Abstract
Ethnography Lessons is the latest methodological reflection from the American anthropologist Harry F Wolcott of some five, significant pieces of fieldwork. While there is, undeniably, a glut of cookbooks about, Wolcott is clearly a scholar who has conducted a serious amount of ethnography (rather than, as a colleague wryly noted, publishing a methods text based on their PhDs). So, there is a market there for informed contributions (such as the powerhouse that was Wolcott’s (1995) Art of Fieldwork), or has he – like Burgess – allowed his own fieldwork to be eclipsed by the volume of subsequent methodological reflections?
Herein lies several spoilers, in that highlighting what he does well risks giving away what the text contributes. It is a brisk read, well-written and pitched at the novice (hence ‘a primer’) but Wolcott teases us here – he is well-placed to say far more and I was certainly hoping for this. The themes are (addressed via eight chapters): ‘getting’ ethnography; lessons along the way; serendipity; analysis; definitional issues; ethics and intimacy; ethnographic metaphors; and brief concluding notes. A running leitmotif is what the essence of ethnography is – and he also communicates a passion for the genre.
The key, nuggets of wisdom we discover along the way include that (somewhat surprisingly) he would avoid the use of pseudonyms (perceiving too loaded) and his personal regrets over his own past selections (he now favours the use of respondents’ own words/terminology). There are also sound lessons here; the realization there is a public/private side behind every account; trickiness of including visual/map data in contemporary accounts; and, that fieldwork is hard. Also the time taken to produce sound accounts, here meaning less the time spent in the field than thinking through the analysis. He advocates not rushing (not always so feasible in new managerialist times), but this resonates with the lessons of his first chapters and his reflections on his own mentorship by Spindler. Sometimes it, admittedly, takes time for a lesson/point of advice to sink in.
Chapter three on serendipity is the weakest. I have always had a personal problem with people saying good luck plays a role in opportunities falling in the lap of the hapless ethnographer, but in one instance (Wolcott hitching a lift with a key gatekeeper) is hard to argue. But, good luck is largely constructed as Wolcott’s career trajectory in this account seems to testify. It is more than a ‘gentle push’ that gets fieldwork done – usually under considerable time pressures – than Wolcott suggests. Wolcott’s discussion of serendipity is therefore more based upon career serendipity than in the field, which was an opportunity lost.
On his own move into offering methodological texts, he asserts that fieldwork is essentially for the young, finding himself less ‘flexible’ in his older age. Here I can only but cite a Durham colleague who recently commented that beyond 50 is no age to be hanging around on street corners.
Chapter five is probably the one to point students toward, addressing the trickiness of description, and offering a list of core essences to ethnography, only to then state they are not actually essential on the next page. His note on the ‘idiosyncratic’ element of ethnography is a neat way of sidestepping charges of relativism. But, he also at times runs the risk of instilling fear in the novice (and, we could add, potential funder) in noting that the flexibility of ethnography (to be celebrated) runs the risk of not actually knowing what you’re going to come up with. Rephrasing this as being ‘relatively unfettered’ is perhaps more helpful.
The chapter is more confessional and involves Wolcott’s reflections on his life history study of Brad, much publicized due to his own sexual relationship with Brad and which literally culminated in Brad burning his house down. Wolcott avoids a lesson-learning tone, but became a little too distanced from ‘the ethics of the situation’ in doing so. Wiser words are to never underestimate the lengths some people will go to unravel confidences and his acknowledgment that, perhaps, our line of work is inherently unethical (as we cannot avoid finding out the good and bad in the course of our studies).
His final conclusions offered more insight into his own stance – that there is a need to forgive (to err being human) and this befits our conduct in the academy as well as that in the field. The final conclusion ‘commends the [ethnographic] journey’ and the book (while not delivering everything and perhaps running toward self-indulgent anecdote and repetition in places) is, too, to be commended. Perhaps there is more to come from this important commentator, as he alludes somewhat ambiguously that the ethnographer should offer the most ‘provocative’ of analyses or interpretations. Why ‘provocative’? Like Goffman, to get read? We wait for Wolcott’s next contribution to find out.