Emotional and Ethical Quagmires in Returning to the Field Carolyn Ellis

Topic: Ethnographers Focus: Intersection of ethnographers and the community Method: Interpretive & Critical Target: Ethnographers Goal: “My article seeks to show the working of the hyphen through a narrative story that uses dialogue to detail the events and emotionality that took place during this particular return visit (see Fabian 1990, 4)” (Ellis 1995, 70).

Keywords and Phrases Ethnography: a branch of anthropology dealing with the scientific description of individual culture (dictionary.com) Ethno = culture Graphy = writing Ethnography: writing about culture

What is Culture? Rcs

Culture Culture is a society’s map of reality, it’s wolrd- view internalized by its member to make sense of their collective lives.

Keywords and Phrases Work the Hyphen: “By this phrase, she means to suggest that “researchers probe how we are in relation with the contexts we study and with our informants.” When we work the hyphen, we reveal “far more about ourselves, and far more about the structures of Othering” (Ellis 1995, 69). Hyphen: to break a word at the end of a line

“American Culture Shock for International Students” s

Cultural Differences “In my book, I concentrated on finding how “they” were different from me, because difference is what the orthodox sociology community normally celebrates (and publishes); on institutions and interactional patterns that “order the lives of the people” (Abrahams 1986, 46), because that’s how a “good” sociologist is supposed to construct the world. I wanted the Fishnecks to be different from me but like one another, so that I could describe them parsimoniously with sociologically relevant concepts” (Ellis 1995, 91).

Conflicting Roles “The fieldworker in me is curious about community response; the friend in me wants to know the reaction to make amends if needed” (Ellis 1995, 77). “I walk to Mary Jane’s, tell her good-bye, and drive back to Michael Paul’s. I am too shaken up to observe as a fieldworker. With the lack of dual roles comes an unfamiliar feeling of authenticity” (Ellis 1995, 80-1).

“I will not assume that the people about whom I write won’t have access to my materials or that they won’t be interested in them (including this piece), no matter how many fieldwork textbooks imply that “scholars often have to go out of their way just to get a reaction out of the people they have studied”(Lofland, J. and L. Lofland 1984, 158)” (Ellis 1995, 88).

“In many ways, my moral code was not as stringent as theirs, yet “they” get portrayed in my book as having few moral controls; the insinuation is that “we” have many more” (Ellis 1995, 90).