Introduction to the ethnography – between impressionist, critical and collaborative tales

A major source of inspiration for the strategy in the data collection and for the presentation that now follows is Geertz’ concept of ‘thick description’ (Geertz 1973). A central feature of this concept is to provide the reader of the anthropological writing a possibility of interpreting the credibility of the author’s interpretations through a detailed description of the researcher’s observations and the contexts in which these took place. The concept of ‘thick description’ has been expanded by Denzin (Denzin 2001:107) who offers criteria to evaluate ‘thick descriptions’: “A full or complete thick description is biographical, historical, situational, relational, and interactional. But not every thick description is full or complete. Some thick descriptions focus on relationships, others on individuals, some on situations, and so on. Accordingly, it is possible to classify thick descriptions in terms of the dimensions that are their primary focus” (Denzin 2001:107).

The following ethnography will attempt to present a complete or full ‘thick description’ and with Denzin’s (2001) words attempt to “rescue and secure the meanings, actions, and feelings that are present in an interactional experience [..]. Description is necessarily interpretive [..]. It captures the interpretations that persons bring to the events that have been captured. It records the interpretations that interactants make as the interaction unfolds. It provides the grounds for the researcher's (and the reader's) interpretations of the events and meanings that have been captured.

The words that record description are also interpretive. Thick description involves capturing and representing the meanings a particular action or sequence of actions have for the individuals in question. The capturing of meaningful events is done through the triangulated use of the several methods of recording and capturing life experiences [..] (personal experience stories, self-stories, collecting slices of interaction, interviews). Thick description is biographical and interactional. It connects self-stories and personal histories to specific interactional experiences” (ibid:116)). An important addition to this is the way the study is guided by the ‘socio-material’ understanding discussed earlier and thus having a perspective on the meaning making among the social actors from this mutual perspective.

I would like to note before entering further into the ethnography, that the ‘thick description’ is not limited to the present chapter but not ‘completed’ before the inclusion of the analysis in the next chapter. Here, a more theoretically driven analysis will dip further into the data and present the outcome of the ethnographic interviews.

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The approach to write the ethnography is inspired by Van Maanen’s (1988) discussion on different styles in ethnographic writing and representation and Gullion’s (2015) expansions of these. Van Maanen conceptualizes ethnographies as ‘tales’ and distinguishes between ‘realist’, ‘confessional’, and ‘impressionist’ tales. In short, the ‘realist’ tale focuses more on the culture than on the fieldworker, the ‘confessional’ tale focuses more on the fieldworker than on the culture and the

‘impressionist’ tale focuses equally on the fieldworker and the culture.

The realist tale is characterized by four conventions: (1) experiential author(ity), (2) typical forms, (3) the native’s point of view and (4) interpretive omnipotence. The experiential author(ity)-convention is characterized by ‘a studied neutrality’ and an almost complete absence of the author from most of the text where the ethnographer ‘simply vanishes behind steady descriptive narrative justified largely by the respectable image and ideology of ethnographic practice (ibid:46). The quality of the fieldwork authority in this convention rests on the expectancies of an audience that rely on “the status of the fieldworker as a scholar or scientist, trained in the latest analytical techniques, allergic to the imprecise, and able to get to the heart of a culture faster, with greater sensitivity, than rank amateurs” (ibid:46). The typical forms-convention is characterized by a strive for describing ‘typical’

traits and routine elements of the studied culture, where particular experiences of the people studied are less in focus than “the categories and institutions that are said to order their lives”

(ibid:48). The native’s point of view-convention is an element that has become more acknowledged in the realist approach and giving more space for indigenous meaning systems and thus has observation given space to interpretation (ibid:51). The precise meaning of the ‘native’s point of view’ is also, according to Van Maanen, subject to much debate in fieldwork circles. The interpretive omnipotence-convention addresses the final word of the ethnographer and inherent in this a lack of self-reflection and doubt. Van Maanen quotes Clarke²⁷ who uses the term ‘didactic deadpan’ as a style where each element of a chosen theory is carefully illustrated by empirical field data – a form that Van Maanen calls “aseptic and impersonal but convincing insofar as an audience is willing to grant power to the theory” (ibid:51).

The confessional tale has emerged as a response to the realist conventions that “have proved most embarrassing” (ibid:73) with the result to explicitly demystify fieldwork or participant observation by showing how the technique is practiced in the field” (ibid:71). In the confessional tales the 3rd person of the realist tale is changed to the 1st person – the ‘I’ of the fieldworker. Here Van Maanen

27Clarke, M. 1975. Survival in the field. Theory and Society 2:63-94.

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sees 3 conventions at work: (1) personalized author(ity), (2) the fieldworker’s point of view, and (3) naturalness. Van Maanen notes that confessional tales normally don’t replace realist accounts but typically stand besides these – “all are distinct, however, from the ethnography itself” (ibid:75). The personalized author(ity) places the ethnographer as the visible actor in the confessional tale as

“often something of a trickster or fixer, wise to the way of the world, appreciative of human vanity, necessarily wary, and therefore inventive at getting by and winning little victories over the hassles of life in the research setting” (ibid:76). The prevalence of autobiographical details in these tales makes it clear that it is the fieldworker’s point of view that is being represented. Often the story being told is one of becoming an insider or even ‘going native’ which often makes confessional tales deal with a

“paradoxical, if not schizophrenic, attitude towards the group observed” (ibid:77). Another trait of confessional tales is often an inherent argument for longer periods of fieldwork in order to “allowing for a greater opportunity for lightning to strike” and an understanding of fieldwork as something which is “as much a matter of luck and being in the right place at the right time as it is a matter of good training” (ibid:78).

Van Maanen places the confessional tale as very relevant for methodological reflections on possible choices of role management in the research process but also criticizes many ‘confessionals’ of understating the possible range of role options to their concrete study. The last consequence of the fieldworker’s point of view in this genre is that “in confessional tales, then, cultural knowledge may rest securely on the testimony of personal experience and can be presented to readers in the form of explicit behavioral norms or interpretive standards the ethnographer learned to follow in the field in order to in the field” (ibid:78). Van Maanen uses ‘naturalness’ to describe how many fieldworkers do use the confessional genre to critically address and reflect on their roles as researchers but nevertheless always end up not to question but supporting the realist writing about the same culture done elsewhere.

With the term ‘impressionist’ tales Van Maanen lends from art history to describe a ‘third way’ or third tale that in a novelistic form “present the doing of fieldwork rather than simply the doer or the done” (ibid:102). In other words, this genre is a proposal to merge the realist and confessional tale.

He also points that “the story itself, the impressionist’s tale, is a representational means of cracking open the culture and the fieldworker’s way of knowing it so both can be jointly examined.

Impressionist writing tries to keep both subject and object in constant view. The epistemological aim is then to braid the knower with the known” (ibid:102). Also this type of tale can according to Van Maanen be described as applying to a number of conventions: textual identity, fragmented knowledge, characterization and dramatic control. The convention of textual identity speaks to the

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form of the impressionist tale as “dramatic recall” and to draw an audience into “an unfamiliar story world and allow it, as far as possible, to see, hear, and feel as the fieldworker saw, heard and felt”

(ibid: 103). The impressionist tale suggest a learning process similar to that experienced by the fieldworker unfolded in a series of events that with suspense keeps the audience unsure of where the story leading and thus slipping cultural knowledge “in fragmented, disjointed ways” (ibid:104).

The convention of characterization refers to the way the fieldworker’s individuality is expressed through the thorough description of the range of ‘poses’ (like “befuddlement, mixed emotions, moral anguish, heightened sensitivity, compassion, enchantment, skepticism, or an apparent eager-beaver spirit of inquiry” (ibid:104) that are occupied throughout the story. This convention also speaks to the element of characterization of the people under study and the obligation to give individual voices to the natives under display. The last convention of dramatic control speaks to the artistic skill and nerve and ability of the narrator to meet an audience’s expectations and judging of the tale “on the basis of its plausibility or believability, not on the basis of accuracy or representativeness” (ibid:105).

Comparing these tales with the ‘turns’ that Hastrup discussed earlier, one can argue that the

‘impressionist’ tale is well in line with Hastrup’s ‘socio-material’ as well as Davies’ ‘reflexive ethnography’ and ‘critical realist’ approaches that the study wishes to position itself in relation to.

Gullion (2015) builds on Van Maanen’s typology and describes two additional genres, the critical/advocacy tale and the collaborative tale that both have relevance in a reflection and discussion of the methodology of the study. The critical/advocacy tale is written with a social change agenda and the collaborative tale as a means to dismantle the research/researched hierarchy by

‘inviting participants to jointly writ[e] the narrative’ (Gullion 2015).

Both these genres relate to the applied goals of the study in both the American and Danish contexts as well as to the specific ways the participants are related to during and after the research process.

With regard to the Danish context and the question of whether the study in general can be said to present a critical/advocacy tale, I will deal with this in the concluding chapter with reflections on the potentials of the findings’ contribution to the Danish debate on ‘challenged youth’.

With regards to the American context the ‘collaborative tale’ can be useful to direct attention to different elements in the process. From the very onset of the research project it was an explicit goal that it should contribute to the program by presenting new perspectives on its practice. In practice this meant both a presentation of the main findings towards the end of the thesis writing as well as engaging in two different areas of program practice during the process of the fieldwork. Both

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occasions of engagement during and after the fieldwork will be presented in tales in this final part of the thesis. Moreover my daily interaction with the youth can also be argued to have had collaborative dimensions. This relates primarily to the initial presentation of the research project as applied and with the potential for starting a similar program in the Danish context. As a result of this many youth showed a continuous interest and curiosity in my research resulting in their choice to both sharing their own program experiences with me in informal talks as well as in the more formal ethnographic interviews. This indicates that youth to a very high degree positioned me more as a social entrepreneur – with questions to Danish society and youth culture - and to a lesser degree with questions to my other role, as a researcher.

Drawing back to the central theoretical and methodological positions in debates around anthropological research and in my reflections on the concept of ‘ethnography’ I have been inspired by Tedlock (1991). Tedlock is in line with van Maanen in her reflections on the change from

‘participant observation’ to the ‘observation of participation’, where the Self and the Other is represented together within a single narrative ethnography focused on the character and process of the ethnographic dialogue (1991:69).

As Davies (2008) notes, an important instrument in an ethnography is to employ rhetorical devices to

“render the argument more interesting, compelling and convincing” (ibid:217) – through metaphor, narrative and the presence of other voices in the text. Davies also notes that “because the collection of narratives is such an intrinsic part of most forms of ethnographic fieldwork, the process of writing and ethnography can be seen as a sort of meta-narrative, an organizing of these narratives to tell yet another story” (ibid:218). Davies also states that as the use of narrative is embedded in human communication and appears and reappears both as data and as product in the ethnographic research – and that this is both appropriate and unavoidable – making it crucial to be sensitive to the variety of ways in which narrative may be organized (ibid).

This point is in line with Bruner, (1997) who argues that ethnographies are guided by implicit narrative structures. I will aim at making explicit these structures as different parts or arcs: The first arc is the pre-history that made entering the field possible; then the second, third and fourth arc is the fieldwork as it unfolded during the phases it followed – spring, summer and fall. Then follows a fifth part with a follow-up study one year after the fieldwork in which the last interview data was collected. The last and sixth arc of the ethnographic narrative took place when the study was reaching its termination and draft versions of the analytical findings were presented to the program staff.

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Finally, a general purpose of including an elaborate ethnographic chapter is the wish to argue for - and demonstrate why - an ethnographic approach and a long term anthropological fieldwork is relevant to answering the research questions in the study. And in line with this as discussed by Davies (Davies 2008:216) as a strive to establish validity of the ethnography in balancing it as both a literary creation and a social scientific report.

With these reflections of ethnographic genres as ‘tales,’ the door can now be opened to the first arc in the ethnographic narrative: the pre-history of the study and the immersion in the field.

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