Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
recordings of interviews to study the subtle signals counselors gave to their
clients.
The areas of proxemics and kinesics in anthropology involve microstudies.
Proxemics is the study of how the socially defined physical distance between
people varies in differing social circumstances (Barfield, 1997; Birdwhistell,
1970). For example, a stranger standing 3 inches away from you and shouting
obscenities is clearly violating an American sense of appropriate distance
unless the incident occurs at a hockey game or a heavy metal rock concert
(Hall, 1974). Kinesics is the study of body language (Birdwhistell, 1970;
Psathas, 1994, p. 5). A motorcyclist who gives “the bird” to a motorist who ran
him off the road is communicating a clear social message—and participating
in a form of cultural communication or, more specifically, body language
(Birdwhistell, 1970).
In the CIP study, I performed a microanalysis of one example of classroom
behavior. I took a series of pictures of a brief encounter between a teacher and
a student. I took 10 photographs in 30 seconds every 10 minutes. During one
of the more vivid cultural scenes, the student was summoned by the teacher to
go over the previous night's assignment, while the other students continued to
work on their own projects. The student had not done the work and did not
want to go up to the teacher. The teacher knew the student had not completed
the assignment, just as he knew the student had not completed every other
assignment that month. The photographs document the student pulling himself
together reluctantly to do battle with the teacher. With a sigh and a deep breath,
he slowly pulled himself out of his chair to go to the teacher's desk. The
teacher—tired and demonstrably disinterested in this particular student—
changed his facial expression from withdrawal to feigned interest. These pho-
tographs document the tension between the two as the meeting developed into
a brief shouting match and subsided, concluding in a draw in which both fight-
ers went back to their corners until the next round. This particular scene tran-
spired in less than a minute. This microlevel of documentation can constitute
a study in itself or, as in this case, highlight one element of a study.
Shultz and Florio (1979) provide a useful example of a microlevel study of
an entire classroom. They demonstrated how a teacher used social and physi-
cal space to orchestrate classroom activity. They collected 70 hours of video-
tape of classroom activity during a 2-year period. The second year of the study
also involved observation of the classroom to inform their interpretation of the
videotapes. Wolcott's (2003)
The Man in the Principal's Office
focuses on a
single occupation within the school system (without videotapes) and repre-
sents a spectacular microethnography (Basham & DeGroot, 1977, p. 428;
Wolcott, 1982, p. 90).
