19-02-2024
Day 1
Dr. Dishari Chattaraj
Research methods
Doing Ethnography
Most widely used fieldwork methodologies.
Anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, linguistics
One of the things that is essential is that it is a long-term process of data collection.
Owing to digitality, it has gone down. Meticulous fieldwork requires long-term ethnography.
Happens in naturally occurring settings- not a hybrid mode.
From the point of education, this is a field of study.
The space is one type of a natural study.
Naturally occurring setting varies from context to context. Observe participant behaviour and personal engagement.
Ethnography encompasses a range of different types and methodologies. Aimed at documenting what actually goes on in the field.
Describe the field. Study the setup & mention the characteristic features of the setup.
Every little detail adds value.
Emphasises significance that meaning people give to objects. Camera, screen, paper. The entire understanding of how we construct meaning is through meditation of these objects.
The materiality of the place gives meaning to that person. Can't segregate the objects from the person. How you are embedded in this particular space.
Ethnography - writing about people.
Know the language in which you collect data- linguistic proficiency.
Design and shopping
IKEA stores & how people are navigating the spaces
What is the purpose of making this video?
Very Ethnography method- where people are sitting and going, spending time- the implications are for the market- not an innocent way of organising space
How these decisions are made are based on ethnography methods that people involved in marketing make.
Ethnography as a method has superseded social sciences.
TRP's- who gets the prime slot for any kind of show that is running.
Write down questions that your current research is attempting to cover?
1) What themes and motifs within folk narratives highlight the impacts of climate change on local ecosystems, livelihoods and cultural practices.
2) ?
What methods are you planning to use- narrative analysis.
Group component- the research questions.
Field ethnography.
There are 2 ways in which we generate data- primary and secondary data.
Fieldwork and archiving data.
If you're a student of literature,
Reading a novel would be primary data.
If you're a student of cultural studies,
The experience of reading would be primary data (it's about lived experience)
How do things happen the way they happen- what trajectory of thoughts do your questions seek to answer- what or how questions?
Types of research-
Quantitative and qualitative
What is the most popular notebook brand among students- quantitative. Classmate. Then you do a Google form survey. 70% people said this.
Experience of writing in a Natraj or a Classmate notebook- can't be quantified.
Anytime we are trying to understand collective experiences. Anything that cannot be quantified can come under ethnographic research.
Do you think it is healthy? Can you quantify it?
Why people conceive it is healthy? then you go into qualitative aspect not quantitative aspect.
One particular way in which activity is organised. Anytime there is a folksong, it is part of a ritual.
Lived experience and way of being and becoming.
Why do people have folk songs?
Mode of collective entertainment
Point of interaction between community members who might not meet otherwise
Local and traditional values embedded in them
Lot of intersectional questions will be raised and addressed
Piercing of iron rods- it helps them make sense of things
Idea of suffering is equated with gaining moksha- how they make sense of the world around you
Anything that people do to make sense of what's going on.
Methods of Data Generation
What is participant observation?
Starts with observation and interaction follows.
How culture is very volatile- what is appropriate in one culture might not be appropriate in another.
Reliance on memories and experience- can be biased.
Idea of objectivity has been equated with research but we're dealing with human subjectivities. It's about individual experiences.
What do you do when you go to a field?
Observer's paradox- data that we elicit is biased- because the observed become conscious that they are getting observed.
Setting is unfamiliar- people will not trust you. The idea is for the people to not be conscious.
The idea of consent. You just can't sit back and observe. It's followed by representations- sitting and reflect on the data that you have acquired.
How many of your research methodologies actually involves interviews? Structured, semi structured
It is advisable to make note of the context and then make your questions.
Where are you planning to conduct these interviews?
Participant generated images are very popular in ethnography.
Limitations
Very mono perspective and unidirectional.
Soundscapes
In a restaurant, a lot of things might be going on. Make minute notes of everything. Any kind of sound that is going around you.
Observation-
There is a pause when someone is speaking.
How silences convey a lot of information.
Seasonality-
Where important aspect of data collection.
We cannot claim our data to be ethnographic if we're relying on people's memories for the interview.
Participant-generated images-
Would that be considered ethnography?
Each of the components contribute to an understanding of ethnography
If you're claiming it to be ethnography, make sure some of the criteria is being followed.
Field notes
Gordon's Great Escape
Chutney of the Dhiruvars
Hot and absolutely delicious
"It's not a fruit."
Gordon Ramsay’s video shown to make field notes
Observations
How far is it?
Uncertain.
Mystery ingredient at the top of the 80 foot tree
What about a safety rod? What safety rod?
The chutney is made out of that and they bite everywhere.
Ant cavier- use ants and eggs.
"Is it 50% ants and 50% eggs?"
"It's sour like tamarind. Deliberate sweetness when you burst the eggs inside."
Red chilli, salt, ginger ground with ants and eggs in a place where meat is hard to come by
Gordon was making sounds while eating. Like a Mukbang video. He ate it with the finger.
Background music- traditional vibe. It has been superimposed. The rustling of leaves- tells us about the season.
Tropical climate- our seasons are different from the West. It's not spring.
Sensorial engagements are key aspects from the way we engage with food.
Fieldnotes- Frances makes a smoothie
How one person makes smoothie?
Look at how much fieldnote is generated.
Collection of interviews and doing a narrative analysis-
Interviews are not narratives. They are something you are narrativizing
Narrative analysis is part of literally analysis. It doesn't have to be a part of ethnography.
How do you analyse your data?
From the disciplinary position
Foucauldian paradigm of thought
Which theories to use to validate your knowledge?
Theorists in Gender and intersectionality? Kimberly Crenshaw. It's a gendered activity.
Ethnographic analysis will involve a lot of reflexive activity. Don't just superimpose a theoretical framework.
It's a hermeneutive process- there's a lot of reflection involved.
Foreshadowed problem-
Research problem- is the research problem a real problem?
Climate change.
Every research problem is a foreshadowed problem. Your analysis and interpretation should have that problem in mind.
Domain analysis-
Semantic or syntactic relationship
Food studies-
Eg. of ladoo. There will be some deterministic characteristic that will make a ladoo a ladoo. A rasgulla can't be called a ladoo
Semantic relationship of how meaning is constructed- domain analysis.
Taxonomy-
Componential analysis-
Balinese cockfight- Clifford Geertz
Reliability, validity- primary and secondary sources.
What is validity? They are very positivistic ways of looking at data. The validity will ensure that whatever context you're taking, you're understanding a similar kind of research.
The process of data saturation-
When things are getting repeated-
The health benefits of boond laddu
How many reactions that people will give on whether ladoo is healthy or not?
When the participants are repeating their experiences
This is the time when you stop eliciting data
Notion of ethnographic gaze-
The psychological bifurcation between yourself and the field out there
Observer's paradox- to what extent can you carry your ethnographic gaze that people stop noticing you
Interpretation - unravel hidden structures
Critical ethnography- when you go beyond your descriptions
Practical concerns during data generation and analysis
Have meticulous methods of storing for data.
Be very conscious and make informed decisions about how you're planning to store your data.
Analytical strategies
Incorporate theoretical underpinning
In which direction your research is going?
Whatever domain you are taking your data?
Software
The moment you bring in digital world, the methodology becomes very diverse
Interactive mapping- an output
Storage of data
For quantitative analysis, you have many softwares
Qualitative- envivo.
How many times have the people used the word 'healthy'?
Some ethical considerations
Reduce your bias as much as possible
Get informed consent- studying people without consent
Philosophical considerations-
Talking about outcome- community should benefit in one form or the other.
Give back something to the community.
Narrative analysis
21/2/24
Day 2
Dr. Joly Puthussery
Folklore- shoplore
He will cite from Examples from Kerala
The idea of what makes you to do research- part of the folklore project- it is a kind of curiosity
Highly normative way of following steps from lit review to other research designs
Lot of things associated with research and knowledge
Research is undertaken in pursuit of new knowledge to fill in the vacuum created by the earlier studies
In terms of cooking and food production, information is nothing but recipes
Recipe is nothing but a sense of information- how the saif will go to the boiling oil, what happens when the mustard is put into the oil
The hero and heroine in every process of information seeking
The researcher- is she/he a hero. Or is he/she a heroine?
A recipe is nothing but a set of information. When you start experiencing it, that will associate with a set of experiences of your own.
Knowledge is cooking set of things but the wisdom is lacking.
The curry culture.
The wisdom should cut across. It is beyond your experiences. It is useful, functional and real.
The research is creating an idea which should be functionally useful and should be experiential for the person who produced the knowledge
In what ways is the phenomena making your life better?
Whether it is exploratory.
Is there a necessity to explore?
How to produce after exploration? Many of the research proceeds with description of text- textualization of what you have seen/observed with a higher precision
You're entering into another category of research- descriptive research.
You are exploring a phenomena/performance/a text a text written and framed but you are trying to describe it better
As you delve into the phenomena's experience...your writing becomes an ethnographic account
Descriptive research can be quantitative.
Most of us interested in humanities will not be interested in statistics and numbers.
Research is an activity in pursuit of a knowledge building activity- original idea with your own objective accounting using the facts you have discovered during your fieldwork
Curiosity is paramount
A researcher needs to sustain the curiosity and interest in pursuing anything
Quantitative - naturalistic
Through my research on the popularity of millet market into the mainstream conception, that can make the people to come together and vouch for it
How your phenomena can be identified with new structures
Through your secondary work, you identify the lacuna.
Designs are exploratory, descriptive
What are the effects of these things upon this phenomena?
Vernacularities cannot be translated into this kind of a situation
Set of proverbs- cross checking with the new generations of that commodities
Was supposed to be the wisdom of that community
Proverbs with laden wisdom having no function in that community (?)
Most of the research is nothing but field research with field data
Components-
1) Identification of data
2) collection of data
3) classification of data- pacificatory idea to classify that data
4) interpretation and analysis of data
5) all this collected data is in the form of idiomatic expression, performances
compendium of so many customs of material
Documentation and archiving followed
6) Material culture- include the architecture, craft and decorative ideas
How food is very cultural specific, you convert from raw into cooked
The culturing it is part of your experiential reality
Many of the folklore material is etic and not emic- an insider's perspective
Nothing but a give and take- how they exchange material/communication/relationships
-Us and them
That food item becomes their identity mark
Any of the food item- food/custom/eating habit/devotee offering that makes them them.
The community is ethos/cultural landscapes. When you research them, it is your duty to subjectively experience what that community experiences.
The proverb is not simply floating- it is executed in a particular cultural performance
Some proverbs cut across communities- "All that glisters is not gold." There are communities where the gold is cheap. There are cosmological glittering things- the glittering is an observable reality for them
A proverb as a folkloric expression in that particular context
You are indulging in a phenomenal process with an analytical mark- looking at the empirical relationships in structures. Subjective/objective correlation.
You are structurally approaching the dynamic activity of a market. What kind of ideology are they trying to impose in this particular market? Deconstruct the market into simpler ways and means of behavioral patterns.
Just visiting the market as a performance- how visitings to a market becomes experiential- practice led research
How you can do practice as research.