What is ‘the ethnographic gallery’?
by IG
When I came across Elaine Campbell’s article "Apparently Being a Self-Obsessed C**t Is Now Academically Lauded": Experiencing Twitter Trolling of Autoethnographers” I had a good laugh about the title. After reading it, I also tried to think about why autoethnography is a source of disdain for ‘serious’ social scientists. My initial gut feeling was that autoethnography is associated with a feminine sense of reflexivity, of being too in tune with your emotions, so in tune that you don’t see reason (‘scientific reason’) and lose yourself in the particularities of your existence.
The obsession with being the omnipotent observer supposedly naked of your prejudices, thought patterns and habits, comes as no surprise in the field of sociology. Positivism asks from us researchers, the impossible endeavour to completely disassociate from yourself when working.
“Do your research as the empty vessel that you are, you are no one on the field, you are a faceless voyeur.”
Okay, but who am I then? A sociologist, or Jason Bourne?
Why do I have to pretend or attempt to be a vaporous, dimensionless speck of consciousness that observes social life through simple binaries?
We associate the greats, the ‘fathers’ of sociology with positivistic social research. For instance, I help teach Durkheim to our students in intro to sociology classes. They’re interesting to read and help us understand how the field developed, we can all recognise their valuable contributions to social research. I enjoy these foundational texts, as do many other students of sociology.
But at the same time, I have also been subjected to quantitative sociology that completely glosses over historical and cultural contexts. I was instructed by scholars completely unaware of their place in the knowledge making machine. These people are not only unaware but also refuse to investigate their positionalities for the sake of putting on a ‘positivistic’ front:
“I am an objective, scientific observer because I refuse to ever think about how my economic, political and social background influences the way I understand the world. Problem Solved. Case Closed. Bye.”
When prodded to think about who they are as a person and how that affects their choice of topic, language, methods in research, they respond by telling you the researcher is not the subject in social research.
Yes, we are not the subject, but we choose to study the subject. Investigating the reasons as to why we choose to study it sheds light onto our role within the subject. It is undeniable that the researcher, just by observing the subject changes is it as well. So why not acknowledge and present to your audience, your relationship with your work?
The ‘ethnographic gallery’ is an experimental attempt at doing that. This is my journey as a researcher but also as a person with hobbies and interests. Something as simple as this might sound banal, but it is the mundanity of everyday life that forms the researcher. It’s your habits and routines that shape your social and political outlook. It’s the economic position within capitalistic production that limits some and frees others. The ethnographic gallery is me chronicling my efforts to become a more creative researcher. It is a collection of my multi media art and my writing, paired together and placed in a narrative sequence.
-Idil