To begin with, I want to remind you that cultural studies aims, amongst other things, to understand the hidden and secret rules behind our society: that is, our culture. Thought there are many definitions of 'culture', in essence t involves looking at the rules and values that we all follow, most often without even knowing that they are there.
A key definition that I like to use is presented by influential sociologist Anthony Giddens:
'Culture consists of the values the members of a given group hold, the norms they follow, and the material goods they create' (1989, 31).
There are three key points that we should highlight here:
Values: that is, what is important in our society? What do we consider important? What hierarchies exist in things like work or leisure? For example, from the pay scales we can see that we 'value' bankers more than nurses or teachers – despite all the rhetoric of the exact opposite. What does that tell us about the structure of our value system?
The second section to this definition is norms: that is, what are the rules that we follow – what do we consider 'normal'? There are many norms in our society – many of which are changing. Again, despite all the rhetoric of 'family values', it is now normal for people to work on weekends. Only a decade or so ago, most shops were closed Sundays. Again, what does that tell us about who we are?
The third dimension of this definition is the idea of what goods we produce. This may sound somewhat weird at first but let's think it through. Pre-modern societies used to focus on the production of necessities: enough food to eat; enough clothes to wear; shelter and some extras to trade. This told you much about the way that people lived: a lack of technology meant that they could not store food for too long. But today, we produce food but we specialise – selling most and trading. But the biggest focus on our society is the production of luxury good – new phones, a new Ipod, a new Nintendo and so on. We do not really hear what the apple farmers are up to but we are always aware about the new products that Apple is producing. So, the production of certain material goods tells us a great deal about who we are – that is, our culture.
It is within this that we are looking at everyday life: how the rules and values shape our lives, the way we see the world, how power operates and the rituals that we follow. For, as I will discuss in future blogs, it is regular rituals that we do not think about that tell us something about our society. So when we look at a society like Australia, we can ask binds us: language, beliefs, institutions, stories and myths, but also common practices – that is, rituals.
How will we be studying everyday life?
As I have already mentioned in my previous blog, there is no 'one-way' to undertake the study of everyday life so we employ multiple methods. This is known as an 'interdisciplinary approach' and we draw on from the schools of Anthropology, Sociology and Cultural Studies: though it is cultural studies that is our focus here. The main research methodology employed, however, is taken from anthropology and known as 'ethnographic research'. This is a form of research focusing on the sociology of meaning through close field observation of social phenomena.
According to Marvin Harris and Orna Johnson (2000-, ethnography literally means "a portrait of a people." It is a written description of a particular culture and its customs, beliefs, and behaviour.
Typically, the researcher – also known as the ethnographer – focuses on a community, selecting informants who are known to have an overview of the activities of the community. Such informants are asked to identify other informants representative of the community (this is a process described as 'chain sampling' because of the interlinked nature of the informants).
As part of the ethnographic analysis, and usually after the observation has been undertaken, informants are interviewed (often a multiple times). This process is intended to reveal common cultural understandings related to the phenomena under study.
Such a research process involves two important assumptions that we need to accept. Note that there are others, for the purpose of this overview, the following should are key:
The first is that ethnography assumes the main focus of research is affected by community cultural understandings: This means that if we are studying a group of people, and we watch them greet each other then we can assume that the greeting is the same for all people within that group – not just the process but the meaning also.
Ethnography also assumes that we, as researchers, are capable of understanding the cultural meanings of the population we are studying. This may be easy in some situations, but what if you are studying a group with a different language; use technical jargon; or even undertake certain rituals that you do not recognise?
Ethnography: a case study
In my previous blog I noted four key dimensions to ethnographic research that we need to understand (again there are others but for the purposes of this overview, let's focus on these). I want to apply these four dimensions to some of my own experiences. I worked for a while in a part of PNG called Bougainville as a consultant to the Central Bank. This was a country that was just emerging from conflict and I was interested, as part of another project, to understand how people were attempting to rebuild their lives from the conflict.
- Observing and understanding: that is, you do not ask interviews but observe (at least initially). When I researched squats in Amsterdam and tried to figure out how they worked, I just went and lived there for a while. I did a similar thing in PNG. The point was I did not ask people how they got along or what rules they followed, I just observed and attempted to understand what was happening.
What I did was I went and lived in the community to observe what was going in. I volunteered to undertake and assist the men in their work. This often involved manual labour even though I was an outsider, after a while they begin to just accept me being there.
While I worked, had dinner, drank coffee and so on, I observed what was going on. I did not ask any questions like, how do you guys do that, but just attempted to understand from my observing.
See, what had happened was that there was a civil war and many neighbours had turned against each other. The questions I was interested was on how people were rebuilding trust with their neighbours. What I found was that it was happening in small steps: people asked to borrow a hammer or gave a hand at some chores. So what I observed was that trust builds slowly, and the more it builds, the more it feeds itself – kind of like a magic pudding. - Focus on meaning: that is, when we do something we need to look beyond the event and understand the meaning behind it. So, buying a Coke is not just buying a Coke, the process has a bunch of meaning attached (like accepting that you are part of capitalist system, money is a means of exchange and that property rights allow you to own a can of Coke only after paying for it).
Think about being at the pub and buying a shout – you are not just being nice, but there is a reason why you do it: to confirm that you are part of the group; that you are all going to stick around and share the evening; there is meaning behind what you are doing. When studying everyday life, we would not just observe 5 guys standing around drink beer but attempt to understand what it means.
- Ok, this extends the above point then: lending someone a hammer does not seem to mean much but if only a few months ago these same people were at war, then the lending of tools takes on additional meanings. So I looked for the subtle meanings in the practices of the everyday – learnt how there was a separation between groups still but also came to understand how people reached out.
This means that a greeting, the sharing of a tool and a bunch of other things seem have much greater meanings than what we give them credit for.
There are many things that have meaning that we do not think about. As we will see in future blogs, there are a great deal of meanings attached to specific rituals such as birthday parties and also the gifts that we give.
- Insiders' viewpoint: this extends the first point – that we do not rely on someone else's observation but do it ourselves. When it comes to observing our own society, this is part of the making the familiar unfamiliar: that is, seeing ourselves as 'anthropologically strange'. So we look at things and attempt to understand them from an insider's perspective.
In Bougainville, I went and lived within these communities to understand what was going on. Sure, I did not understand everything, but I began to gain insights that would not have been possible if I was just passing through.
But while doing this, it is important to avoid being ethno-centric: this means, we need to accept that there is more than one way of seeing the world and that our own biases will always impact upon what you see – no matter how hard you try to avoid that.
Finally, the truth is that I will only ever be able to gain a specific view – which as biased and coloured by the things that I understand. I came to accept these limitations in the work.
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