Ethnographic writing as grassroots democratic action

Composition Studies, Spring 2003 by Kahn, Seth

we find a relatively abundant literature on the poor, the ethnic groups, the disadvantaged; there is comparatively little field research on the middle class and very little first-hand work on the upper classes. . . Studying "up" as well as "down" would lead us to ask many "common sense" questions in reverse. Instead of asking why some people are so poor, we would ask why other people are so affluent? How on earth would a social scientist explain the hoarding patterns of the American rich and middle class? (289)

The goal of aggressively inverting the questions that have positioned ethnography as an imperial practice isn't just to save ethnography for ethnographers. The goal is to refigure ethnographic practices so they help citizens participate in democratic life:

A democratic framework implies that citizens should have access to decision-makers, institutions of government, and so on. . . . I believe that anthropologists would be surprisingly good at applying their descriptive and analytical tools to a major problem: How can a citizenry function in a democracy when that citizenry is woefully ignorant of how the society works and doesn't work, of how a citizen can "plug in" as a citizen, or what would happen should citizens begin to exercise rights other than voting as way to make the "system" work for them? (294-95)

Obviously there are material problems for ethnographers who choose to "study up." Nader is acutely aware that many if not most dominant groups won't be happy about throwing their doors open to researchers who want to expose their inner workings. But she seems convinced of two things: 1) that with enough persistence, a good researcher can gain access to pretty much any site; and 2) that the potential outcomes of the research make it worth the work it takes to get access.

Whereas Nader's main point is that ethnographers need to rethink their sites for political reasons, Robert Jay argues that ethnographers need to enter a relationship that doesn't relegate awareness of power relations to published ethnographic texts, and differs from the critical relationship Nader advocates. Instead:

In future field work I shall place first a mutual responsibility to my whole self and to those I go to learn from, in agreement with my desire to relate to them as full equals, personal and intellectual. I shall try to use my relationships with them to find out what topics are relevant to each of us, to be investigated through what questions and what modes of questioning, and for what kinds of knowledge. I should wish to make the first report for them, in fact with them; indeed it may be that written reports would seem to us redundant. (379)

Jay describes a relationship that is inherently collaborative, which is substantially different from what any other contributor to the collection suggests. Moreover, the result of this kind of collaborative relationship may well be that the anthropologist never writes up or publishes the results of her work outside the site.

In the end, Reinventing Anthropology presents less of a program for ways to do ethnography than some ways of seeing ethnography as a positive force for democracy. Contributors disagree over the best kinds of relationships for researchers and participants to enter into; the extent to which ethnographic research needs to assimilate itself to other kinds of academic research endeavors; the extent to which the practices of ethnography are tied to the discipline of anthropology; and so on. But across the board, these ethnographers are committed to finding ways for their practices to extend and strengthen democracy rather than to subvert or destroy it.