Task

THE DEVELOPMENTAL RESEARCH SEQUENCE

Part Two is based on an important assumption, one that has influenced the design of the remainder of this book: the best way to learn to do ethnography is by doing it. Each step contains the following elements:

Objectives: A brief statement of the learning goals at each particular stage in the ethnographic process.

Concepts: A discussion of the basic concepts necessary to achieving the learning goals at each particular stage.

Tasks: A specific set of tasks, which when completed enable one to achieve the objectives.

It is no accident that the title of each step is an activity-"Locating a Social Situation," "Doing Participant Observation," "Making an Ethnographic Record," and so on. These activities, steps in the larger Developmental Research Process, lead to an original ethnographic description.

I cannot emphasize too strongly that each successive step depends on reading the preceding step and doing the tasks identified in that step. If you read the remainder of this book in the same way as the first part, it will tend to result in a distorted understanding of participant observation. In short, each step in Part Two is designed to be done as well as read.

Finally, I want to remind the reader that Part Two focuses exclusively on doing participant observation. This focus will enable the reader to acquire a higher degree of mastery than is possible when using multiple research techniques. Depending on available time and background, one can easily combine the tasks that follow with ethnographic interviewing and observing in more than one social situation.

It is well to keep in mind from the beginning of a research project that the end result will be a written cultural description, an ethnography. An ethnog­ rapher may describe only a small segment of the culture in a brief article or paper for a course in ethnographic research. On the other hand, the ethnog­ rapher may end up writing a book or several books to describe the culture. In Step Twelve, I discuss some strategies for writing an ethnography. One of the most important ones is to begin writing early. If the ethnographer waits until after all the data are collected to begin writing, it will be too late to follow the leads that writing creates. Another reason to begin writing early is to simplify the task. Most people contemplate the task of writing a thirty­ page report as formidable; writing ten three-page reports seems much less difficult.

In order to facilitate the writing task and make it part of the research process, I have made a list of brief topics, listed separately in Appendix Bat the end of the book, that an ethnographer can write about while conducting research. Each writing task is designed to fit in with the particular stage of research. I envision a few pages written in rough draft form. Then, when you sit down to write the final ethnography, the task will be simplified as you revise these brief papers. It may be useful to read Step Twelve and review the writing tasks in Appendix B before starting the D.R.S. steps.

38

OBJECTIVES 1. To understand the role of social situations in beginning partic­

ipant observation. 2. To identify the criteria for selecting the best social situation for

participant observation. 3. To locate several possible social situations for doing ethno­

graphic research.

Ethnographers have done participant observation in such a variety of settings that there appears to be little in common among research sites. From a remote tribal village in India (McCurdy 1971) to an Eskimo hunting group in northern Alaska (Nelson 1969), from a self-service restaurant in Helsinki, Finland (Kruse 1975), to a bus in Tulsa, Okla­ homa (Nash 1975), ethnographers have conducted partici­ pant observation. Their search for the cultures people use to order their lives has taken them to fishing boats and city zoos, tribal hunting bands and high-rise apartment com­ plexes, airport waiting rooms and large mental hospitals, nomadic tribes of the Sahara Desert and street corners in Washington D.C.

This enormous diversity of research sites can obscure an important common feature in all settings. Wherever the ethnographer may go and whatever the size of the social unit (a street corner, a village, a town, a city), all participant observation takes place in social situations. The first step in doing ethnography by means of participant observation is to locate a social situation. By understanding this concept and its role in the research project, you can easily find interest­ ing and workable places for conducting your research. In this step we will examine the nature of social situations and several important criteria for making the best initial selec­ tion.

SOCIAL SITUATIONS

Every social situation can be identified by three primary elements: a place, actors, and activities. In doing partici­ pant observation you will locate yourself in some place; you will watch actors of one sort or another and become in­ volved with them; you will observe and participate in ac-

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39

THE DEVELOPMENTAL RESEARCH SEQUENCE

tivities. These primary elements do not exhaust the social and cultural meaning of social situations, but they do serve as a springboard into under­ standing them. Most important, by focusing on a single social situation you will greatly simplify the task of beginning your ethnographic research. It will help to think of social situations in terms of the following figure:

Place

Place

Any physical setting can become the basis for a social situation as long as it has people present and engaged in activities. A street where people cross, a bank window where people line up and transact business, an ocean pier where people loiter and fish, a bus door through which people enter and exit the bus, and a grocery-store check-out counter where groceries are rung up, paid for, and bagged are all social situations. Each of these places offers rich opportunities for participant observation.

The ethnographer begins with a single, identifiable place for participant observation. However, it is often useful to think of a social situation as a kind of place. For example, one beginning ethnographer began observing on a specific bus that ran along Grand Avenue in St. Paul, Minnesota. How­ ever, it soon became clear that she could not do all her research on that specific bus, so she treated all the" Grand Avenue busses" as a single kind of place. She could have enlarged this category to "city busses" and treated them all as a kind of place, a social situation with various actors and activities. When Nelson (1969:228-45) studied Eskimo hunting, he treated many different locations for hunting seals as a single kind of place: breathing holes. He did not do all his observing at a single breathing hole since this would have greatly limited his discoveries. As he observed at a variety of breathing holes, he saw Eskimo hunters engaged in a complex set of ac­ tivities. Another distinct kind of place, "the ice edge," is the basis for another kind of seal hunting and another distinct social situation. In your research you may observe at a single, specific location or at a single, identifiable kind of place with several locations; in either case you will be doing participant observation in a physical place, which is a primary element of any social situation.

40

LOCATING A SOCIAL SITUATION

Actors

Every social situation includes people who are considered particular kinds of actors. A businessman, a widow, and a child line up at a supermarket check-out counter. All become customers (a kind of actor) for the brief period of time they are in this social situation. At a busy intersection people become street crossers; on a bus they become bus riders and a bus driver; at seal holes and at the edge of the sea ice they become hunters. In Brady's Bar, where my colleague and I did ethnographic research, the people be­ came one or another kind of customer, employee, or manager (Spradley and Mann 1975). As you search for a social situation for doing participant observation, you will need to keep in mind this second basic element, the kinds of actors people become.

When we first enter a social situation it is often difficult to know what kind of actors are present. All the investigator sees are people; with repeated observations one begins to notice the differences in clothing, behavior, demeanor, terms of identity, and other features that people use to identify the various actors in the situation. For example, when Northrop (1978) began observing people running on an indoor track, they all appeared to be "people who were running." Later, several distinct types of actors emerged, including newcomers, visitors, regulars, track team members, and long­ distance runners. In selecting a social situation it isn't necessary to distin­ guish various types of actors; one only needs to know that people are present who are actors because they are engaging in some kind of activity, even if it is merely loitering.

Activities

The third primary element in every social situation is the activities that take place. At first, the ethnographer may see only a stream of behavior, hundreds of acts that all seem distinct. With repeated observations individ­ ual acts begin to fall into recognizable patterns of activity like hunting, sprinting, ordering drinks, selecting a seat on the bus, and bagging groceries at the supermarket check-out counter.

Sometimes sets of activities are linked together into larger patterns called events. Taking inventory in a supermarket, holding a track meet at a college, taking a hunting trip, holding a revival meeting in a church, and graduating from high school are all events made up of many different activities. Actu­ ally, the line between an activity and an event is often difficult to clearlY. identify. When the ethnographer begins research it may be impossible to know whether different activities constitute an event. Events often occur in many different social situations: a wedding, for example, may involve the rehearsal, the wedding breakfast, the marriage ceremony, the reception, and the chase. As the actors involved in a wedding move from place to place

41

THE DEVELOPMENTAL RESEARCH SEQUENCE

and do many different things, an ethnographer from another culture would not know these activities were all linked together into a larger event called a "wedding." It is best to begin participant observation by observing and recording activities (the smaller units of behavior) in a social situation; as work proceeds, the structure of events will become clear.

Related Social Situations

It is usually best to begin ethnography by locating a single social situation. However, you may decide to begin with several closely related social situa­ tions. Or, once your research is under way, you may want to expand it to include several. In either case it is useful to identify three main ways social situations can be related.

1. Clusters of Social Situations. Even the simplest social situation which you thought involved a single location may turn out to include a cluster of social situations. Let's say you decide to become a participant observer at a nearby playground that covers half a city block. You can observe all the actors and activities from a single observation post. On a brief visit it appears to be a social situation: you observe a group of children playing on the swings. and climbing bars; their parents are helping them or sitting on a bench beside the play area. But on subsequent visits and with more obser­ vations you discover that you are really studying a cluster of closely related social situations that include (1) the swings, (2) the bench where parents sit, (3) the sidewalk that bisects the park and is used for walking and skating, and (4) the embankment at the far end where teenagers congregate to talk and smoke. A cluster of social situations, as in this example, is linked by physical proximity (see Figure 7). The four situations at the playground can all be observed from a single place; they are connected in space. At Brady's Bar, although it was a small establishment, we discovered a cluster of social situations including the main bar, the waitress stations, the tables, and the telephone (Spradley and Mann 1975).

Sometimes the places included in a cluster of social situations may appear quite arbitrary. For example, in observing at the playground you may also be able to see automobiles and bicycles on the street, a man mowing his lawn at a distant house, and two telephone linemen repairing wires about fifty yards south of the playground. Should all of these actors and activities be included in a related cluster of social situations? Eventually you will want to try and decide on the basis of what the people in the playground think are related. For purposes of research, and especially for getting started in participant observation, it is not necessary to solve this problem. You can select a single social situation, expand your observations to take in a few that appear related, and leave others until later or simply exclude them from your research if they prove to be unimportant to the people you are studying.

42

/ /

/

Place: Playground

FIGURE 7. A Cluster of Social Situations

LOCATING A SOCIAL SITUATION

/ /

/

2. A Network of Social Situations. In addition to social situations linked together by physical proximity, others are connected because the same people are actors in different situations. In complex societies people move about from place to place, interacting with a wide range of other people. A student may participate in the following social situations in the course of a single morning: family breakfast, bus stop, chemistry laboratory, library study hall, and restaurant. Although these constitute a network of social situations for this particular student, the great variety of people make it difficult to do participant observation at all these places.

As ethnographers, we are interested in those networks of social situations where the same group of people share in the activities. Consider the follow­ ing example. David Gordon set out to study a religious movement in Chicago called the "Jesus People" (1974). For a period of eight months he

43

THE DEVELOPMENTAL RESEARCH SEQUENCE

engaged in participant observation to discover the patterns of culture com­ mon to this group. He observed in one social situation they called "Bible studies," but the Jesus People were involved in a network of social situa­ tions, all of which eventually became sites for Gordon's research. These included Bible studies, revival meetings, street witnessing, marches, speak­ ing engagements in churches and schools, and appearances on radio and television talk shows. This was not merely a single person moving through different situations, but an organized group of people who shared a network of social situations. We can represent a set of linked social situations that form a network by the diagram in Figure 8.

3. Social Situations with Similar Activities. Social situations can become linked for the investigator in a third way: through the similarity in activities.

Actors: The Jesus People

FIGURE 8. A Network of Social Situations

44

LOCATING A SOCIAL SITUATION

As your research progresses, you may want to expand it by identifying a single kind of activity (for example, swimming, waiting in line, buying used cars), then finding other places to observe similar activities. For instance, if you studied swimming, you could conduct observations in backyard swim­ ming pools, rivers, lakes, and public pools, all the time focusing on this one kind of activity.

We can contrast activities in a single social situation with an activity in several social situations by looking briefly at two studies that focused on cultural rules for standing in line. Ferry (1978) selected a single social situation, the credit department of a large department store. He stationed himself at a convenient place where several lines would develop, with people seeking to cash checks or take care of other credit matters. Mann (1973), on the other hand, studied the same phenomenon but in many different places. He observed lines at theaters, football games, and other places where tickets were scarce. He also drew information from newspaper reports about long lines of people waiting for scarce tickets. Although the places and actors varied, his research focused on similar activities (see Figure 9).

To summarize: all social situations involve the three primary elements of place, actors, and activities. By keeping this in mind, the beginning ethnog­ rapher can easily locate one or more social situations for research. From the start you will probably see how your single social situation is linked to others. In time you may decide to include other social situations in your research project. Some will be related by physical proximity, forming a cluster of social situations. Others will be related by the same group of people who move from one place to another; then you may want to study a network of social situations. Finally, you may decide to focus on a single activity in a social situation and then extend your research by finding other places where similar activities occur.

SELECTION CRITERIA

Participant observation can serve many different purposes. Each inves­ tigator will have different reasons for selecting a particular setting for re­ search. Wolcott (1967), for example, selected a Kwakiutl village and its school because of his interest in cross-cultural education. Walum (1974) selected a number of doors on a college campus where men and women entered buildings; she wanted to examine male and female interaction. The following criteria are designed with the beginning ethnographer in mind. If you follow these guidelines for selecting a research project, you will increase your chances for a successful study and also for learning the skills required for doing participant observation.

45

THE DEVELOPMENTAL RESEARCH SEQUENCE

Activity: Waiting in line

FIGURE 9. Social Situations and Similar Activities

Simplicity

I have already identified this criterion by suggesting that you select a single social situation. All participant observation is done in settings that fall somewhere along a continuum from the simplest social situation to the most complex clusters and networks of social situations. Consider the two proj­ ects identified in the previous paragraph: a Kwakiutl village and a set of doors on a college campus. Blackfish Village in British Columbia, where Wolcott did his participant observation, had a population of 125 children and adults, which represented only about thirteen families. However, his re­ search took him to hundreds of different social situations-in the school, along village paths in the woods, in homes, on boats, along the waterfront, and in many other places. It took more than a year of intensive research to

46

LOCATING A SOCIAL SITUATION

discover the culture of this tiny but complex native American village. Walum, on the other hand, studied a single type of social situation: doors through which people passed. Her study is no less sophisticated but only more limited in scope. Each study involved participant observation, but Wolcott's in a Kwakiutl village required a great deal more time, more involvement, and the use of many different strategies for collecting data.

The great advantage to the beginner of doing participant observation in simple settings is that one can learn to do ethnography in the course of actually doing original research. As you consider social situations that lie along the continuum from simple to complex, select one that lies closer to the simple end of the continuum. Later, with more experience, you will find it easier to navigate in more complex social settings.

Accessibility

Social situations offer varying degrees of accessibility. You can enter some settings easily, participate freely in the activities, and record your observations. Others offer easy access the first time and then become difficult or impossible to enter again. Consider several different social situa­ tions in a bank.

You could do participant observation at the entrance to a bank, at the lines in front of the tellers' windows, inside the employee restrooms, or inside the bank vault. Research at all these places would be interesting and useful in understanding the bank culture. However, there are striking differences in the degree of access to these social situations. The bank entrance offers the greatest accessibility for participant observation. If you studied the lines inside, you could easily enter, wait in line, cash a check, then leave. But repeated observations and participation would be more difficult. If you waited in line several times each day, sooner or later someone might become suspicious. Either at the entrance or in the lines you would probably want to inform the bank officials of your study and gain their permission. If you decided to observe in the employee restroom, even with permission your access would greatly decrease. And the bank vault could prove to be completely inaccessible. It would offer a unique challenge for research, but even with permission, much of your time would involve waiting to get into the vault and your activities would arouse considerable suspicion among the vault's users.

Consider some other social situations with varied degrees of access. Family dinners are less accessible than street corners. Corporation board meetings are less accessible than local playgrounds. Hospital operating rooms are less accessible than school lunchrooms. City jails are less acces­ sible than city council meetings. All these settings offer significant oppor­ tunities for doing ethnography, but those that are less accessible present the beginning ethnographer with unnecessary complications for learning to do

47

THE DEVELOPMENTAL RESEARCH SEQUENCE

research. If you select an operating room rather than a school lunchroom, for example, you will probably spend weeks learning valuable lessons about gaining access. However, you may have little chance to practice observing, recording, analyzing, and writing up your ethnographic data. As you con­ sider your own interests and the remaining criteria, keep in mind that the greater the accessibility of a social situation, the better your opportunities for learning to do ethnography. Later, after having gained experience, you can undertake more challenging situations.

Unobtrusiveness

When anthropologists study in small, non-Western communities, they stand out like a giant sunflower in a field of daisies. Colin Turnbull, for example, a white anthropologist who towers well over six feet could not downplay his presence among Mrican pygmies. He could not blend un­ noticed into the crowd or participate in activities. One reason anthropolog­ ical fieldwork requires many months of fulltime involvement is that the ethnographer must deal with all the responses to his or her presence. In doing participant observation for a short period, and with the goal of learning fieldwork skills, a low profile has distinct advantages.

Some settings offer much better possibilities for remaining unobtrusive than others. Public places like busses, restaurants, busy sidewalks, shopping malls, football games, airports, and libraries help to reduce the ethnog­ rapher's visibility. Hagstrom ( 1978) studied the process of becoming a regu­ lar at a small neighborhood restaurant. She remained unobtrusive by assum­ ing the role of customer. She would enter the restaurant several mornings each week and sit in an out-of-the-way booth, where, almost unnoticed, she could drink coffee and write fieldnotes for more than an hour. Estenson (1978), on the other hand, could not remain so obscure in her study of picketers at an abortion clinic. At first she tried to observe from across a wide, busy street but could not see the details of behavior. When she moved closer, the picketers noticed her watching them and wondered whether she was "one of them." Finally, to reduce her visibility, she moved inside the clinic itself and made her observations through a large window. Although she was able to conduct the research in an effective manner, many of the difficulties arose from her high visibility.

Participant observation almost always means some degree of unobtru­ siveness. You may even seek the challenge that comes with a social situation where you will be highly visible. Rather than seeking to eliminate all obtru­ siveness and concealing your presence completely, it is probably best to weigh carefully the extent to which a social situation will call attention to your activities. As a beginning ethnographer, you will increase the chances for successful research by selecting a setting that does not call direct atten­ tion to your activities.

48

LOCATING A SOCIAL SITUATION

Permissibleness

In every society some social situations cannot be studied without permis­ sion from someone. Deciding whether to seek permission, locating the persons who can grant permission, explaining the nature of your research, and finally gaining permission can become time-consuming activities. If the beginning ethnographer can circumvent some of these difficulties, it will facilitate both the research process and the learning of participant observa­ tion skills. We can consider three types of social situations from the perspective of acquiring permission for research.

Infree-entry social situations, the ethnographer can do research without seeking permission. Edgerton (1978), for example, did ethnographic re­ search on a large ocean beach in Southern California. Thousands of people congregated on this beach each day during the summer and he simply became an anonymous participant and observed what happened. Although he obtained permission for individual interviews, much of his data was gathered by participant observation. He observed, for example, the way people claimed a small territory for personal use, spread out their beach towels, and protected their belongings. It would have been virtually impos­ sible to gain permission from all the people he watched. Nash (1975) did not need permission to ride the city bus in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Furthermore, it would have been impossible and unnecessary to ask all riders for permission to make observations. Many, if not all, public places offer free entry. In selecting a social situation for learning to do participant observation, those that offer free entry will help pave the way to a successful research project.

Limited-entry social situations require permission from one or more per­ sons before conducting research. Private offices, barber shops, an alco­ holism treatment center, hospital emergency room, and a private home represent limited-entry situations. Even public places like a school will usually require the permission of at least the principal and the teacher in whose classroom you make observations. In some schools you may even need to get the permission of each child's parents. Limited-entry social situations can become excellent places to do your first field study, provided the permission-gaining process goes smoothly. Verin (1978), for example, studied a classroom where deaf children were "mainstreamed" with hearing children. She approached the school principal and a teacher in one class; permission came easily and quickly. During her research she had the sup­ port and interest of the teacher; she sat in the back of the room and recorded what took place. Rather than eliminating limited-entry social situations from your list of possibilities, try to estimate the time and work involved in gaining permission. A phone call to the right person can help you decide whether you can gain permission easily or whether it will involve numerous delays. Seeking permission, if it doesn't become complicated and time consuming, can enrich the fieldwork learning experience.

49

THE DEVELOPMENTAL RESEARCH SEQUENCE

Restricted-entry social situations, the third type, have a high probability that permission will be extremely difficult or impossible to acquire. Groups engaged in criminal activities, street gangs, secret societies, and closed meetings in churches or corporations all have restrictions that make partici­ pant observation difficult. If you had many months to gain the trust and confidence of members, you still might study any of these groups. Soloway and Walters (1977), for example, studied active heroin addicts, and Keiser (1969) did participant observation among the Vice Lords, a street gang. However, the difficulties in such situations mean that gaining permission can take weeks and even months of patient work. Once you have made a list of interesting social situations to study, it is best for the beginning fieldworker to cross off those that will present restricted entry problems.

Frequently Recurring Activities

In order to discover the cultural rules for behavior, you will need to observe a large sample of similar activities repeated over and over. If you select an isolated suburban intersection in order to study the cultural rules for crossing streets, you will observe far fewer instances of this activity than at a busy intersection downtown. An important criterion, then, for selecting a social situation is the frequency of recurrent activities. Ehrman (1978) studied waiting behavior at a busy airport and easily found hundreds of people waiting for an airplane departure. Had she decided instead to study sleeping behavior in public, an activity that did occur in the airport, the relative infrequency of sleeping would have limited her research. The goal is to select a social situation in which some activities frequently recur.

The frequency with which the same activities are repeated depends, in part, on the time selected for observation. If you go to a local supermarket to observe the check-out counters at 9:15 each morning, you may discover little activity. However, if you go during the peak rush period between five and six each evening, you will see the same activities repeated again and again. Beginning ethnographers often make the mistake of searching for social situations with a great variety of activities. Unless some are recurrent and acted out repeatedly, the situation will not serve your research purposes adequately. Because it is often difficult to anticipate the activities you will observe in a social situation, you may have to apply this criterion after your research is under way. You cannot observe everything; in deciding what to focus on, try to select those activities that recur with a relatively high frequency. Tolzmann (1978) studied an urban arcade located between a number of stores in a large city. At first she wanted to observe the dangers people encountered in this impersonal, public place. However, it soon became evident . that she could not actually observe many instances of dangerous threats; they simply did not occur often enough. So she shifted her focus to those activities intended to maximize safety and reduce intrusion of

50

LOCATING A SOCIAL SITUATION

personal space. Immediately she found numerous instances of such ac­ tivities. The steps in the D.R.S. Method, as I have emphasized earlier, have a dual goal: to learn to do ethnography while at the same time actually conducting original research. You will achieve this dual purpose more read­ ily if you carefully select a social situation in which activities are frequently repeated.

Participation

Ethnographers do not merely make observations, they also participate. Participation allows you to experience activities directly, to get the feel of what events are like, and to record your own perceptions. At the same time, the ethnographer can hardly ever become a complete participant in a social situation. In Step Two we will examine different degrees and forms of participation; at this point in selecting a social situation, you should look for ones that offer the best opportunities for participation.

Consider the possibilities for participation in two contrasting social situa­ tions. First, if you studied the tacit rules for behavior in a library you could easily participate by looking for books, sitting at tables, checking out books, and returning books. This personal involvement would enable you to test observations about what other people did in the library and to explore the culture more fully than you could do by observation alone. On the other hand, if you studied the behavior of a surgical team in an operating room of a hospital, you would undoubtedly have to remain a spectator. Although you could gather important data, even as a spectator you would not know the feelings and perceptions of a participant. Ethnographers frequently en­ counter situations that hold little opportunity for participation; they must then depend on observation alone and ethnographic interviews (see Spradley 1979). For example, in tribal societies the ethnographer probably won't get married, give birth to children, or go through a puberty rite, but will observe such events. In these cases, collecting data always depends on extensive ethnographic interviews.

As you consider possible social situations for research, try to imagine how you would participate. In the Seattle criminal court where I studied arraign­ ment and sentencing of skid row men, I participated as a spectator, an accepted role in that court. In our research on cocktail waitresses, Mann (1976) became a full participant, taking employment as a cocktail waitress at Brady's Bar. Maisel (1974) studied a flea market where people bought and sold used goods. He participated by buying, browsing, and selling. Hayano (1978) studied the culture of a large urban poker parlor; he became a participant by playing poker. Singwi (1976) studied the cultural rules in a small restaurant through the role of waitress, while Hagstrom (1978) did a similar study but participated in the role of customer. The best social situations for learning to do ethnography offer ample opportunity to partici-

51

THE DEVELOPMENTAL RESEARCH SEQUENCE

pate in a natural way, and also allow you on occasion to act as an observer only, taking notes and watching others' activities. Kruft found this balance in studying a blood bank (1978). As a participant she went frequently to give plasma, to find out what one experiences as a blood donor. On most occa­ sions it was necessary for her to wait her turn to give blood, during which time she was able to observe and take fieldnotes.

I have identified five criteria to be used in selecting a social situation for doing participant observation: ( 1) simplicity, (2) accessibility, (3) unobtru­ siveness, (4) permissibleness, and (5) frequently recurring activities. Al­ though these criteria cannot all be met to the highest degree in a single social situation, they are offered here as guidelines for making an initial choice. You will want to balance them against personal interest, time constraints, and theoretical concerns. As your skills at doing participant observation improve, some of the criteria will become less important. But the beginning ethnographer will acquire ethnographic skills more easily if fieldwork is done in a social situation selected on the basis of the five criteria.

Tasks 1.1 Make a list of at least fifty social situations In which one could engage In

participant observation. 1.2 Identify the five or six best situations In terms of your own Interests and

the five selection criteria discussed.

52