Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Ethnography Reaction & Questions

I also apologize I hadn't realized this assignment was due last week but here are my thoughts on interviewing challenges:

I agree with Clark said in terms of the barrier that exists when you act as the interviewer and another person is the interviewee. Studying people from a scientific standpoint whether that be social science or natural science will always present that barrier. Like Irina said, we are both interested in psychological elements of fashion choice and what fashion choice shows about the individual. By finding out what fashion means to an individual, we can start to paint a picture about cultural/moral forces which shape the individuals thoughts and perspectives.

Some questions I have so far:
1. How do we establish rapport with our interviewees despite being from a different country and different ethnicity than they are? To help them understand our goals as non -intrusive and exploratory?
2. I think personal every day experiences will still differ significantly from the way media portrays a certain issue (such as banning a religious type of dress) how do we reconcile public news or literature with what participants say if they happen to be going in different directions? A good thing is our question itself is rather open ended so there isn't be a "prove" or "disprove" goal at least.
4. And as Irina said, we would like to include both meet up & spontaneous interviews as well as observations but at which locations and how often? How do we juggle this?

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