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Interpretive ethnography: From ‘authentic voice’ to‘interpretive eye’Douglas HarperPublished online: 03 Jul 2008.

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33

Interpretive Ethnography:From 'Authentic Voice' to 'Interpretive Eye'

Douglas Harper

The premise of this paper is that ethnography is in a state of change, andthat visual ethnographers may be able to contribute to the discussion of whatthe 'new ethnography' is and how one does it

Visual ethnographers, a relatively small number of sociologists andanthropologists who use photographs in the study of social life do not seemto be aware of how their work parallels ongoing experiments in writtenethnography, and there is little mention in the ethnographic literature tosuggest that anthropologists are aware of the contributions being made byvisual ethnographers. This paper is intended to be a step in bridging theintellectual distances between these groups.

The integration of these two intellectual traditions is made difficult bythe fact that visual ethnographers are spread thinly in several disciplines inand out of the university. There are visual field workers in anthropologyand sociology, as well as history, education, and area studies. Academicsgenerally publish their work for their own disciplines, typically in researcharticles and monographs published by academic presses.

Visual ethnographers include 'photo documentarians' who work outsidethe university. Photo documentarians are often mavericks who fashion aliving from their photographic work and other unrelated activities. Theyoften work from a personal commitment and sacrifice a great deal to bringtheir work before the public. While the quality of documentarians' photowork varies tremendously, much of it is deeply experimental and substan-tial. The best of it is done with informal methods that accomplish what thebest anthropological and sociological ethnography achieves in formal fieldstudies. The usefulness of photo documentarians' work is often limited foranthropologists and sociologists, however, because it is not informed bysocial theory. On the other hand, it often takes bold steps that are onlypossible in work unfettered by academic traditions. In other words, RobertFrank had probably not read David Reisman or Alex de Tocqueville whenhe published The Americans, but his book is now thought of as an important

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contribution to the study of the cultural life of the United States in the 1950s.It is my view that academics who venture into visual sociology shouldbecome students of this wide and informal tradition of photo documentary.

Photojournalists who work on lengthy projects and produce in-depthreports should also be thought of as visual ethnographers. The lines betweenphotojournalists and photo documentarians, in fact, are not always hard andfast. W. Eugene Smith, for example, was a photojoumalist when he workedfor Life magazine, and a documentarian when he completed the study ofmercury poisoning in a Japanese village (Smith and Ailene 1975). In fact,he spent much of his professional life trying to gain independence from theorganizational constraints of photojournalism (brief periods in the field,trivial assignments, and editors and writers who controlled the final pres-entation of his photographs) to pursue visual ethnography of his own vision.Certainly not all photojournalists share the goal of in depth and experimen-tal cultural analysis. Most, of course, make the legions of photos thatillustrate the thousands of newspapers and magazines we consume daily.But among modem photojournalists are individuals such as Eugene Ri-chards, who works for major news magazines through Magnum, a leadingphoto agency, but also produces such books as Exploding Into Life (Ri-chards and Lynch 1986) and Below the Line: Living Poor in America(Consumer Report Book 1987) which explore the experience of illness andpoverty in a way which challenges conventional assumptions about do-cumentary communication. These and other photo documentarians gener-ally publish for trade or fine arts publishers such as Aperture, New YorkGraphic Society, or the Museum of Modern Art, publishers which fewacademic visual ethnographers typically read. This contributes to the gapsbetween the ideas and activities of the academic and non-academic visualethnographers. This gap is, however, narrowed by University Presses whichhave increasingly published visual ethnography by academics, photojour-nalists, and photo documentarians. It is perhaps in these publication outletsthat the necessary discourse between these interest groups will finally beinitiated and sustained.

An Evolving Ethnography

Ethnography has traditionally meant the study of alien cultures throughextended observation or immersion. Ethnographers typically learn thelanguage of the group they study, and to some degree adopt the group's

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customs and lifeways. Ethnography typically leads to academic reportsgrounded in anthropological theory, and written with the vocabulary ofsocial science.

While anthropologists traditionally studied native cultures of far-off lands,they now often study smaller cultures, or 'subcultures' in die western world.These smaller cultures typically share an occupation, lifestyle, region, genderor age status, or participation in voluntary activities.

The first ethnographers were nineteenth century travelers who broughtback descriptions of new people they encountered. Early anthropologicaltheory was strongly influenced by biological evolutionary theory, and theearly ethnographers sought to classify and compare societies, much asscientists were doing in studies of plant and animal species. The theoreticalparadigm of evolution dominated anthropology during its formative de-cades, until Malinowski's seminal modem ethnography of the TrobriandIslanders was completed during the 1920s (Malinowski 1967). The ethno-graphic tradition that developed from Malinowski and other pioneers ofmodem anthropology centered around two theories of culture. The anthro-pologist has conceptualized culture as shared categories and plans (thisorientation is sometimes referred to as cognitive anthropology) and second-ly, in terms of the contributions of various elements of the culture, such asthe institutions, the kin structure, the technology, or the beliefs, to socialsolidarity (this second approach is often referred to as structural function-alism). These two approaches are, of course, related. If you understand howa member of a group categorizes his or her experience in the group, you arelearning one part of how the group functions at the micro and macro level.There was un underlying and largely unquestioned confidence in themethods and theory of anthropology through this period.

Before describing the current experiments and innovations in ethno-graphic thinking, it is important to mention that sociological field worktraditions trace back just about as far as do the traditions of anthropologicalethnography. During the nineteen twenties Robert Park, at the Universityof Chicago, emphasized field work as an integral part of sociologicalresearch. Park (who had been a journalist before becoming a sociologist,and thus is thought of as strongly influenced by his years 'on the beat') didnot send his students to the South Seas, however. They remained, for themost part, in Chicago. The primary theme of their research was the evol-ution and social differentiation of the city. Some subcultures were, however,studied in depth1 by the early University of Chicago sociologists and mostmodem sociological field workers express in their work a connection to thetraditions begun at Chicago. Indeed, the University of Chicago Press

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continues to publish many of the most experimental and important Ameri-can ethnographies, as well as the ongoing commentary on ethnographicpractice.

Twenty to twenty-five years ago anthropologists began to question thetheoretical paradigm of structural functionalism. The critique of anthropo-logical theory grew to include not only the underlying ideas of anthropology,but also assumptions of how anthropologists had written their reports andmade their films. Did the scholarly prose of the ethnographer tell the wholestory? Should the ethnographer disappear from his or her tale? Could'culture' even be summed up tidily? Within the last decades these and otherrelated questions have been asked with increasing frequency and complexityin a tradition largely attributed to Clifford Geertz22, and developed recentlyin such books as Clifford and Marcus' Writing Culture (1986), John VanMaanen's Tales of the Field (1988), and Marcus and Fischer's Anthropologyas Cultural Critique (1988).

The new forms of ethnography have come to be known as 'Interpretiveanthropology'.Interpretive anthropologists seek to move ethnography froma unified theory to a posture of tentative and eclectic theorizing. Marcusand Fisher talk of the 'antigenre' of interpretive anthropology3. The subjectmatter of ethnography grows to include the constitution of the self, theemotional life of the culture, and the interaction of the research process.The interpretive anthropologist seeks new ways of both learning and telling:the recasting of biographical and autobiographical texts as ethnography, theuse of literary texts as models, experimentation with ethnographic narrative,or texts which explore the presence of the writer and the process offieldwork. Interpretive anthropology has roots in phenomenological socio-logy: the detailed attention to how natives view their world, bracketing asmuch as possible the ethnographer's point of view; and hermeneutics: theclose reflection on the way natives decipher and decode their own complex'texts,'...'their rules of inference, patterns of association, and logic ofimplications' (Marcus and Fischer 1988: 30).

Interpretive anthropology is also characterized by widening methodo-logical experimentation. The emerging methodological orientation is de-scribed metaphorically as dialogue and communication. Dialogue suggestsexchange between individuals of approximately equal status, and in thecontext of ethnographic field work, die element of dialogue which emergesfrom the ethnographer contributes as much meaning as does that whichemerges from the subject Marcus and Fisher write: 'dialogue has becomethe imagery for expressing the way anthropologists (and...their readers) mustengage in an active communicative process with another culture. It is a

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two-way and two-dimensional exchange, interpretive processes beingnecessary both for communication internally within a cultural system andexternally between systems of meaning' (ibid.).

I will briefly examine a number of visual ethnographies which developand extend the 'new ethnography'. I note that several of these experimentshave come from documentary photographers; fewer from visual sociolog-ists and anthropologists. I also caution that in these comments I developconnections between only a few visual ethnographies and the many themesof the new ethnography. A fuller integration is called for!

The Study of Cultural Meaning Through Photographs

Just as ethnography has moved from a kind of positivism to a stance ofeclectic experimentation, ethnographic photography has moved from a roleas simple description of material or social culture to multi-faceted ex-perimentalism. Traditionally, if the ethnographer made photographs in thefield, they were considered unproblematic descriptions of material andsocial environments4. To some extend, of course, all photographs are 'ofthe world,' and to that extent they comprise what one who holds a traditionalview of science would consider to be 'data'. Probably the most successfulexample of photography used in this manner is Bateson and Mead'sBalinese Character (1942), in which over nine hundred photographs areused to systematically illustrate a comprehensive ethnographic study. Moreoften, unfortunately, the photographs which illustrate ethnographic texts donot really develop the analytic insights of the authors; rather they appear asvisual redundancies to the written text. In any case, this rather traditionalunderstanding of the documentary potential of the photograph has beenincreasingly questioned in and outside of academic discourse. I will, in thefollowing, briefly describe some of the experiments in visual ethnographywhich extend photographic possibilities and contribute to the redefinitionof ethnography.

Interviewing with Photographs

Apromising technique for the study of cultural meaning has been developedby integrating photographs into the ethnographic interview. The 'photo

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interview', while not typically seen as such by its practitioners, developsthemes in interpretative ethnography such as the redefinition of authorship,and the recasting of research dialogue.

The photo interview can be done a number of ways, with photographsfrom a variety of sources, but the simple logic of the method is that thesubject interprets, responds to, or reflects upon photographic images, typi-cally of their cultural world. This technique is similar to projective devicesused in clinical settings such as the Rorschach Test (a test in which patientsproduce data about their personalities by responding to ink blots anddrawings). The photo interview (sometimes known as 'photo elicitation')in the hands of an ethnographer may be used to study culture in any of anumber of ways. For example, Jean Mohr (1982) assembled six unrelatedphotographs (a worker with arms outstretched, a man in a tree, a group ofIndian peasants who seem to be presenting a petition, a child crying, a mansleeping on a huge pipe) which he then presents to nine individuals rangingfrom banker to schoolgirl to psychiatrist to worker. The responses to thephotographs are meant as a quick identification rather than an in-depthreflection. The responses tell us how people from very different socialcircumstances make meaning from the same image. While these responsesare not 'cultural examination' they are a clue to the vast differences that thelenses of culture produce. This is a small exercise, but it suggests a modelwhich could be used to great advantage by others.

Bunster and Chaney (1989) used photo elicitation to investigate thecultural worlds of a culturally homogeneous group, that of proletarianwomen in Peru. Elian Young, a member of the research team, photographedthe environments of their four subject groups street vendors, marketwomen, servants and factory workers, and then did follow-up photographyof about twenty-five women in the four groups outlined above. Thesephotographs recorded the women through daily, weekly, monthly sche-dules, and domestic routines. A 'photo-book' was then constructed to reflecttypical experiences of the women in the four groups under study. The bookwas extensively tested by other proletarian women who evaluated therepresentativeness of the photo book and suggested revisions. The resulting'visual questionnaire instrument' was used in open ended interviews witha wide range of Peruvian proletarian women. The result was a 'window intothe world' of the proletarian third world women.

While Bunster and Chaney used the photo interview to standardize aninterview process work with a class of individuals, the photo interview canalso look intensely into the experiences of a single individual. I used a photoelicitation technique in this manner, in a study of the cultural world of a

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rural mechanic in Northern New York (Harper 1987). The methods of thisstudy slowly evolved as I sought a way to 'get behind the eyes' of mysubject. I photographed at first as I would photograph any subject throughmy own sociological and photographic sensibility and found the photo-graphs of limited value in exploring the subject's world from his point ofview. Eventually the subject and I began to systematically discuss photo-graphs and photo sequences which portrayed work activities spread over afour year period. These discussions were tape recorded and became one ofseveral narrative threads in the final ethnography. As in the Bunster andChaney project, the subjects of our interviews began at the level of theconcrete and moved to the abstract. For example, I first asked the subjectto simply tell me about the machines he was fixing, the material he wasusing to fix them, and the skills he used in his work. From these kinds ofquestions we slowly began to examine how his work was part of the societyof the neighborhood and the region. Eventually, our discussions reachedquestions of identity through work practice and the nature and evolution ofskill. The result is a multi-voiced ethnography that moves from the individ-ual to culture with discussion of cultural meaning arbitrated by photo-graphic images.

The photo-elicitation interview redefines the typical field work inter-view in ways which are consistent with the interpretive critique. The subjectof the interview becomes the teacher in a dialogue fueled by the discussionof the concrete as represented in the photographic image. The photos revealnot only the subject's knowledge, but the cultural ignorance of the inter-viewer. The photographs lay between the interviewer and the subject, andbecome the focus of exchange and reflection.

The photo-elicitation interview may become even more subject-oriented. Wendy Ewald, a photographer and a teacher, developed a photo-elicitation technique to study the mental worlds of six to fourteen year old'sin a remote part of Appalachia (Ewald 1985). But rather than taking thephotographs herself which became the basis of interviews, she taught hersubjects to expose and develop their own photographs. Later she inter-viewed some of these children about their lives as reflected in their photo-graphs. Here the process includes the step of teaching cultural membershow to frame their world through the viewfinder of a camera, and then, touse the images to evoke cultural meanings. In this example the photoelicitation interview is especially potent for it shows us our own stereotypesas powerfully as it shows the mental worlds of the child-photographers.This is the case/I suspect, because the Appalachian universe is so stronglyin the public eye as an exploited and backward region, whose residents are

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thought to be isolated, downtrodden and thus of limited imagination, energyor creativity. Ewald's photo-elicitation interviews reveal imaginativeuniverses in which young people have a deep and informed connection totheir natural world, kin networks and local social groups.

Further Experiments and Possibilities

Interpretive anthropology, as suggested above, takes as its subject mattersuch topics as the cultural definitions of emotions. Photographers have longsought the nuance of gesture or expression in portraits or photos of publicinteraction. Indeed, it is often the capacity of the photograph to freeze afleeting moment or expression which makes the photograph aestheticallysuccessful. However, ethnographers have not typically used the camera toproduce visual data from which to analyze emotions or presentations ofsocial class. Two exceptions are Barbara Norfleet, who has photographedthe very wealthy in Eastern North America in 1987, and Bill Owens, whophotographed the suburban middle class in California in 1975. The subjectsin Norfleet's photos exhibit a finely-tuned control over their bodies andexpressions, a sense of 'awayness' in facial expression, and a generalposture of confidence and ownership of space. Owens' suburbanites, on theother hand, exude a sense of happy (and sometimes what seems to bevacant) simplicity, wide-eyed enthusiasm, or postures of relaxed indif-ference. Control over ones body is typically low: bellies protrude; knees aresplayed. It is remarkable how these nuances of interaction and presentationof self are shown in children as well as adults. While these and otherphotographic studies are potential data for an interpretative ethnography ofsocial class, it remains to study them systematically in the context of thework of sociologists such as Irving Goffman.

Summary

The purpose of this paper is to open dialogue between academic ethnogra-phers working in the developing paradigm of 'interpretative ethnography'and visual ethnographers both academic and non-academic using photo-graphs in studies of social life. I have briefly traced the evolution of theideas that lay at the basis of ethnography, and suggested many visual

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ethnographers are experimenting with methods of studying and presentingsocial life that are consistent with the experiments of new ethnography. Ihave made this point by looking briefly at a number of visual ethnographieswhich extend the experiments of the new ethnography. There are severaladditional themes developed in visual ethnography, such as narrative,phenomenology and photographic fiction which would extend this analysis.

Notes

1 See, for example Nels Anderson's The Hobo. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1924.

2 An important early statement was Clifford Geertz's The Interpretation of Culture, NewYork: Basic Books, 1973.

3 They write: 'The motivating spirit of experimentation is thus antigenre, to avoid thereinstatement of a restricted canon like that of the recent past Individual works haveinfluence on other writers of ethnography, but are not self-consciously written as modelsfor others to follow, or as the basis of a 'school' of ethnographic production' (Marcus andFischer 1988: 42).

4 This view is found in the classic Collier and Collier text Visual Anthropology: Photo-graphy as a Research Method (New Mexico University Press, 1986, second edition).While anthropologists do not spend a great deal of time talking about the epistemologyof still photography, they do raise these issues in regard to anthropological film. CarlHeider, in Ethnographic Film (University of Texas Press, 1974) suggests that ethnographicfilms should be as close to scientific representations as possible, and that they should beevaluated on the basis of their approximation to ethnographic 'truth'. This position hasbeen hotly debated ever since, recently in Jack Rollwagen's Anthropological Film-making(Harwood Academic Publishers, 1988. See especially: 287-317).

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