Inviting Emotional Connections to Ethnographic Research

Abstract

Two central struggles facing activist scholars, including critical ethnographers of education, are (a) power relations researchers and participants navigate and (b) dissemination of our work to reach multiple audiences, including study participants and others outside academia. This one-act ethnodrama was written as part of a critical ethnography of a community change initiative. Ethnodrama is an appropriate choice given roles afforded participants and audience in which emotional connections and closeness of data and experience are highlighted.

Critical Ethnographies of Education and for Social and Educational Transformation: A Meta-Ethnography

“…Freire (1970) calls this process of gaining critical consciousness a process of conscientization. The first step is to take sides and commit to working in the interests of change (Ares, 2016; Beach, 2010) and with as much mutual trust as possible (Beach & Sernhede, 2012; Dixson et al, 2015; Harris, 2010). High familiarity with and extensive firsthand knowledge about the social and material conditions and interests of those whose lives are being researched and represented, helps to close social distance and establish strong objectivity (Harding, 1995; Thomas, 1993; Weis & Fine, 2018).…”

“…Such research is unjust according to critical ethnographers, as it uses the labor of others to produce value without publicly recognizing or compensating them fairly, which is both dishonest and unethical (Dennis, 2018). The examples in Table 2 are very clear about this point and they all express commitments to be fair to participants and to develop not just rapport but trust (Ares, 2016; Beach, 2020; Vannini & Vannini, 2019), by taking the time needed to recognize value in the places researched and the people there. They marked two further common research characteristics.…”

“…Accepting marginalization in society and culture as resulting from weaknesses in marginalized groups from territorially stigmatized areas is a common misunderstanding in education research (Beach, 2017a, 2017b; Dixson et al, 2015). Yet it is also ridiculously out of touch with reality (Ares, 2016; Beach, 2006; Beach & Sernhede, 2011, 2012; Dixson et al, 2015; Harris, 2010). Marginalization always has other grounds than those inherent in individual shortcomings, because although many marginalized and oppressed individuals will have played the high-stakes education game and lost (Sernhede, 2007), this “loss” is not because of their own inabilities.…”

“…Schools are places where the possibilities created for achievement are insufficient for all to do well, and although there is an understanding that pupils compete over these possibilities based on nominal equality, they differ markedly in terms the resources they can access to support their performances (Beach, 2017a, 2017b; Widigson, 2013). Most of them will therefore not have been defeated because of their inabilities, but by the system and the achievements of their competitors (Ares, 2016; Beach, 2018; Beach & Dovemark, 2011; Dixson et al, 2015).…”

Echoing Ghosts

“…While ethnodrama adapts ethnographic research data, the language scripted in a play form to be performed more lively articulated so the word can challenge privilege, silencing, misrepresentation, inequity, and help incite people to engage difficult questions that research. This also can contribute the literature’s accessibility to reach expanded audiences, including those who participate and who live outside of academia (Ares, 2016; Saldaña, 2005, 2008a, 2010, 2017).…”