Culture - Intertwingled: Information Changes Everything - page 86

As an outsider, it's my role to ask the questions that never get asked, but when I begin I have no
idea what they are or where to find them. So I use a multi-method research process that affords
breadth and depth. I wallow in data of all sorts and talk to people from all walks. While I begin
with observation and analysis, I'm aiming for insight and synthesis. Towards this end, I find
lightweight forms of ethnography to be great tools for digging into the cultures of users and
stakeholders.
Design Ethnography
Unsurprisingly, Clifford Geertz, the eminent pioneer of symbolic anthropology, defines culture
metaphorically.
Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun,
I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be not an experimental science in search of law
but an interpretive one in search of meaning. xcix
Ethnography is how we discover and describe this meaning, and Geertz argues it isn't defined
by a methodology but by a particular way of knowing. “What defines it is the kind of intellectu-
al effort it is: an elaborate venture in, to borrow a notion from Gilbert Ryle, thick description.” c
A thin description of the superficial behavior that's easily accessible via observation misses the
point. In the contraction of an eyelid lies the vast distance between an involuntary twitch and a
conspiratorial wink. The ethnographer needs to understand the meaning behind the behavior.
In The Ethnographic Interview, James Spradley offers a thick description of the art of thick de-
scription. He sees words as keys to culture, noting “language is more than a means of commu-
nication about reality: it is a tool for constructing reality.” ci He enjoins ethnographers to pay at-
tention to the words we hear and use. For instance, the people we study and interview are in-
formants, not subjects, respondents, or actors.
Ethnographers adopt a particular stance toward people with whom they work. By word and action, in
subtle ways and direct statements, they say, “I want to understand the world from your point of view. I
want to know what you know in the way you know it. I want to understand the meaning of your experi-
ence, to walk in your shoes, to feel things as you feel them, to explain things as you explain them. Will
you become my teacher and help me understand?” cii
We must be careful how we ask questions. Spradley recounts his experiences studying the
“homeless men” who turned out to be “tramps” noting that if you ask “where do you live?”
they answer “I have no home.” They use translation competence or “the ability to translate the
meanings of one culture into a form that is appropriate to another culture.” ciii They tell you what
they think you want to hear in your language. But if you admit ignorance and ask descriptive
questions (e.g., Tell me about a day in your life. Where do you sleep? Where do you eat? What
do you do?) you may learn about “making a flop” and realize that they aren't homeless after all.
I discovered that making a flop was such a rich phrase that I scarcely scratched the surface of its meaning.
My informants identified more than a hundred different categories of flops. They had strategies for locat-
ing flops, for protecting themselves from the weather and intruders in flops. Making a flop defined their
friendship patterns and even their police record…I realized that, in some ways, a flop was like a home to