizing and immersing themselves in their own rituals” (Eriksen, 2005, p. 13), something that weakens the discipline by removing its most accessible resources. Design ethnography, conversely, exploits the perspective of the fieldworker, creating a more powerful tool for problem solving.

C. Collaboration: Distinguishing Between Applied Anthropology and Design Ethnography

If design ethnography is the ethnographic tool set applied to problem solving as Salvador and Mateas (1997) assert, then isn’t it just a fancy name for applied anthropology? After all, applied anthropology is anthropology directed towards solving practical problems. (Van Willigen, 2002). In the regard that both design ethnography and applied anthropology are focused on developing solutions, they are quite similar. However, they are distinct in a significant way: applied anthropology is practiced in the model of traditional anthropology, in which a lone anthropologist ventures out into the place of the “Others”, to “to grasp the native’s point of view, his relation to life, to realise his vision of his world” (Malinowski, 1961 [1922]) before leaving the field to analyze and synthesize his observations. It is a monologue, a specter of colonial modes of representation, “an exercise in power and control” (Monagham, 2000, p. 29). Design ethnography, on the other hand, is deeply collaborative. A design ethnographer “actively encourages … others to participate in the process and in so doing, will fundamentally expand their way of seeing” (Cheskin Group). The backbone of ethnography is dialogue (Monagham, 2000).

The tension between the applied anthropologists and the people they were representing is nowhere more apparent than in development anthropology during the mid twentieth century. Development anthropology grew from “imperial expansion and colonialism,” in which the colonizers were “‘rational agents of progress and development’” (Van Willigen, 2002, p. 68). This view birthed modernization theory, the idea that natives should be industrialized and urbanized out of their “primitive” ways (Van Willigen, 2002). Patterson writes

Millikan and Rostow provided a blueprint for the interdisciplinary development and modernization studies that were carried out by social scientists, including anthropologists, in Asia, Africa, and Latin America during the 1950s and 1960s. American foreign aid programs should, in their view, combine economic and political agendas to develop the infrastructures of underdeveloped countries and to support the export-oriented sectors of the local elites in order to promote capitalist modernity and to create “an environment in which societies which directly or indirectly menace ours will not evolve” (Patterson, 2001, p. 116).

Notably, the countries at the focus of many of these studies did not agree with this assessment. Many of the newly independent nations in Africa and Asia advocated instead an approach of non-interference in the affairs of other nations (Patterson, 2001). “In other words,” Patterson writes, “there was a fundamental difference of opinion between the American advocates of modernization and the leaders of the non-aligned nations of Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America” about how anthropologists should approach the “problem” of underdevelopment (Patterson, 2001).

While the issue of the lack of dialogue in applied anthropology is thrown into starkest relief when seen through the lens of development anthropology, it is also readily apparent in medical anthropology. Medical anthropology “draws upon social, cultural, biological, and linguistic anthropology to better understand those factors which influence health and well being (broadly defined), the experience and distribution of illness, the prevention and treatment of sickness, healing processes, the social relations of therapy management, and the cultural importance and utilization of pluralistic medical systems” (Society for Medical Anthropology, 2009). However, in spite of this enormous potential to alleviate suffering, medical anthropology has by and large failed to make significant impact. The primary reason for this is lack of communication. In order for interdisciplinary collaboration to be productive, both parties must have “respect and mutual understanding of the assumptions and approaches of the other discipline” (Pool, 2005, p. 1). This is often missing from medical anthropology projects because the anthropologists “failed to communicate with medical professionals” (Pool, 2005, p. 1). Hemmings writes, “Anthropologists have typically assumed the patient’s perspective rather than that of the doctor… The stereotyping attitude of anthropologists to doctors has often produced poor communication between them” (2005, p. 98). Success for medical anthropology comes only when the anthropologist assumes the role of a facilitator in addition to an observer: “Stein (1985) argued that he had been most successful with doctors when he did not try to change them, but instead helped them to see their own meanings and constructs that they brought to and imposed on their clinical practice” (Hemmings, 2005). It is in this mode of facilitator that the design ethnographer lives. In addition to actively encouraging participation from all involved parties, a design ethnographer “helps all stakeholders understand the questions and the role research can play” (Cheskin Group, p. 14). A design ethnographer “[makes] connections. They take the leap from research to strategy and innovation, working collaboratively … to solve complex problems” (Cheskin Group, p. 17). The focus on collaboration between stakeholders distinguishes design ethnography from applied anthropology; this dialogue helps the design ethnographer to develop more appropriate and applicable solutions to challenging problems.

III. Modern Storytelling: Design Ethnography in Industry

Because of the extreme importance of communication to a design ethnographer’s work, they have moved beyond simple text, which is the traditional (and nearly exclusive) mode of transmitting information in academic anthropology. Academic anthropology “offers little by way of an understanding of the contemporary world in which visual media play such a central role” (Grimshaw, Ethnographer’s Eye: Ways of Seeing in Anthropology, 2001, p. 2). Design ethnography, by contrast, is focused on “engaging people concretely, for example, within films as subjects and collaborators” (Grimshaw, Ethnographer’s Eye: Ways of Seeing in Anthropology, 2001, p. 3). This engagement is crucial in industry, where time to transmit information is often short. The design ethnographer must function as a storyteller in addition to an observer.

This role as storyteller is particularly apparent in the case of Intel’s design of the Intel Reader. The Intel Reader is a “mobile device that takes pictures of text, translates the image into digital text by using optical character recognition (OCR) technology, and reads the text aloud by using text-to-speech (TTS) software,” designed to help users with visual or other disabilities lead independent lives (Chan, Foss, & Poisner, 2009). The process began, as many ethnographic processes began, with listening. Chan writes:

When we started developing the Intel Reader we talked with end users who allowed us to gain insight into their needs, and who gave us the opportunity to hear how they use current technology in their everyday lives. To obtain a deeper understanding for end-user needs, we began with usage research. As part of this phase, we interviewed targeted users, followed them through a day in their lives, and observed their daily challenges at home and at work, and asked for their insights on the challenges of daily living (Chan, Foss, & Poisner, 2009).

Following the interaction with targeted users, the team began to develop composited personas from the key characteristics of the people they interviewed. This technique showcases the design ethnographer’s role as storyteller-it is “a way to make sense of complexity” (Cheskin Group, p. 4), to “translate large amounts of data into concise and compelling findings” (Cheskin Group, p. 17). Initially there were 30 characters, but from that the team distilled 5 personas. The process of distilling the user research into compelling and digestible stories gave the team the insight they needed to produce a design specification. “[The research] highlighted for us the three key elements for a reading device: accuracy, convenience, and discretion. The device needs to accurately capture information; it needs to be easy to use anywhere, anytime; and it must allow users to maintain privacy in their everyday tasks” (Cheskin Group).

Another example of ethnography in use in industry, Miller Beer’s quest to ascertain how their user base was different from Budweiser’s, showcases design ethnography’s willingness to embrace visual forms of communication, such as film, that are eschewed by traditional anthropology. Taylor writes on the subject, the perception that “‘when anthropologists begin to dedicate a large part of their time to ethnographic films it is usually because they have lost confidence in their own ideas’-is surely part and parcel of an abhorrence of imagery in general” (Taylor, 1996). Design ethnographers take a more pragmatic approach: Emma Gilding and Johanna Shapira of OgilvyDiscovery spent hours or days at a time filming their participants in their native habitats. Tischer writes:

Subjects agree to allow videographers to follow them for a day or longer, documenting the minutiae of everyday life and gathering information on everything from emotional engagement with a product to environmental cues on its place in the home and the psyche of the user. After an initial awkwardness, the camera typically seems to fade away, allowing an extraordinary candor. “There’s something really incredible about someone asking you to tell your story for eight hours,” says Shapira. “It can almost become a confessional experience for people.” (Tischler, 2007, p. 1)

Shapira and Gilding’s team analyzed the seventy hours of video footage of men in bars drinking Miller Lite down to twenty minutes of key insight; they found that Miller Lite was a social drink, while Budweiser was purchased by those drinking alone. Additionally, the team discovered that the average Miller Lite drinker was more comfortable emoting than his Budweiser-swilling compatriot. This insight allowed them to develop a series of commercials specifically tailored to Miller’s user base, “a hilarious series of ads that cut from a Miller Lite drinker’s weird experiences in the world–getting caught in the subway taking money from a blind musician’s guitar case, or hitching a ride in the desert with a deranged trucker–to shots of him regaling friends with tales over a brew” (Tischler, 2007, p. 2). The team credits the video footage with helping them pin the tone of the advertisements exactly; “‘It let us bring a level of verisimilitude to the execution that was just terrific’” (Tischler, 2007, p. 2).

It is the rich interaction ethnographers have with participants and other stakeholders that gives ethnographic results that “level of verisimilitude”. By building a deeply collaborative practice and embracing new forms of media to aid in storytelling and the presentation of “thick description”, design ethnography offers to the world what academic anthropology should have offered, but did not; a powerful tool for understanding ourselves and improving the world.

WorksCited

Ahmed, A. S. (1984). Al-Beruni: The First Anthropologist. RAIN , 9-10.

Barnard, A. (2000). History & Theory in Anthropology. Port Chester: Cambridge University Press.

Burns, C. (2009, September 28). BRAINS Sucking & Seeing Bells MOVIES FOGS & ETHNOGRAPHY & Rabbits. (C. Burns, Performer) MDes Studio at the University of Dundee, Dundee, Angus, UK.

Chan, S., Foss, B., & Poisner, D. (2009, December 2). Designing the Intel Reader. Retrieved December 14, 2009, from Dr. Dobb’s: http://www.ddj.com/architect/222000377

Cheskin Group. (n.d.). Ethnography and Design . Retrieved December 10, 2009, from Cheskin Added Value: http://www.cheskin.com/cms/files/i/articles//28__Cheskin_AIGA_ethnography_primer.pdf

Clifford, J. (1983). On Ethnographic Authority. Representations , 118-146.

Eriksen, T. H. (2005). Engaging Anthropology. Oxford: Berg Publishers.

Grimshaw, A. (2001). Ethnographer’s Eye: Ways of Seeing in Anthropology. Port Chester: Cambridge University Press.

Grimshaw, A. (2004). Viisualizing Anthropology. Bristol: Intellect Books.

Hemmings, C. P. (2005). Rethinking Medical Anthropology: How Anthropology is Failing Medicine. Anthropology & Medicine , 91-103.

Hodgen, M. T. (1964). Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Macaulay, C. (2009, September 23). Week 2 Lecture. (C. Macaulay, Performer) MDE Studio at the University of Dundee, Dundee, Angus, UK.

Malinowski, B. (1961 [1922]). Argonauts of the Western Pacific. New York: E.P. Dutton.

Monagham, J. (2000). Social and Cultural Anthropology: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Patterson, T. C. (2001). A Social History of Anthropology in the United States. Oxford: Berg Publishers.

Pool, R. (2005). Medical Anthropology. Berkshire: McGrawHill Education.

Salvador, T., & Mateas, M. (1997). Design Ethnography: Using Custom Ethnographic Techniques to Develop New Product Concepts. Retrieved 12 14, 2009, from CHI 97: http://www.sigchi.org/chi97/proceedings/tutorial/ts.htm

Society for Medical Anthropology. (2009). What is Medical Anthropology? Retrieved December 12, 2009, from Society for Medical Anthropology: http://www.medanthro.net/definition.html

Stocking, G. W. (1963). Matthew Arnold, E. B. Tylor, and the Uses of Invention. American Anthropologist , 783-799.

Stocking, G. W. (1992). The ethnographer’s magic and other essays in the history of anthropology. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Taylor, L. (1996). Iconophobia: How Anthropology Lost It at the Movies. Transition , 64-88.

Tischler, L. (2007, December 19). Every Move You Make . Retrieved December 14, 2009, from Fast Company: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/81/everymove.html?page=0%2C0

Tylor, E. B. (1871). Primitive culture: researches into thevdevelopment of mythology, philosophy, religion, art, and custom. London: John Murray.

Van Willigen, J. (2002). Applied Anthropology: An Introduction. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group.

]]> http://johnpostill.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/mateo-candeas-intriguing-defence-of-the-bounded-field-site/ Tue, 15 Dec 2009 12:19:28 +0000 John Postill http://johnpostill.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/mateo-candeas-intriguing-defence-of-the-bounded-field-site/

It is not often that I come across a defence of boundedness as an operating principle of anthropological field research – one notable exception being Boellstorff’s (2008) ethnography of the 3D virtual world Second Life as a bounded domain.  This is what Tessa Valo over at antropologi.info has to say about Mateo Candea’s chapter ”Arbitrary Locations: In Defense of the Bounded Field-Site” in the 2009 volume Multi-Sited Ethnography: Theory, Praxis and Locality in Contemporary Research, edited by Mark-Anthony Falzon:

Candea targets in his critique what he sees as a latter-day implicit holism. This is to be found in “a suggestion that bursting out of our field-sites will enable us to provide an account of totality ‘out there’” (ibid: 27). He challenges this implicit holistic idea through his proposal to reconsider the value of the delimited field-sites. He argues that ethnography is about setting up ‘arbitrary locations’, he urges us to opt for ‘self-imposed restrictions’ and to take the path of ‘self-limitation’; to be reflexive and self-critical in our methodological decisions, to take responsibility for those decisions and to take responsibility for what we include and what we exclude.

He believes that being “explicit about the necessity of leaving certain things ‘out of bounds’” would turn “what feels like an illicit incompleteness into an actual methodological decision, one which the ethnographer reflects upon and takes responsibility for” (ibid:34). Arbitrary location for Candea is “not an object to be explained, but a contingent window into complexity” (ibid: 37).

Even though the title might mislead some, Candea’s article should not be read as an attack on multi-sited ethnography, rather, it views ‘multi-sited’ as a positive development, a development which brought a new wave of methodological reflexivity. And it is on this wave of methodological reflexivity that Candea’s article is sailing and challenging the imagined totality of ‘cultural formations’.

Candea’s article is one of those that push you to think further, and whatever your opinion might be, it definitely makes you sit down and rethink your own approach to multi-sited ethnography, though maybe in a different direction than his.

I am reminded here of the Manchester School of anthropology and their position about the limits of ’social fields’ being invariably arbitrary and tied to the researcher’s aims, see the 1966 volume Political Anthropology. For his part, Bourdieu is more ambiguous about the ontology of field boundaries, see his conversation with Wacquant in An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology.  (NB – in both these cases we’re dealing with ‘fields’ as both specialist domains of practice  AND research settings.)

I had two things to talk about tonight but I couldn’t get a full post out of either so I combined them both and they really fit together nicely.

” I know it hurts. It’s painful but you have to get over it. You need to go to school, life is painful, cold and full of burden’s you need to grow up and deal with it” That is what a mother was telling her daughter on her cell phone today. It’s moments like that I wish this blog was an interview blog. I really wanted to know the whole story. To bad I couldn’t just say ” Hey I write this blog and it would really help me if I could interview you so I can exploit what ever tragedy has befallen your daughter for my ego and my readers enjoyment. But that just seems too cold. Sometimes you just don’t get the whole story.  I hope that’s a talk I never have with my kids. Life should never be painful or a burden and hopefully in the tough times we parents can be there to support them but unavoidably life is full of pain.

Which I get because let me tell you about  how painful driving can be. When the temperature dips like this, I almost hate walking out to my bus. Buses sit in a cold yard all night long. Their solid steel bodies freeze up like the old metal ice cube trays. It takes about an hour or two for the heater to fully thaw the bus out. In the time between that it’s physically painful to drive.  The fact that I’m getting older only makes it harder to cope. The cold can penetrate down to my bones and makes me feel like a popsicle. Add to the cold the stiffness of sitting in a seat and life can be very painful.  even though I’m in pretty good shape for a driver it still wrecks my body.

I can crack my neck just by turning my head. Sometimes my back is so tweaked and compressed that I have to come home lay on the floor and put my legs up on my couch for 20 minutes to allow for my spine to decompress.  I’m pretty sure I’m solely supporting a majority of Tiger Balms sales and I don’t know what I would do without my wonderful masseuse .  I’m not alone many drivers I know are breaking down as we get older. The all to many miles and all two few breaks lead to wear and tear on our bodies; there’s no such thing as a skinny healthy bus driver. The union and the company are trying to promote wellness programs but in my mind if they really cared They’d offer more compassionate schedules that are less demanding on us drivers. my new schedule I started today drivers for 8 hours and 45 minutes. my longest break, is 9 minutes.

Presented to me by the Carl Couch Center for Social and Internet Research for my paper, “Autoethnographic Fragments of My Grandmothers.”

The paper will be published in 2010 in the McFarland & Co. anthology, First Person Sociology:  Essays Towards Autoethnohraphy in Today’s Qualitative Research.

It’s been cold and wet for the last couple days in LA.  Which makes it not very delightful and leads to one constant truism on the buses. When it gets cold the homeless ride because they got no place to go.  A bus is warm and cheap ( if they have disabled card it cost .25). They prefer to find long lines so they can sleep for awhile.  now before you get all emotional and think, well at least they have a place to be warm, I have to tell you I cannot stand it when they just ride around.

I’m not a rolling Holiday Inn. it’s not my job to provide shelter to the disenfranchised of the  world.  If they just got on and rode it would be ok, but it’s never just that.  There are many issues that come with them. First and foremost they usually stink. Next, the almost always get into some clash with other riders.  Lastly, many times it’s hard to get them off the bus at the end of the line.

Look I’m not inhuman I feel for them but you have to understand, anything that is not routine on my bus adds stress on the bus. It makes passengers uneasy and ultimately that makes my day a lot harder. Sometimes to persuade them to leave I’ll make the bus as inhospitable as possible by turning on the AC and opening the windows while it’s 45 degrees outside.  If  the bus isn’t warm then they have no reason to stay and they go on their way.  Is it the christmas spirit? nope. Is it the decent thing to do? nope. But is it the solution that makes my day less stressful? Yes. There in lies the secret, anything that makes my job harder jeopardizes my long term success so  to manage the risk sometimes my inner prick comes out.

Look at any walk of life or any hobby and you will find people who are passionate at what they do. You have to admire them; the pursuit of their discipline is like food and water to them. They lose all track of time in the pursuit – if fact, they are energized by the time they spend at their craft. The passion is their first thought when they wake up and the last thought when they go to bed. If you meet them for the first time, it is one of the first things they have to talk about. They have to talk about it.

Maybe it was my upbringing but I wasn’t raised to cultivate a passion. I was raised to survive as the oldest child of an abusive father. My entire early life was in watching my mother endure merciless beatings and then when I was old enough to join the party, my goal was to avoid attention whenever I could. The last thing I wanted to do was to excel in something enough to stand out. Thankfully, my mother was brave; she divorced my father at a time when women just didn’t do that. So instead of being a battered wife, she was a divorced woman with three young children in 1963. If I get my tenacity from anyone, it is from her. Despite the odds, she waited tables during the day and went back to school at night, ultimately getting her graduate degree.

We were poor—I lived in a house in bad need of repair in an integrated, working class neighborhood within a stone’s throw of New York City. I don’t ever remember waking up thinking I was lucky to be the white kid in the neighborhood; we were all trying to survive race riots, making ends meet, keeping children safe. Looking back, I think God was looking after me because I was able to graduate high school drug free and with a good mind. It took a long time to repair the damage those early years did but in the end I knew two things: I was smarter than anyone gave me credit for, and I was a champion for the underdog. And believe it or not, I had some musical ability.

My music history started with watching Lawrence Welk on my grandparent’s TV (I’m not THAT old but they did have a color TV long before my mother did). There was a lady on that show named Jo Ann Castle who played Honky Tonk piano. She had this huge smile and bounced when she played and there was no way a person who wasn’t deaf could help but tap their feet when she played. I watched her and I thought if I could just play like her, I would be the happiest kid in the world. My mother (to her credit) saw how transformed I was when I watched Ms. Castle play, so she scraped up enough money to have me take lessons—with someone who had no idea who Jo Ann Castle was.

Mr. C had a background in opera. He was old…really old. And the music he had in his studio had to have been there since the dawn of time. Maybe he just felt sorry for my mother; after all, we did win the Christmas dinner from the radio station for having the hardest luck story. Where was Extreme Makeover Home Edition when I was a kid? Mr. C loved the classics and opera but was exasperated when I never practiced-unless he gave me the rare tarantella to play. I struggled through that for 7 years before everyone finally gave up on me. By that time I was in high school, had become a trumpet player and found out about the Blues. I played horn all through high school and part of college but it never became more than a hobby…it wasn’t a passion.

I had an interesting conversation with my boss today. Let me preface my post by saying ” I love my boss” She is easily the finest person I’ve worked for at the MTA, but she’s still a boss.  Our discussion was about recent procedure changes at work and the sticking point was the definition of the word help.

she told me to assist drivers leaving on time she now has a supervisor in the yard to “help” us.  Here’s the thing. In 20 years I’ve never seen a supervisor help anyone. Supervisors at the MTA don’t help.. they write. More specifically they write rule violations.  so ultimately my boss and I didn’t see eye to eye because we connotatively have different meanings for the word help.

There are may ways to define a word.  you can define a word by example. For instance  ”Lend”  I could explain lend as ” I need lunch money so my friend gave me $5 that I would payback.” One can define a word by tradition. snafu   means “situation normal all fucked up”  It was coined by American servicemen and has been used for 50 years.  You can define words dennotatively, from a dictionary.  such as help

Help : to give or provide what is necessary to accomplish a task or satisfy a need; contribute strength or means to; render assistance to; cooperate effectively with; aid; assist: He planned to help me with my work. Let me help you with those packages.

in direct opposition to denotative is connotative meaning.   Which basically is the implied meaning a community ascribes to and understands a word to mean.  For instance a Fag in England is a cigarette. In America the word is a disparaging remark to someones sexuality  same word different connative meaning.

We drivers hear the word help from a supervisor, well that just means a write up. Supervisors at the MTA are incapable of actually supervising. I was  in the USMC the main function of an NCO was to train and guide enlisted troops, not punish them.  I’ve never once received any advice from a supervisor that was actually offered as a means to make my job more efficient or helpful.  In fact I find them so devoid of any ethos that I actually prefer the general public to supervisors.  I’m only at my work location for 17 minutes a day and it’s more often than not the worst 17 minutes of my day.  The MTA’s way of getting us to put on a smiley face to our customers is to poke us with a knife in our back….  it just adds to the overall stress of the job and one major reason I can’t wait to leave.  but I’m nothing special, everyone has shitty bosses at work…

4 explorers, 5 Countries, 2000 miles, 16 abandoned sites, 5000 photographs, 3 hours of video footage, a pocket full of loose change to live on and a car full of $7000 worth of camera gear. It’s these last two bits that I find so amusing, these are the pieces of the puzzle that turn this from a hobo trip to a pro hobo trip I suppose. That and the radical mobility of our opt-in faux homelessness.

After our last trip to Europe, I wrote about urban camping. I felt like that long weekend away was a sort of like a wilderness retreat, a little escape from work and obligations to see something unstraited. Some people choose go to a pine forest for these retreats, we go to abandoned chateaus in Belgium. Seems fair enough.

But this trip was different right from the beginning. Part of it was due to the length of our expedition, part of it due to the dynamics of the crew. We had a crew of 4 – myself, Statler, Winch and Silent Motion, all up for it in a big way. We were long inspired by the perpetual homeless adventures of Dsankt at Sleepy City which seemed to pry open a new level of UrbEx or, at the least, open up new possibilities for adventurous play. So we struck out on a Sunday night from Reading, UK, across the channel on the P&O car ferry, through the sadness of Calais, France, just across the border into Belgium to Kosmos, a hotel with a weird Russian art-deco theme that had closed in 1996 where we planned to stay the night.

Transgressive Mobilities

Tourism?

Rated 1 Star on Travelocity

Strangely enough, given what a pile of crap this place was, it was really hard to get into. Finally, after making our way in, ferrying in bags of clothes, food, whiskey and 8 bottles of Chimay looted from a road side stop, we settled in for the night, with a gorgeous view of a random Belgian valley spread out before us, full P&O shot glasses of cheap drink and a horrible rattling noise from the winds assaulting some loose flap on the roof above us.

Penthouse

Winch taking in the epicness

The Goblinmerchant gets naked

We ended up finally dragging tables and chairs from other rooms to board up the windows which were allowing massive gust of wind and rain into our sleeping quarters. Essentially, we started doing home repairs. That night, falling asleep to Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Volume II playing softly on my phone, I had dreams about the property owner showing up weeks later to find that somebody had actually repaired their building, boarded up windows, brought in and cleaned up couches, filled the bookshelves with tea lights. I imagined them being, at first, dismayed and confused and then… amused, a small smile cracking their stoically disappointed Belgian head.

The thing I started thinking was that our move from UrbEx into pro hoboness was actually a move that benefited property owners because, as Silent Motion put it, “our sleeping in the space builds a more intimate connection with it, we become a part of the fabric.” So going pro hobo, in my mind, even the documentation aspect that you are scrolling through right now, is about place hacking, about finding intimacy in a world full of sterile engagement.

This idea was made even more funny when the property owners showed up at 8am the next morning and started putting up more fencing on the site. Between us and them, the place was going to be completely remodeled soon. We waiting 30 minutes or so for them to leave and made our hasty escape.

Although I am tempted to write about all 16 sites we went to, I can’t. The reason for this is, quite simply, that I cannot relay the epic nature of the experience to you in a blog posting, try as I might. With every day that passed, the crew got more raw, more volatile, more energetic, in a weird, confused sort of way. It was a delirious panic that I think would have even made Dionysus proud. I was drunk for most of it, partly because I do better fieldwork after a few beers and partly because the experience was so raw that it had to be shielded, it was like trying to stare into the sun. Now I know why so many homeless people drink.

Staring at the sun

The raw light of experience

Boundaries that existed in our little UK bubble began to break down. We did not speak the language, we did not meet a single person outside of the grocery stores and petrol stations we ravaged, washing our hair in their bathroom sinks and leaving piles of trash in their parking spaces, running under the turnstiles at the restrooms that demanded 50 cents. All that existed, all that mattered was the adventure and the bond between us which grew tighter with every sip of Jupiler in the back seat of Statler’s car, with every step walked over squishy mold/carpet. We could not think about what was happening because as Dostoevsky points out “one must love life before loving it’s meaning.” And this love was on fire. We began infiltrating live sites, barbecuing dinner in wheelbarrows, lighting dozens of candles in random rooms of Nazi extermination camps and free climbing timber into bell towers in crumbling buildings to photograph the holes in the roof veiled in cloudy continental morning mist.

The films here were shit

Dinner cooked over pieces of the gas chamber

Do they know we're in here?

Winch was the primary conspirator of this little frozen-toed expedition. Always up for a challenge and a laugh, he had booked this absurd holiday in December, I think, to break our will. After all, only the broken can be admitted into the ranks of legend. After taking in a few leisure sites over the first few days, he hits us with the news – we are going after heavy industry. Now, given that I am about to give a paper on reanimating industrial spaces through urban exploration at the 2009 Theoretical Archaeology Group conference in Durham at the end of the month, I thought this is a grand idea. Until it actually started going down.

We walked up to Transfo, a power station in Belgium, to find it swarming with people. We waited until dusk. When we thought everybody had gone home, Silent Motion ninja’d his way in to the secure building past the motion sensing lights and infrared alarm system. We got in and snapped some pics for about 10 minutes before some worker ran up and started rattling the doors to the heavy equipment room. Whoops. Turns out they were not all gone, but Silent Motion clearly could give a shit and starting climbing the infrastructure of the building to get a landscape shot.

Raw Metal

Ghosts of industry

On our way to Germany, we stopped to infiltrate Kokerei Zollverein, again swarming with people including professional photographers and men in suits. I swore that this infiltration would end badly. The only bad outcome, in reality, was my nausea from being meters away from workers as we snook past them and hid in the shadows. All my photos from there are shaky save two:

Fear processing factory

Pulled

After my moment of existential crisis, we made our way to an abandoned train yard Munster Gare, a glorious moment for me for some odd reason. Something about the intersections of transportation (mobility), dereliction (history, aesthetics) and remote location (opportunity for playfulness) made this my favorite site of the trip.

I'm the captain of this ship!

The passengers

No more goods

Unnecessary

After my locomotive jizfest, we drove into Germany. I had not been since I was 19 years old when I pursued the country on a underage American-in-Europe beer run, and was dismayed to find that it was actually a really beautiful place. Mostly because the further East you go, the more derelict structures begin to dominate to landscape. I always thought of dereliction being about the failures of capitalism, but nowhere was abandonment more apparent that in East Germany, markers to the collapse of communism and the retreat of the Soviet Union. The group entered a fervor as we drove through the country side, everything began to look derelict. At one point I remember Silent Motion saying, “Hey there’s a building over there!” and Winch responding “Nice, does it has trees growing out of it?”

We had resigned ourselves to a week of squatting. It was safe to say, at this point, that we had all left our lives behind. I didn’t care about my research anymore, I just wanted to keep getting high on adrenaline. No one ever talked about their jobs, their families. We talked about girls, 4chan, about what country had the best beer (hint: it’s Belgium), about football. Even our Blackberries and iPhones served only to get us aerial photos and to update our facebook status so everyone knew how much more fun we were having than them being homeless, elite and stacked with fat kit. As we crept into East Germany, we were all broken.

I don’t mean that in a bad way. What had been broken was our expectations, our existential dilemmas, our need for unnecessary daily crisis. These things were overwhelmed by the experience of the present, by what was just around the horizon. I felt, for the first time on this project, like I had actually broken the research barrier. I was not studying UrbEx anymore, I was UrbEx. I sat in the back of the car, delirious and drunk, and saw Winch staring at his fingernails. He says “When you look at my fingernails what do you see?” I told him “Maybe the blood and sweat of old inhabitants.” He considered it and replied “I don’t want to clean them…” This was our arrival, the point at which we had committed to dreaming instead of sleeping. And with that, we moved into Berlin, into Ex-Soviet Territory. But that, my friends, is a story for another day.

Never done

Re. the article written by Don Norman “technology first, needs last” http://jnd.org/dn.mss/technology_first_needs_last.html here’s my response – I think the article is a little irresponsible and I disagree – it is needs and technology in parallel.

With 4 new business ventures under my belt, I’ve learnt how hard it is to be an inventor. You have to make huge sacrifices to acquire the technical AND contextual knowledge needed to invent – these two things run in a parrellel.

Leonardo di Vinci believed the most important organ he possessed was his eye, not his brain… inventors are keen observers because that’s how they can apply their knowledge of technology most effectively – to spend years of pain and financial loss to break through with an invention, you have to have a central belief that you can improve a situation.  That motivation comes from within the inventor, they have seen something you and I missed, because they possess the knowledge of a technical field and believe they can change it… I believe context and need have to co-exist for the inventor to find the reason why they believe a technology revolution is worth investing a lifetime – I think inventors realise their idea presents an opportunity to make a difference.

Inventors developed the insight that led to an invention gradually over hours of dedicated focus and hard work… that’s why you need creativity, imagination – that’s why you need designers who can facilitate the latent knowledge within organisations, because most business people aren’t very good at invention, they usually can’t see the true nature of the problems they should be solving with their knowlege.  I wonder also what was the average age of the inventors in your list?

If we want to improve people’s lives and take our responsibility as designers for helping organisations reduce environmental impact we must focus everyone in organisations on thinking harder about why they are doing something when they go to work, before they start doing it.

With design research we are shining light on the human needs normally ignored before making a business decision, now employees can apply their knowledge more effectively.  I’ve found on many projects that use ethnography/contextual study that the performance of people and the organisation goes up substantially, waste goes down, employees are happier and customers more satisfied.  Presenting knowledge in that way to a lot of eyeballs and brains increases the chances of making a leap – yes, you need the right organisational culture, but doing work this way is how you start to make a difference.

The average technologist or engineer who could use this article to make their case, will waste huge amounts failing and leave far too much to luck BECAUSE they didn’t understand the context properly – they just like tinkering but they wouldn’t risk their job/house on it.  I don’t believe inventors do that, good inventors are successful because they combine a gift for observation and technology – what motivated them? Inventors see a chance to make a difference to humanity otherwise why risk a lifetime’s work – what other reason is there?

The access stairs and veranda of Potlogi Palace, located in the environs of Bucharest, one of the archetype buildings from which the modern Neo-Romanian architectural style traces its origins. (©Valentin Mandache)

Potlogi Palace is a late c17th edifice built by Italian architects for the Wallachian prince Constantin Brancoveanu on a late Venetian Renaissance country villa framework, using local decorative and structural elements. The symbiosis resulted in a unique style, encountered in similar edifices commissioned by Brancoveanu and his contemporaries (Mogosoaia Palace, etc.), termed by some specialists as “Romanian Renaissance”, but which I prefer to define as “proto/early Neo-Romanian”, as the motifs and elements encountered in these buildings were synthesised at the end of c19th by the architect Ion Mincu and his colleagues within the modern Neo-Romanian style, one of of the remarkable national schools of architecture of that period in Europe.

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I endeavor through this daily image series to inspire appreciation of the historic houses of Romania, a virtually undiscovered, but fascinating chapter of European architectural heritage.

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If you plan acquiring a historic property in Romania or start a renovation project, I would be delighted to advice you in locating the property, specialist research, planning permissions, restoration project management, etc. To discuss your particular plan please see my contact details in the Contact page of this weblog.