Readings Week 7
0Wednesday, October 17, 2012 by Unknown
Trust and Observer Partiality in Ethnographic Research - Responses to Week 7's Readings
In order for Ethnographic research to be of any
significance, the Ethnographer must gain the trust of those under study. Why is gaining trust so important? Because once those under study recognize that
the observer is not a threat, they are more inclined to act more naturally or
normally as if they are not under a microscope.
Thinking about this truism, I am reminded of how trust is so important in any type of observer – participant interaction. In the medical field, trust is paramount
if Doctors or Psychologists are to identify a physical or mental illness, and
its causation. A patient, who doesn’t
trust a physician, will not feel inclined to reveal personal information
necessary for the diagnosis of an illness or disorder. Information withheld could lead the physician
to misdiagnose a patient. Likewise in Ethnographic Research, if the partipants under study do not trust the Ethnographer, the behaviour they exhibit might not be representative of how they "normally" act.
This brings to light another point in Ethnographic research:
The Ethnographer has to be very careful in drawing conclusions based upon their
observations. The Ethnographer's mere presence could serve to alter the “normal”
everyday interactions of the people or phenomena they are observing. For example, I remember watching a nature
documentary about a Zoologist observing the behaviour of a certain species of monkey.
Given her observations of how the
monkeys moved from one area of the jungle to the other by swinging from tree
branches, the Zoologist was initially led to believe that these monkeys
travelled mainly by trees. However, the
Zoologist intuitively grasped that the behaviour exhibited by the monkeys was
not typical. Eventually, after many more
days observing the monkeys, the monkeys exhibited a change in behaviour and
started travelling on the ground by foot.
After observing this behaviour
and how natural it appeared to the monkeys, the Zoologist then came to the
understanding that these monkeys spent the vast majority of their time
travelling along the jungle floor by foot and only when they felt threatened,
they sought to travel the jungle canopy via treetop branches. Inadvertently by her mere presence, the
Zoologist was affecting the normal behaviour of the monkeys and only when the
monkeys felt that the Zoologist was no longer a threat, did they resume their
normal behaviour. Similarily, the Ethnographer is
not a neutral observer. Given that they
are forced to gain the trust of those they seek to study, at times they are
forced to adopt a persona or image. By
doing so, they could be inadvertently shaping the behaviour of those under
study.
