Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Ethnographers can produce “draft” videos, used to test one's understanding of
the social situation, much like a draft memoranda or a projective technique.
They may be used to collaborate with community members, jointly videoing
events and editing them together. This lends greater validity to the effort or fin-
ished product, because the key informant/actor and ethnographer are making
meaning together.
Ethnographic films have rigorous requirements, ranging from actual time
sequencing to authenticity of the event recorded. Heider (2006) has produced a
scale of “ethnographicness” with which to judge ethnographic films (see also
Aldridge, 1995; Lewis, 2004; Rouch & Feld, 2003). This attribute dimension
includes such variables as ethnographic basis, relations to print, whole acts,
whole bodies, explanation of distortions, technical competence, narration fit,
ethnographic presence, contextualization, whole people, distortions in film-
making (time and continuity), inadvertent distortion of behavior, and inten-
tional distortion of behavior (pp. 46-117). Most ethnographers agree that
ethnographic films still supplement, rather than replace, a written text or
ethnography. (For additional information about the use of cameras, camcorders,
and filmmaking in ethnographic research, see Bellman & Jules-Rosette, 1977;
Collier & Collier, 1986; Erickson & Wilson, 1982; Hockings, 2003; and Pink,
2006. The Society for Visual Anthropology also maintains up-to-date informa-
tion about this topic at http://societyforvisualanthropology.org/.)
INTERNET
The Internet is one of the most powerful resources available to ethnographers.
It can be used to conduct searches about a topic, create a map to the site (both
street view and satellite), analyze census data, conduct interviews by “chat-
ting” or videoconferencing, share notes and pictures about a research site,
debate issues with colleagues on listservs and in online journals, and download
useful data collection and analysis software. The Internet refers to a worldwide
network of computers talking a language known as TCP/IP. To most users
(including ethnographers and other researchers and scholars), however, the
Internet appears as e-mail and the World Wide Web (WWW). The former is
probably familiar to anyone reading this topic. The WWW, which was virtually
unheard of in 1993, now occupies a prominent place in world popular culture;
the once obscure symbol http:// is now ubiquitous. The WWW is a standard-
ized method of transferring files (text, graphics, and audio) across the Internet
and can result in attractive, vivid, and engaging presentations (known as Web
pages) to persons connecting to the Internet via Web browsers.
