Gearing Up - Ethnography - page 89

documents that are passed around with track changes from person to person
on a team, Internet-based word-processing tools allow members of the com-
munity an opportunity to edit or at least comment on your work in an ongoing
manner. They can type on your document at the same time that you are editing
it. Similarly, members of an ethnographic research team can enter data into a
spreadsheet (with formulas that automatically calculate and recalculate the
data). Instead of inefficiently sending all the material to one person to enter the
data (and then holding the team back while waiting for data entry), this tool
enables everyone to enter the data at the same time even though they might be
operating remotely.
Collaborative Web Site
Blogs allow one person to shape and control the overall design and content
of a Web-like page. Others can comment on postings. However, unlike blogs,
collaborative Web sites enable community members, program staff members
and participants, and ethnographic colleagues to create their own Web pages
on the same site. They can provide their profile, interests, and pictures on their
own page. They can attach relevant documents. I have used collaborative Web
sites in a variety of settings, ranging from the Stanford University School of
Medicine (facilitating a medical education research group) to the Arkansas
Tobacco Prevention group (documenting the group's effectiveness). The Web
sites become a useful base for the group to make announcements, discuss
issues, document their work, post outcomes, and highlight important events.
These centralized repositories of cultural knowledge are rich sources of data
for the ethnographer. The ethnographer learns more about the language and
priorities of the group (as they construct their own narrative about them-
selves). (See Figure 4.5.)
Ethnographers have conducted fieldwork for generations without the bene-
fit of laptops, desktop computers, or the Internet, and a few will continue to
do so. In most disciplines, however, these tools are indispensable, and today
few anthropologists conduct research without the use of a computer or Web
tools. Nevertheless, computers and the Internet have limitations: They are only
as good as the data the user enters or retrieves. They still require the eyes and
ears of the ethnographer to determine what to collect and how to record it, as
well as how to interpret the data from a cultural perspective. (See Brian
Schwimmer's 1996 review and evaluation of anthropology on the Internet in
Current Anthropology or on the Internet. Allen Lutins compiled a list of
anthropological resources on the Internet. In addition, Fischer, 1994, provides
an excellent discussion about applications in computing for ethnographers.
Brent, 1984; Conrad & Reinharz, 1984; Podolefsky & McCarthy, 1983; and