Ethnography Vs. Journalism: Week 1.5 Response to AJ's Post

Rather than burying it as a response to each of your individual posts, I think it makes more sense to reply on this main posting thread, -- especially when my rambling'n'meandering thoughts are relevant for all of us.  For now, I'm going to respond to AJ's post.  

AJ, great post as usual.  You raised excellent questions, and I've had similar ones myself.  There are certainly many similarities between what we typically think of as journalism and what we're learning is ethnographic writing.  As you stated (via Kahn), they both require the "generat[ion], collect[ion], analy[sis], and synthesi[s]" of ideas, data, and other related material.  

• One beneath-the-radar difference is that ethnography -- at least within the academy -- tends to examine power dynamics within a given culture.  An ethnographic approach might ask: how are participants' relationships and roles shaped by the negotiation (or lack thereof) of power?  It seems to me that an ethnographic approach to research/life seeks to defend the powerless or the disenfranchised.  Although this isn't a defining feature, from what I've gathered, ethnographic projects typically seem to stick up for "the little guy" -- people or ideas that might be overlooked or disregarded. 

• A follow-up on that thought: instead of looking at an issue through a telescopic lens (from far away), they examine it through a microscope (super close-up).  My awesome advisor at UCSB often reinforces this point during our chats, and that "versus" dichotomy always helps make the issue click for me.

• A follow-up to the follow-up: I bang heads with administrators (and probably always will, unless they're more experienced in this specific context or approach the issue more respectfully) when they tell me how to do my job -- that is, how to design, teach, and assess Academic Writing.  (Which, just to anticipate looking like a schmuck here... is literally, the 1 thing I'm doing with my life!)  They seem to be in favor of a 1-size-fits-all model without understanding how/why its important for instructors to build their own courses through their own theoretical framework, and they also seem to overlook the longview of writing development (which includes cultivating attitudes and habits instead of just "grammatical fluency") in lieu majorly reductive views of what "good writing" is/isn't.  Now, I can only truly see the world through my own eyes, but comparatively, I've got the microscopic view of the issue, whereas they've got the telescopic view.  Good teachers -- which they are, which makes this even more bizarre -- think ethnographically and see their classrooms as distinct cultures.  However, on this issue, they haven't done any due diligence in trying to understand what is/isn't appropriate or prudent for Academic Writing -- according to the "native's perspective," my students or my own.  We're the ones who have "lived it," on the ground, so we're the ones who truly know its upsides and downsides.  So for them to "get" what's happening in this context, they need our "native" perspectives.  Does that example help?  ;)

• Since we're on the topic of identity and personal perspective, one major difference between journalism and ethnography is that journalism usually strives to achieve objectivity, and in effect, removes the writer's individual stance towards the material from the written piece.  Ethnographers, though, would maintain that there really is no true objectivity.  Since ethnographers dig into their cultures via participant-observation, they tend to acknowledge their pre-dispositions, biases, and cultural assumptions at the door.  (Although this isn't always the case, ethnographic research pieces typically begin with autobiographical background information so the reader knows what subjectivities the authors are bringing to the table.)

• Ethnographic projects are often guided by an underlying research question.  They're not "married" to this question, though;  qualitative research can be iterative and ever-expanding/evolving. 

• As you mentioned, time is a major factor, for sure.  Ethnographies are intense, so such sustained inquiry takes a lot of time.  Journalists have deadlines that an ethnographer would never be able to meet because they'd/we'd need to sacrifice getting that "deep" and intimate knowledge of the culture and its participants which is so crucial to ethnographic work.

I think/hope this is a decent start for now.  Glad we got some momentum going.  Thank in advance for reading and for being such committed academic badasses!