Doing Field Projects. John Forrest

match or contradict the public perception of this event?” or “In what ways do the fine-grained details of personal experience add a dimension to generic descriptions of an event?” or “How did this person’s individual choices shape their life course or experiences?” Whereas, when observing, let’s say, a wedding, your research questions are likely to focus on collective behaviors, such as, formalized movements and deportment, language, and dress codes: “Are there features of a wedding or a wedding between two men or two women that are distinctive in comparison with one between one woman and one man?” If it is between two women, do both/neither wear white?” “How does family income affect the choices of food served, and what do those choices mean? How do the couple’s ethnicity or ethnicities shape the event? What are the formal and informal expectations for behavior for guests and the bride(s) and groom(s)?

      Somewhere in the mix has to be a consideration of the cultural influences on what you are observing, but “culture” is a complex variable that is neither easy to define nor readily identified in your data. Start with the immediate group that you are investigating and then move outward. You will see when you get to the mapping project (Chapter 7) that I give examples of the layout of kitchens in two different countries. A kitchen in Italy looks very much like one you would find in the United States or in England, but in Morocco, for instance they are quite different. Why? Some of the answers to that question can be found in the differing cooking styles of the two regions, in terms of both what is expected of a meal and what cooking fuels are available. In Italy a “proper” meal consists minimally of a first course of soup or pasta and a second course of meat and vegetables, plus a dessert. In Morocco, everything is served at once (except for desert – usually fruit), and the main dish is often cooked in one large cone-shaped ceramic pot (called a Tajin). It is served on one single large plate and eaten by everyone together with bread. In Italy it is normal to have an oven for roasting and baking; in Morocco ovens are not as common because roasting and baking are inconvenient due to the year-round heat. If you want roast meat, or baked goods such as bread, cakes, or pastries, people typically buy them from vendors who have large commercial ovens. We can consider these to be cultural variables, but there are individual choices also.

      In both Italy and Morocco, family income plays a major part in how a kitchen is designed and organized. In Italy, family income affects mainly the size and layout of the kitchen, including the amount of work and storage space. In Morocco the variation based on finances is much greater. The poorer households have a single heat source, usually wood or charcoal, located outside the house, whereas more well-to-do families cook over bottled propane, commonly with two burners, inside the house.

Or, I might ask the simplest of questions: Why are there virtually no accommodations for people in wheelchairs in Phnom Penh? Some major hotels have ramps as well as steps leading into them (and elevators internally), but very few other public or private buildings have any help for wheelchair-bound people, and the public streets are difficult to negotiate. The sidewalks are often clogged with parked cars, so that pedestrians have to walk in the road to bypass them – but, the curbs are high with few breaks in them to allow easy passage on and off in a wheelchair. Why has the government invested substantial funds to upgrade sidewalks so that now in heavily trafficked areas there are paving stones set in the center of the sidewalks to be used as guides for blind people walking with canes, but they have done nothing to change the curbs for wheelchairs? What do you notice about accommodations for people with disabilities where you live and why are they the way that they are? What are the cultural implications of such government decisions? These types of observations and insights are the kind that will help advance your research design.

      Choosing locations and people to investigate go hand in hand with formulating research questions. There is nothing wrong with choosing events to study, or people to interview, out of simple interest or curiosity, and some of the projects in this book, such as the life history, rely primarily on interest more than on a targeted research question. Without doubt, you should not conduct a project that does not interest you – ever – although such a danger always exists when you are carrying out an exercise for training purposes. Sometimes, a field situation is not your first choice. You, or the situation you want to study, may have time constraints that are unworkable, or the like, so you may have to go with a second choice that is more convenient. Given that the projects here are for instructional purposes, such situations may arise out of necessity. Nonetheless, choosing a field location for no other reason than that it is handy is a mistake. You must have some interest in the site as well. At this point you are learning certain skills, so that your research will likely not be earth shattering. But your lack of interest in a project will be overtly and directly reflected in the work you produce.

      When I first began teaching field methods, I used to insist that all fieldwork projects had to be conducted off campus, preferably in locations that were new to the student, but I relented on that requirement after several years. It is true that participating in events that are completely new to you can produce data experienced through fresh eyes, but it is also possible to see well-known situations in a new light if you are creative in developing a research question. The pitfall is that if you know a situation very well you can end up with a research question that you already know the answer to, or, you may have trouble formulating a question at all, because nothing seems unusual or noteworthy.

      We all spend significant portions of our day on auto-pilot. This state of affairs is normal and efficient, but has to be overcome when carrying out fieldwork. There is a difference between seeing and observing or hearing and listening. The first verb in each pair describes the act of sensory data entering your body, and the second verb concerns paying attention to the meaning and content of that sensory data. Fieldwork, unlike normal, everyday life, is all about paying attention, or what I call “radical paying attention.” You have to get into the habit of asking questions that you do not normally ask, and keep a note of things you observe: Why do the input keys on a drive-up ATM have braille numbers on them (blind people cannot drive up)? Why is the bride’s side of the church the left-hand side as you enter? Why are deodorant, shampoo, and body soap marketed toward men and women differently, whereas hand soap and dish soap are not typically gendered? Why does the color red classically signify a warning (stop sign, red light) and green means you can proceed, yet when it comes to natural fruits many of them are ready to eat when they are red, but are unripe, and one should exercise caution, when they are green? In fact, “green” is used as a general metaphor for someone or something that is not ready to go.

As you prepare for the projects in this book you need to start radically paying attention to your world, observing and listening instead of merely seeing and hearing, and asking, “Why?” all the time. You will find that this stance is exhausting, which explains why we do not normally do it. Nonetheless, it is an important habit to cultivate as you are learning to conduct ethnographic fieldwork

      Presenting Your Data

      After you have done the fieldwork for a project, you will then prepare your data and results for presentation. Presenting your results may take many forms, and each project in this book has specific guidelines on how to do so. You should not see these guidelines as hard-and-fast rules, but as suggestions which you can modify to suit your own needs and skills. Your instructor may want you to use PowerPoint or some other software for oral, written, or video presentations.

      In general terms, I recommend breaking your presentation into three parts: setup, data, and conclusions. Your instructor may have different, or more specific, guidelines, but these components will be in the mix somehow. Presenting your material clearly is as important as conducting fieldwork effectively.

      Part 1. Setup

      Here you present details concerning how you got started on the project. Lay out what interested you about it, how you fixed on specific places and/or people, and what your initial research question and hypothesis were (if hypothesis formation is appropriate). Also explain any preconceptions or concerns you had before beginning the project, and describe any missteps, such as canceled events, and other things that forced you to change plans.

      Part