Have you ever heard of ethnography? How about reflexive ethnography? I first heard these terms while attending Royal Roads University where I started this adventure of acquiring my graduate degree in communication. At that time, both of these academic terms were unfamiliar but, like every adult learner I have met, I lied about knowing them and then looked them up later. They were foreign and sounded weird. I figured I would never be smart enough to really understand either one of them. But I pushed through and now am embracing both in my research.
To understand reflexive ethnography, we first need to understand ethnography. Simply put by Prof. Phillip Vannini, ethnography is “the in-depth study of people’s ways of life, of cultures” (Vannini, 2018, p. 4). So really, ethnographers are simply looking to answer questions related to what people do and the cultures they live in. This really interested me as I started to think about the maker community in Edmonton, Alberta.
Having been a woodworker in Edmonton for the past 8 years, I have seen the community of makers grow in the city. There are a number of craft fairs, artist showcases, and farmer’s markets where makers show and sell their handmade goods. The entrepreneurial spirit of the city has grown this community and has allowed many to flourish. Most makers still need to supplement their income but are so committed to making, creating, and being an artisan that money does not seem to be much of a driver. It was this “maker spirit” that caused me to want to delve into their lives and discover some of the inner workings of what they do.
Exploring this through the eyes of an academic, I came up with the research question, how do makers relate to the tools and materials they use and how does this shape their processes? As outlined on the method page of this site, I am interviewing ten makers from the Edmonton area to explore this question.
Outlined on that page as well is the second part—reflexive ethnography. Reflexive ethnography is similar to ethnography but rather than exploring other maker’s experiences, I will be exploring my own tools, materials, and process as a woodworker and answering that research question for myself. In essence, I will build an object and discuss, on this blog, how the materials influence my choices, how the tools change the way I do things, and what this all means to me.
So why do both?
I could easily fill my thesis with the ten interviews of other makers in Edmonton. Each one of these talented individuals will bring me a wealth of knowledge to answer my question. But, as a woodworker, I have my own ideas and commentary on the tools and materials I use and how they influence my woodworking—it’s what put me on this path in the first place. I know, from my time in the shop, that the tool I select changes how I accomplish the task and the wood I choose impacts how that final project looks and is viewed. In woodworking, tools and materials are so connected to process that they cannot be separated from each other.
There is another element of research that excited me when I started exploring it—the idea of Arts Based Research (ABR) (Leavy, 2015, 2018) and the extension of that concept into artisanal ethnography (Vannini & Vannini, 2019). Often, the findings of a researcher (especially at the graduate student level) are represented by a written paper. While there are many cases where this is still valid and often required to explain complex concepts, ABR allows for different representations of those results. This could take the form of a play, a poem, or perhaps a documentary video. I want to embrace ABR and use my skills as a artisan to showcase my thesis.
Here is how it will work. Each artisan will loan me their hand made objects. My project will house those objects so anyone interested in understanding my thesis can explore my project to find the other artisans’ object. In the case of the project I have selected, each drawer will house one or two of the handmade objects from the other artisans—more about the specifics of my project in a future post. Will this work? Follow along with me to hear see how I experience the relationship between the materials I select and tools I use to find out.
References
Leavy, P. (2015). Method meets art: Arts-based research practice (Second). New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
Leavy, P. (2018). Handbook of arts-based research. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
Vannini, P. (2018). Doing Public Ethnography. London and New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/978131511100
Vannini, P., & Vannini, A. S. (2019). Artisanal ethnography: Notes on the making of ethnographic craft. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800419863456