Response to Weston's Question

Although you may not have many examples of communication in your ethnography, your research on the observed site should be able to fill the gap that it leaves. I would suggest that you compensate for the lack of communication by providing more elements of descriptive narration in your paper. By doing this, you will give your ethnography perspective, which is the purpose of dialogue in an ethnography.

plan

I analyzed my fieldwork note once again. I found out my original claim has not much to do with my field note. Therefore, I reworked my claim again and it turned out to totally different thing. My new claim: There is an issue about group forming between Chinese students and American students in the history class. Moreover, The group forming causes negative effect on communication between the two nationalities students.

I found 4 sources to use for my essay from the UW Madison online database. All of them are relate to the cultural boundary and communication. The first one is about a study of cultural discontinuities. There are three different types of cultural discontinuities, which are universal, primary and secondary. I am only going to use the concept of the primary and secondary discontinuities on my essay. I found out there are two type of Chinese students in class (active talking and quiet). The older students (who stayed in the U.S. longer and those who grow up in the U.S tend to be more active than the news) I believe it is not only because they master better English, but also they gathered more American culture. The other three sources are basically about cultural boundary. The first one is going to be primary.  

challenge: It is difficult to find out the source I want from the online database. I think using the right keyword is the most important on doing online research. 

Ethnography Plan

I will be focusing on organization and how it influences education at my ethnography site at firefighter station 1. There are a few examples I will be able to use in my ethnography paper. Some patterns I observe at the site are fire fighters wearing uniforms. Everything in the station is pretty much spotless. For example, the kitchen is immaculate, the bedrooms are tidy, the truck compartments are neatly organized. This makes their jobs a little easier when they are called upon to help others. Organization also serves as a valuable form of communication. For example, communication takes place daily through organization and structure at the station. There are many examples I can give that support this observation. Since Dewey strongly focuses on communication as being an essential component to education, I will be able to relate to his article. I can also relate this topic to the Wisconsin Idea, because working in the fire service involves giving back to the community in a number of ways. Firefighters travel around to local schools for fire safety month and teach others about fire safety and what it's all about. My plan is to use examples such as these to show how organization contributes to learning. I would like to do some more secondary research regarding this topic to see if I can find any further information on how organization is used in education.

Question: This might be a stretch, but I think my claim is going to be something along the lines of: organization is an essential tool that, in some way or another, serves as an essential tool and is used in all forms of education (for example, from elementary to college). Organization is seen when considering how different classes are required to fulfill a major, or how students are separated into different grade levels in high school (9-12). My question for you guys is, is there any situation that you can think of where organization is not a component used within education?

ethnography process

So far I have observed not only several times at the Children's museum, but also at the Stem Cell learning lab. After having spent time at the Children's museum during a science experiment night recently, I decided I want to focus on science-education in youth. Specifically, I will be looking at different approaches and methods that are tailored for different age groups. The children's museum offered several exhibits and I had a chance to chat with some of the volunteers, and their thoughts on how effective each of their exhibits were in providing a stimulating learning environment. The Stem Cell Learning Lab provided a unique, realistic laboratory where youth (usually middleschool aged) can conduct researchers as those would on campus. Through detailing out their lessons, one can specifically see how the learning lab is tailored for the group. I am conducting additional research on other science outreach programs on campus, including WiCell and workshops at WID. I will focus on these methods in science education in relation to theories of Friere's banking method, the Wisconsin Idea, and psychologist, Jean Piaget’s learning theories. It is worth noting that some Piagetian principles for teaching and learning discuss the important of learning as an active process in a meaningful, authentic fashion. They also discuss the role of the teacher in encouraging students to become active constructors of their own knowledge in a rich environment for exploration. These are some of my fundamental aspects that I will talk about in my ethnography, yet I still have much more research to conduct and may find other theories that I would like to include in the paper. Moreover, I still have yet to completely chisel down my main claim, which, thus far, is to discuss the methods and approaches applied in several science outreach programs at UW and at the Children’s museum, representing science education (my observations and additional research on programs) in their relation to several educational/learning theories, including that of Friere’s problem-posing/banking method and that of Piaget (perhaps WI Idea too). I feel that during my research and digging through my observations, I will hone my claim and be able to develop my paper more thoroughly.

I am not sure whether I should discuss science education in comparison to other educational focuses for youth (such as writing, math, ect), or comparing science education at different levels (elementary vs collegiate – may discuss problem-posing/banking methods, for example). Do you think these would be important in creating a more dynamic discussion in my paper?

Ethnography Plan

I plan to focus on efficient communication in chemistry tutoring in the residential halls. People learning chemistry claim that they are learning a new language. That is how I get the idea for this project.

During my visits, I noticed both tutors and tutees talked to each other directly in scientific terms. I wonder how much the two parties understand this specific language and how well they use the vocabulary to convey complex ideas. I listened to their conversation and picked out some misunderstanding about certain concepts, but this is just normal misconceptions in the learning process. Most of the time, the tutee were inured to this type of talking -- they accepted the term regardless. On the other hand, the tutor made effort to show the tutee how to apply the term both in conveying thoughts and in solving problems. This reminded me of Friere's critique on the banking methods and Derek's justification of the same method -- the use of such approach in science teaching is most efficient.

In the light of this, I paid more attention to the daily language they used and there was no indication of the power hierarchy implied by Friere. The tutor and the students were equal and the student challenged the tutor whenever he or she did not agree on the topic. (You may argue that because they are both students. Upon that, I may use the example of writing center to demonstrate the equality, since the writing fellow is a representative of a higher level.) Based on that, I propose that there exist a "personalized" banking method and information transition is important and inevitable in lower level learning, namely the knowledge accumulation stage. The tutor switched his teaching style -- by drawing diagrams, using models or reading the text with the students, etc. -- to suit the students' need. This would reexamine the value of the banking method.

Further research would be on conceptual understanding in chemistry education. Both the tutor and the tutees mentioned it helped if they understand the readings before doing homework. So I would like to look into it and see what I would find. There may be new ideas I have never thought of or heard about before.

Question: I worry that I may overlook something in technical talking. What are the other aspects you would suggest me to pay more attention to? How about other aspects on educational communication? Or merely language and daily communication? Thanks.

Ethnography Plan

I have been observing a martial arts class in Aikido for my ethnography.  There are usually only four to six students in a class and there is hardly any talking so I spend most of my time observing their actions.  The instructor of the class never gives any formal verbal or written instruction to the class so I am planning on writing a claim about different learning/teaching styles.  I am not sure exactly what my claim will be yet, but it will have something to do with learning by doing and by observation and if the style of teaching is effective compared to other styles.  I have found some sources on the general background and history of Aikido that will help me to understand what I have been observing so far and help make my analysis more complete.  I want to find more sources on different teaching and learning styles that could help focus my claim more.  I also still need to do one more session of field notes, which will give me a chance to do an interview and get a better understanding of the culture of the club.

Question: I am worried about the fact that there isn't much verbal communication at my site. Do you think I can still write an effective ethnography if a lot of my information comes from research instead of observation?  

Ethnography Planning

For my ethnography, I've been observing an elementary Spanish class at West High School. I've spent time focusing specifically on students and different time focusing specifically on the teacher and TA. I also recorded quite a bit of observation regarding the appearance and layout of the school, classroom, library media center. I am generally familiar with the school because I spent a semester tutoring there during my freshman year. Although high school is a familiar place to me, West can still be quite foreign to me--I constantly find myself comparing it with my own high school experience. Notable differences include how the students interact as a community, students' motivation to achieve, and more obvious things including population, location, and layout. Some things have also stood out during my observations: the most disruptive student also seeks the teacher's approval and praise the most, the teacher makes a speech about foreign language being important to a successful future, a focus on appearance (including racial segregation, a lesson on adjectives and an exercise where the students use the vocab words to describe themselves, comments and questions from students during class), how the teacher keeps students on task and also how they respond to different styles of teaching. During my research, so far I have been looking into behavioral patterns, leadership characteristics in students and teachers, foreign language learning, and methods that address problems in the classroom. I'm still struggling to commit to a claim and hope to make that step tonight as I plan an outline. Questions: Does anyone have an interesting approach to forming a claim about behavior in the classroom (not exclusively bad behavior...)?

Ethnography

As I continue to research the “No Child Left Behind” policy, I am beginning to find more and more instances of increased stress placed upon both students and teachers by the demands of standardized testing. Because the careers and salaries of teachers often rest upon the test results, educators have begun to “teach to test” rather than to “teach for learning”. Such stresses have pushed some teachers as far as erasing incorrect test answers and penciling in correct responses to improve student outcomes. The fact that teachers are willing to act in an unethical manner to improve test outcomes signifies that they are also likely to teach in any manner that they believe will result in better scores. Often times; however, teaching to improve test scores is not teaching in manner that causes effective learning. Instead, the teaching method is reminiscent of Freire’s “banking concept”, which we have already discussed as a rather ineffective method. The findings of my research led me to further examine my field notes and interviews with Tina Sugar, the teacher of the 3^rd grade class I’ve been observing. Through further examination, I noticed much stress in Tina’s actions, interview responses and student interactions while WKCE testing was occurring. Not only did I notice Tina’s elevated stress level, but I also noticed how she dedicated much of her classroom teaching time to math, reading and writing rather than subjects such as art, history or science. Coincidentally, the material that third graders are tested on include only math and reading (which includes writing responses). Because of my realizations, I’ve decided I want to focus on teacher stress related to testing and how it impacts the way students are taught as well as their learning outcomes.

Question:

I’m still struggling with how I’m going to bring everything together and I’m worried that I will have more outside research than classroom observations within my ethnography. Do you think this will pose a problem or do you think I can still write an effective ethnography using a more research-based approached than a more observational approach?

Ethnography Plan Response

My ethnography took place at various libraries, mainly College Library and Memorial Library. I specifically focused on how students studied. The theme that emerged pretty early on was the role communication played in studying. After observing the study habits of people at the library and talking with them, I realized that communication was essential to studying in the same way as communication was vital to formal education as in Dewey’s education theory. Traditionally, the interaction in studying could solely transpire within study groups. But what was interesting is how new technology now has created a form of communication that allows students studying by themselves to experience and draw the positive benefits of this communication. From talking with the people who were actually studying in groups, some of the benefits of studying in groups that were listed were being supportive of one another, being able to stay together as a group even when the material was hard, and more creativity because there were more ideas being talked about. I got some insight into the benefits of new technology like YouTube, online lectures, and other advances, but I would like to do some more secondary research on this to better grasp why it is so beneficial. I guess that would be my challenge going forward.

For my ethnography, I am finished with all of my observations and have a plan/focus formatted into a rough claim. I'm going to focus my attention on five areas of learning, which will illustrate education's integral role in fitness. However, I'm not entirely sure where I'm going to include narrative detail in my paper. At this point, I was thinking of starting my paper with a description of one of my observation sites, which would transition into an area of learning that I observed at that location. By highlighting five different aspects of learning with respect to fitness, I believe that I will have enough information to effectively argue my claim, while reaching the ten page limit as well. Also, all of my sources are different than the ones discussed in class, but I may end up referencing some of these educational theories to compare/contrast the theories I have been researching.

Question: What is the most effective method of incorporating narrative description into an ethnography?

Planning for Ethnography

I am still in the very basic stages of my ethnography. I am having a lot of trouble figuring out the education element of my food cart site. I have found fantastic information on the food cart history and where to get one and places where they are popular but I don't know how to weave education into this rapidly growing community/subculture. I still need to do my last observation, I want to do it around noon because I feel I will get a better sense of the actual crowd that is there but it was raining and crappy the last time I had an opportunity to go out. I feel like interviewing people who eat at food carts is a key element to the food cart community but I don't feel like I will have enough information from just doing small interviews and observing for another hour-hour and a half. The place I am focusing on now is Library Mall. Clearly this has education buildings around it and more often than not students and teachers are the ones buying the food from the carts but that is just the community and surroundings of the site.

Do you have en suggestions as to what education may be involved with this site?

Ethnography Planning Response

My ethnography was based at the Tai Chi Center of Madison. One of my observations was that the practice focuses heavily on minor details. For example, an emphasis is placed on which toes a practitioner distributes his or her weight. This element of the practice establishes Tai Chi as a “moving meditation”. I also noticed a large amount of advertisements around the Tai Chi Center about the health benefits of Tai Chi. I am tying my two observations together to make my claim that the “moving meditation” element of Tai Chi is the reason the practice offers so many health benefits. For secondary research I plan on looking for books or articles from the library as well as utilizing books provided to me by the instructor at the Tai Chi Center of Madison. My current resources discuss both the history of Tai Chi and the health benefits of the practice. I plan to write a brief summary of the history of Tai Chi before focusing more specifically on the health benefits of the practice.

Should I dedicate a section of my paper to how the lessons of Tai Chi can be applied to an individual’s every day life? Is this stretching the purpose of an ethnography?

Ethnography Planning

At this point in the planning process, I have a very rough outline of the flow of my paper, but I still need to work on transferring some of the details from my field notes into something that will start to look like what Ill include in my first draft. I'm struggling with this part because its very difficult to piece the narratives back together to how they sounded when I was observing. As for my overall claim, I am arguing that the UW Slow Food café serves as a platform for educating the campus community on the opportunities for local and sustainable eating habits. The café is able to accomplish this by allowing the food it serves to act as a catalyst for conversations and social interactions that lead to a more informal type of education. I think that the strongest point in my paper will be highlighting the various ways in which Slow Food informally educates its members. Eventually I want to tie everything in with Cronon's theory of "only connect".

My question/concern for the class is how are you guys balancing the amount of research with the amount of dialogue and description in your papers? What techniques are you trying to use to make sure the paper is cohesive and the two components (research vs detail) fit together cohesively?

Ethnography Plan

I am still in the early stages of writing and organizing my ethnography. I have started writing some of the descriptions of my site but mainly I have been thinking about my claim and how to best support it using my observations and interviews. I think my claim is going to center around how at the Humane Society, interactions with animals and staff seem to stimulate creative thought and questioning in both children and volunteers. I also want to talk about how animals teach kids about respect, compassion, and responsibility. I am still looking for some of my secondary sources to support my claim and to provide history and background for my site. A few interesting and useful sources I have found thus far include the Dane County Humane Society website, volunteer manual, and newsletter. I am going to try to go to the Historical Society later today to look at their pamphlet collection. Due to the inherent biases that might exist in these documents, I would like to find some third party sources and am currently looking through the library databases. I am also probably going to use Dewey and Freire to provide some theoretical support for my claim. After I get my secondary research sorted out, I will put together my annotated bibliography and outline tonight and then begin writing the main analysis sections of my rough draft. One question I have is: What do you think is the best way to organize the descriptive and narrative elements of the ethnography? Should you incorporate them throughout the entire ethnography like in Lives on the Boundary and some of the other ethnographies we read or would it be better/easier to do most of the description of your site at the beginning?

Ethnography Planning Response

I am planning on touching on two main themes in my ethnography - how the Madison Children’s Museum utilizes play as a form of education, as well as how the museum is a site for both children and adults to learn. I need to be very clear with my claim, because I am not discussing if/how the parents are learning at the museum, but instead how the employees are learning. I was able to interview multiple employees at the museum, and I have recently had experience learning on-the-job, so most of my material for that portion of my ethnography is in my fieldnotes and my previous experiences (subjective positioning). My outline is definitely not hammered out yet, so I’ll be attempting to finalize that within the next 24 hours. For my additional outside research, I focused on sources centered on play as a means of education. I find the “learn from play” topic very interesting, so it is becoming difficult to keep the focus primarily on my fieldsite. Therefore, my question is:

“How much of my claim should be supported directly by my observations at my fieldsite, and how much can I support primarily with outside research? Should my research on the topic only be used to backup behaviors I observed at the museum?”

I am worried about the description and depth of my essay. I have a good outline together and it is a little over four pages. I plan organizing my paper by my observations and using my interview to support my claims about the observations. After bringing up my observations, I will give a narrative about how the church looks, feels, and sounds like. I will also bring up how I felt or how others act. After the narrative, I will go into specific observations and back up the observations with my sources from class or my other sources. I will find it hard to put my position into my first paragraph without it sounding out of place. Hopefully it will go smoothly.

Ethnography Plan

At this point in my ethnography process I feel slightly unorganized. I have set up an outline, but still feel like things need to be added and switched around. After going through my information and looking at sources I may need to go back for an additional observation to make this writing long enough and more focused on my claim. My plan right now is to begin with some narrative describing my observations upon entering the childcare center and move into what the qualities are that people look for when searching for a program using a checklist and question sheet I found in a newsletter. From there I would like to move into the elements of social and formal education that can be identified within the program at Legacy Academy. I would also like to add a counter argument that would go against the positive aspects of the facility by talking about its downfalls and what can/should be improved in comparison to what the general public expects or wants for their children. To do this I have and article as well as a brief interview with a parent of a child that attends Legacy. Right now, I feel that I need more content. Although I haven’t really started writing I'm thinking it will be too short.

Ethnography Planning Response

By 9 PM on Monday night, post one paragraph (200 words or so) talking about your plan for your ethnography and where you're at in your process. Also include one question you have/challenge you're facing in putting your project together.

By 9 AM Tuesday morning, please respond to 1 person's question/challenge with a brief post.

House for Homeless

In "House for the Homeless", Ivana Nikolic immediately begins writing to the audience by clarifying her background and life experiences associated with her interest to volunteer at the homeless shelter. These revealed fixed and subjective positions immediately bring into perspective her thoughts and feelings throughout the writing to the reader. Furthermore, she continually refers back to her subjective positions during her writing. For example, when talking to Solomon she consciously forms judgements on his choice, which we rooted back to her fathers experience that she refers to within writing about Solomon (pg 50). I believe this continual referral back to her subjective positions aide in explaining her feelings and observations during her volunteer time at the shelter. It really tells an inspiring and interesting story to the reader. On the other hand, Citron does not tend to continually weave his subjective positions throughout his writing of his observations of the Latino community. Rather, he discusses his fixed and subjective positions initially (chapter 1), and does return much to it. He begins to form judgements throughout his observations, yet does not try to reconcile them in any manner. Unlike Citron, Ivana would recognize her subjective tendancies and attempt to explain them by noting subjective experiences in relation to them. She even states at the end that she realizes she only got a small taste for the homeless community as a whole, and that "I learned one cannot make generalizations about the homeless" (52).

Do you think that since Ivana recognizes her subjective tendancies in her writing, than opposed to Citrons sometimes heavily biased notions, can perhaps make her writing more credible and legitimate? Which one did you personally enjoy more?

House for the Homeless

In “Houses for the Homeless,” I think that Ivana has a much more objective position towards the group she is studying than Cintron does in his chapter from “Angels’ Town.”  She even points out when she is not being objective enough with statements such as, “I allowed myself to base my opinions on what I heard from other people, without ever trying to hear the stories of the homeless themselves…But I felt ashamed.”  Cintron was extremely subjective in his portrayal of Angels’ Town; however, he did not preface his subjectivity.  Also, I prefer Ivana’s placement of her self-descriptions to Cintron’s.  Interweaving self-descriptions where they apply in the text seems a more appropriate method than putting the entire description at the beginning where the reader would need to flip between that and the body of the text.  The only positioning aspect of Cintron’s paper that I preferred was his textual positioning.  I found the language of his paper much more sophisticated and interesting that that of Ivana’s article.

Question:  Does Ivana’s recognition of her subjectivity make her ethnography more objective?

Respons to House for the Homeless

Cushman and Ivana both position themselves subjectively in their writing--Cushman writes that he identifies with "individuals sitting on their front stoops in the inner city" (p 4) and Ivana identifies with the people at the homeless shelter where she volunteers. Ivana continuously sympathizes with people in the shelter throughout her writing and reflects on her own background often. Cushman states his position in the beginning and then moves toward discovering the "deep games" inner city residents play through their language and "critical consciousness" (p 5). To me it seems that both papers lead the audience to question his or her own position in looking at the groups being observed and recognize the unfair conclusions we may come to because of our positions.

Throughout her writing, Ivana returns to her own background and tells us how she can relate to the people she is describing. In my opinion, she didn't really leave us much to think about while reading her paper--the content of her ethnography wasn't surprising at all to me. This has me wondering about how much to include about oneself, and also if maybe we should try not to relate so much to the group we are observing. Maybe sometimes when we think we relate to someone, we jump to conclusions and judge them based on ourselves. Thoughts? I apologize for how wordy that question ended up being!

Positioning in "House for the Homeless"

In “House for the Homeless,” Ivana addresses her positioning by describing her experience as a Bosnian refugee and the struggles her family faced adjusting to their new lives. She believes that her “personal experiences have made [her] more responsive and sensitive to the misfortunes of others” (46). Her compassion for the homeless, as well as her lack of understanding regarding their situation, seemed to be the motivating force behind her research. Throughout her ethnography she periodically mentions assumptions and preconceptions she has about the homeless shelter, such as when she “expected to find a place saturated with religion” (47). Similarly, her father’s work experience causes her to make certain assumptions about Solomon’s situation (50). I think Cintron was much more thorough in addressing his fixed and subjective positioning in the opening chapter of Angel’s Town. He gives much greater detail when describing his motivation for his research and his influences throughout the process. However, this is likely the result of his research being a larger and more extensive endeavor. I think Ivana did a better job in addressing her subjectivity throughout her analysis and allowing the reader to see how her personal experiences affected her perceptions of the homeless people she encountered.

Question: Do you think Ivana’s experience as a Bosnian refugee significantly affected what she looked for at the homeless shelter or how she perceived those she was observing? Do you think she adequately addressed this possible bias as she explained her interpretations?

Response to "House for the Homeless"

In "House for the Homeless," Ivana Nikolic uses positioning in a very different manner than Cintron does in Angel’s Town. Both authors provide both their fixed and subjective positions at the beginning of their writings, but that is where the similarities end. Cintron provides the reader with a great deal of background information in the first chapter of Angel’s Town, but then provides very little throughout the chapter titled “A Boy and His Wall.” Nikolic provides some background information at the beginning, but then references her experiences throughout the ethnography, especially in areas where she states her conclusions. An example of this can be seen on page 8, where she states, “I have a great deal of respect for people who have a goal in their lives … That is what kept me going as a refugee.” I find this style to be much easier to follow and more transparent for the reader.

Question:
Which method of revealing fixed and subjective positioning do you find to be more practical: Providing all of the needed background information at the start, or providing some at the beginning and revealing more later as it becomes relevant to the writing?

Response to Weston's Question

I believe that weaving positioning into an ethnography is the most effective method of conveying your subjective opinions because it helps illustrate cause and effect during the research project. By incorporating this strategy into your ethnography you can illustrate whether your biases were accurate or not.

homeless response

Within “House for the Homeless,” Ivana Nikolic utilizes positioning in order to convey her subjective thoughts. This is especially seen through Nikolic’s use of assumptions in her writing. For example, Nikolic assumes that the homeless people are infected, which represents her own subjectivity. This type of positioning is similar to Cintron’s ethnography, as he assumed that the walls of the Valerio household were representative of the social conflicts in Angelstown. Cintron’s and Nikolic’s use of positioning is vital to the integrity of their articles, as it provides readers with an understanding of each author’s biases. In turn, the author’s can use their biases to illustrate how and why their assumptions may or may not be accurate.

Question: In “House for the Homeless,” how would your perception of Nikolic’s ethnography change if she had chosen to omit the background of herself?

response of "House For The Homeless"

I like the writing style of the Rick’s article “House For The Homeless” better than Cintron’s report “Struggle and the Tools.” This is because Cintron tries to emotionally separate himself from the members of the group he was observing despite their common background and ethnicity. This procedure makes me feel that Cintron has eliminated personal bigotry and is very objective in his arguments. On the other hand, Rick definitely uses more emotional appeals to express her subjective opinions. It is very obvious that she feels deeply for the homeless people and she uses the homeless peoples’ stories to remind herself and the audience of their woes. Moreover, Most people usually think homeless people deserve to be homeless because they are not really willing to work and most of them are addictive to drugs and alcohol. But In Rick’s paper, Rick collects homeless people’s stories and explains how their stories change her opinions about the truth of homeless people.

Question: I feel Rick is being very subjective in her article. On the one hand, we should be objective while we analyze the data. On the other hand, I feel Rick’s emotional writing has more impact on us. Do you think the emotional writing is necessary to show the writer’s interpretation?   

Response to Homeless

Ivana does a study in a field that she is very familiar with just like Ralph. Their positions allow them to see the reasons behind the activities of the individuals they are studying. Their positions give the reader valuable insight but I wonder how much it blinds them. I feel that it limits the questions they ask because they ‘understand’ what the person is going through. Despite how their positions could limit their research, Ivana’s interpretations due to her positions are very detailed and easy for the reader to understand. Ralph has similar interpretations based on his positions but they are not as easy for the reader to follow.

How does the language become a barrier in Ivana’s research? Some of the individuals are immigrants like her so does their understanding of English impact the research?

House for the Homeless

The overall positioning in Ivana Nikolic’s “House for the Homeless” is much more straightforward and easy to understand the intentions and reasoning behind her choice to investigate the homeless community. She expresses her immediate interest when her family moved from Bosnia, unlike Citron, whose subjective position behind looking at the Latino community is never clearly disclosed. Throughout the piece, Ivana is able to weave her positioning in a positive manner and is aware that her volunteering may have resulted in her missing aspects of the community, whereas Cintron’s writing eventually cuts off all outside meaning and it is more difficult to understand his goal and message.

Can being directly involved in your fieldwork site be positive? Do you think Ivana was successful without being a complete outsider in her situation?

house for the homeless response

I think Ivana is much more involved in her research than Cintron was, or at least has a bigger stake in it. Ivana seemed to have a fixed and subjective position that is similar to that of the homeless people she is studying . She talked about being a refugee that had little income and were struggling to get by is a similar fixed position as the people in the shelter, and her experiences in navigating the waters of being in a desperate situation gives her a similar subjective position. I think too that Ivana remained a little more neutral and did not insert her own biases as much as Cintron did. I thought it was interesting too how Ivana noted her selection bias in saying that her "crop" of homeless people may have been to narrow and not a completely fair group to judge.

Question: Where is "the line" between becoming too involved in your research subject? Is there even a line that can be crossed?

House for the Homeless Response

In "House for the Homeless: A place to Hang Your Hat", Ivana Nikolic begins by defining her fixed position as well as some subjective positioning.  She says that she is from Bosnia and has a younger brother and parents.  She explains her early childhood experience as well by describing her family's life as refugees.  This helps the reader to understand where she is coming from and what her biases might be before they read the rest of her work.  In Ellen Cushman's "The Struggle and the Tools", she starts by briefly describing a bunch of experiences she has had, which helps define her subjective positioning.  However, she does not show her fixed positioning quite as easily.  She hints at being an African American and a woman, but she never explicitly says it.  Although both authors go about their positioning in different ways, overall they both do a good job of defining their positions so the reader can infer the subjectivity in their writing.

Question:
Do you think it is more effective to define your fixed position and give some subjective positioning right away or to weave it into your writing, making it more subtle?

House for the Homeless and positioning

The positioning in House for the Homeless seems to be a bit conflicted. Since Ivana volunteered at the shelter I feel she was at a disadvantage because she was not able to see everything from an outsider’s point of view. When she interacted with the workers of the shelter, they knew her or recognized her and/or her position at the shelter so it may have skewed their answers. Ivana was at an advantage with working at the shelter because she had the credibility of being helpful and a good person to the homeless that passed through the shelter so it is possible that they were more willing to open up to her since they recognized her.

Question: Do you think it is better or worse to be involved in your ethnographic site? Will it be more difficult or easier to get an outsider’s perspective and real responses if you are known at your site?

Positioning in "House for the Homeless"

The use of positioning varies significantly from Ralph Cintron’s “A Boy and His Wall”, and Ivana Nikolic’s “House for the Homeless”. In “A Boy and His Wall,” Ralph Cintron explicitly identifies his fixed position and implicitly suggests his subjective position in the first chapter of the ethnography. However, as Cintron’s writing continues the existence of his position becomes less blatant to the reader. In contrast, Ivana Nokilic is very direct in identifying both her fixed and subjective positions in “House for the Homeless”. Nokilic opens the ethnography with a detailed account of her flight from Bosnia and her experiences as a refugee. This strong positioning is further weaved throughout the writing, as shown by subjective statements like, “I remembered how before I came, I expected to find a place saturated with religion, and the mere thought made me feel slightly uneasy” (Nikolic 47).

Question: How does the difference in use of positioning effect your interpretation of the ethnography? Do you prefer a highly positioning style (Nikolic) over a less positioned style (Cintron)?

Positioning in "House for the Homeless"

Positioning in Ivana Nikolic's House for the Homeless is much easier to identify than positioning in Cintron's A Boy and His Wall. Nikolic tells the reader immediately about her background as a Bosnian refugee and the struggles her family faced when coming to America as immigrants, whereas Cintron leaves the reader somewhat in the dark regarding his fixed positioning. On the other hand, Nikolic's and Cintron's subjective positioning are similar in that they both are significantly influenced by the respective roles they play in their fieldworking sites: Nikolic as a volunteer at the homeless shelter, and Cintron as a keen observer acting almost as an additional family member of the Martinez'.

My discussion question for the class is: Now that we have been exposed to some examples of author's that have varying degrees of involvement with their fieldwork site (i.e. from Rick Zollo as an outsider interested in the truck driving community to Ivana Nikolic as a volunteer at the Ramsey House homeless shelter, and Cushman as a graduate student at a nearby university of inner city Quayville), do you see any advantages or disadvantages to their central arguments that correlate with their degree of involvement at the sites?

Positioning in "House for the Homeless"

Positioning functions quite differently in “A Boy and His Wall’ than it does in “House for the Homeless”. For instance, Cintron never discloses his subjective positions that caused him to research the Latino community, The writer of “House for the Homeless”, on the other hand, states she is interested in studying the homeless community to “better understand their culture”, which would help to “diminish the fear and stigma” she had begun to feel toward homeless individuals. Not only does the author of “House for the Homeless” disclose her positions at a greater frequency, but she also interweaves them throughout her writing. In contrast, Cintron reveals his positions at the beginning of his ethnography rather than throughout it. For example, the author of “House for the Homeless” often states her existing stereotypes based on her past experiences and how they are changed by observing individuals at the homeless shelter. This can be observed in the following statement, “The whole conversation was somewhat surreal. Here he was, a young, healthy intellectual, sharing his life philosophy with a stranger in the loud and dirty lobby of a homeless shelter. He was stepping over every stereotype I had of homeless people.” Unlike this author, Cintron rarely reveals his existing stereotypes.

Question:

How have your positions affected the fieldwork you have completed up to this point? Are your positions helping or hindering your observations?