Backroom Research

Juggling Immersion and Detachment in Participant Observation: a case study in Werner Herzog's documentary Encounters at the End of the World

Professor's Grimes lecture today ended with a discussion regarding the challenge of balancing immersion and detachment while practicing the ethnographic research method of participant observation. I commented in class what an impossible task this seems when the line between what is too much immersion and not enough seems to be moving from moment to moment and relationship to relationships. Then when another set of eyes examine your work, they may have an entirely different opinion on how well you did or did not balance immersion and detachment. It seems like an impossible task. It seems that Werner Herzog, perhaps in recognition of this fact, throws any attempt to be unbiased out the window. He puts himself front and center into his documentaries and becomes a character  in  his own films. It also seems like he is poking fun at the community that he is observing, but he also comes off as just as alien and odd as those he is filming. It creates a kind of repeating loop that the viewer becomes implicated in, as well, in the sense that we are participating in the viewing of the oddity of Werner Herzog himself, who is viewing the oddities of those who would choose to live in the strange place of Antarctica.

Is this self-reflexivity and constant reminder of the observer a solution to the problems of participant observation? Or does it in fact raise more problems?  Is the discomfort the viewer feels participating with Herzog, sort of the point? We can't be passive voyeurs immune to the implications of watching from the privacy of the theatre or our computer screens. I am not sure, but the feelings that this film arouse are similar the uncomfortable feelings I have generally about participant observation.