Ethnotale

The field of disaster sociology, or the sociology of disaster, was born out of a need to understand the social impacts of a wide range of catastrophes and since its beginnings in the early 20th century, sociologists have been on…

We always tell our participants that there are no wrong answers, and it’s true. They are the experts, and if we’re not learning what we want from them, the blame is likely on us. Maybe our goals or our expectations…

Should ethnographers use tripods or not? The question may seem trivial, but thanks to Margaret Mead, tripods signify two very distinct approaches to ethnographic filmmaking. In terms of practicality, tripods can be cumbersome in the field. There’s plenty of sit-down…

In early 2019, one of our clients asked us to do an interview and video diary study for them entirely online. We were open to the idea but a little skeptical. We had never done online research before and it…

After more than a couple of decades of being a professional ethnographer, I think it’s safe to say that I’ve seen it all. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. I mean it in an authentic way. I’ve…

The bonds ethnographers make with their participants can come in unexpected ways. Years ago I was in Australia studying hair loss, and my participant’s apartment looked like it would be walkable from the hotel. This was back when we used…

Analysis is a sacred and labor-intensive element of our work at Ethnographic Research, Inc. Sometimes we hear about ethnography timelines that have reporting slotted just a couple of days after the end of fieldwork and we aren’t sure how that…

We never really know what to expect when we roll up to do ethnographic fieldwork. Even though we’ve been doing ethnography for more than 30 years, arriving at a participant’s home or workplace always feels a little like our first…

The political divide in the United States has been a stark reminder of how people can experience and interpret the world in very different ways. No matter what side you are on, it can be hard to see where the…

It’s not our imagination—observing health care provider/patient interactions was simpler when Ethnographic Research, Inc. opened its doors in 2001. This was before HIPAA’s Privacy Rule, its Security Rule, and its HITECH Rule all went into effect, and although these are…

At Ethnographic Research, Inc., we always emphasize the value of social theory in ethnography and its ability to add depth and nuance to our results. It is like having the ghosts of sociology’s past prodding us to consider looking at…

Like carpenters who build dream houses from simple wood and concrete, it takes a lot of work for ethnographers to build dazzling insights from raw data. Doing analysis is where we spend the vast majority of our time. Still, an…

With COVID-19 moving a lot of market research online, we thought it’d be a good idea to highlight some considerations for getting deeper insights using remote and online methodologies. Although most of our work usually includes an in-person visit, we…

One of the great things about being a sociologist AND a mom is that I got to watch 3 kids grow up from scratch. If I hadn’t been so exhausted when my kids were younger, I would have taken better…

I like to say that our theme song here at Ethnographic Research, Inc. is I’ve been everywhere man . We travel a lot, a whole lot, but more importantly, our ‘office’ (when doing fieldwork) can be almost anywhere. Since one…

I had been doing ethnographic research for almost a decade when I began working for businesses about 17 years ago. Honestly, I wasn’t sure that the methodology would ‘transfer’ very well. Prior to my work for corporate consumption, I had…

A few months ago I had an interesting interaction on an airplane that illustrated how different the ethnographic approach to understanding is from the typical American’s approach to knowing. We regularly make assumptions about situations and people in daily life,…

All cultures have their own language and ways of communicating meaning that extend well beyond the spoken/written word. Signs, symbols, gestures, and icons all have varying meaning, depending on the context in which they are found. Often sub-cultures have ways…

In my business it is important to try to blend in. No matter who we are hanging out with, it is essential that we look like we belong and are able to put our participants at ease. Each ethnographer has…

When I was earning my undergraduate degree, there was a required class called Sociological Theory. The first time I became aware of the class was when a bunch of my classmates were sitting around, talking about what they were going…

One of the first things people ask me when they find out I’m a sociologist is ‘Are you studying me right now?’ And if I’m being honest, the answer is usually ‘yes.’ I think people are fascinating and I wonder…

Remember a few years ago when Bissell came out with the tag line ‘Life is messy, clean it up’? I LOVED that campaign and also the sentiment behind it. Because the truth is, life IS messy. And consequently, real answers…

Social scientists and philosophers have been arguing about ‘reality’ for a while now. There are generally two approaches to how reality is understood and measured by social scientists. Those taking a positivistic approach believe that although people may ‘see’ things…

I always tell clients that one of the benefits of an ethnographic approach is that you get really close to the action or the ‘thing’ that you want to learn about. And I do mean REALLY close. I often compare…

A few years ago we were hired to observe doctors and nurses inserting central venous catheters in hospitals and clinics in order to identify opportunities for reducing the possibility of infection. We had been working on the project for a…

When I used to teach introduction to sociology and sociology of marriage and family, I always had my classes watch the movie “Fiddler on the Roof”. It was a great way to bring to life many of the sociological concepts…

A few years ago we were hired to help our client understand what it was like to live with schizophrenia. We were given the unusual luxury of time, so we got to spend an entire year with our participants and…

Usually the things that I get to do in the field are sooooo cool. But my job also often requires me to do things that are outside of my comfort zone. Seriously, I do things when I’m working that I…

I’ve been a professional ethnographer for more than a decade and there are recurring themes in the questions I’m asked about my work. When I tell people what I do for a living, the first response is generally ‘I didn’t…

We’re doing our collaborative analysis this week for our study on the luxury lifestyle in India. In honor of that, here are a few more tales we haven’t told from John’s and Kazuyo’s weeks in Mumbai, Ludhiana and Bangalore. Hospitality…

“Du bist, was du ißt.” – “You are what you eat.” This meaningful insight into the sociocultural importance of eating is not just recognized by health food and diet gurus worldwide. Looking at the place of food in a society…

After a mix up with flights and luggage, I got to ride through rural northern India, in the state of Punjab, at dusk and into the night. It was dark and the streets were lit only by moonlight and oncoming…

I just arrived in Berlin to spend a week following up on the first half of fieldwork Melinda accomplished. Here’s a few tidbits from my arrival: – Customs was easy breezy! Just a couple of kiosks outside the arrival gate.…

We’ll be bringing you some of Kazuyo and John’s experiences in India over the next several weeks… Negotiating with an Auto-Rickshaw Driver One morning, I went to a fancy hotel in Bangalore to do context mapping. The hotel people were…

The rhythm of Mumbai Landing in Mumbai three days ago, I walked off the plane after a 15-hour flight into a sweaty oven of an airport terminal. Now to the baggage claim. After waiting in the wrong carousel for 20…

I’ve never really been a football fan but I cannot be more amazed with all that’s happening with Spain winning the World Cup for the first time in its history. I have never seen so many people so collectively happy!…

Wow, here is my quick update/cultural experience of arriving to India. Even at ORD airport, the gate heading to India had a little more chaotic feeling to it. Not an unpleasant one. It’s just didn’t feel ordinary. Let’s say compared…

Kazuyo and John are headed to India. In fact, Kazuyo is probably on a plane as we speak, and John will join her in a little over a week. We’ve traveled all over the world and our stop in India…

Driving scares me. I have never been good at it. I’ve had a number of car wrecks, like a vicious one just two weeks after I bought my first car as a teenager. Yes, it was my fault. Driving has…

We left our last conversation talking about narrative and how we get to learn a whole lot about people by dropping our assumptions about their experiences. In other words, we let them guide our process of understanding through their narrative,…

I just finished the book Nurture Shock: New Thinking about Children (2009, Hachette Book Group) by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. It blew my mind as a parent and as an ethnographer because it provided an overwhelming presentation of social…

My cousin did the Peace Corps in South Africa in the early 2000s. Last night while talking with her on the phone I asked about the history of the vuvuzela. She laughed and responded, “I didn’t see a single vuvuzela…

As the world’s most watched sport, soccer [or football as it’s know throughout much of the world] dates back thousands of years. In this year’s World Cup in South Africa, 32 teams will battle for glory, each carrying forth a…

As ethnographers, we get to travel to a lot of new places, but sometimes we visit places we’ve been to before. Recently I went to Austin, Texas, where I had lived four years ago when my oldest daughter was three.…

We are wrapping up a project for a client in the automotive industry. During our collaborative analysis we discovered some pretty fantastic insights around generations, communication and technology, precisely what we had been studying a couple months earlier during ERI’s…

We’re sitting here getting ready to start analysis from 3:30-9:30 p.m. to share what we have learned over the past four weeks. Picture the four of us sitting in a room for two days hashing it out, watching video, agreeing,…

Yesterday I spent three hours with a local realtor considered a key opinion leader in her field. Towards the end of our time together, she gave me one of the biggest compliments you can give an ethnographer. “I forgot you…

This morning I accompanied my 83-year-old grandma to court. Two weeks ago she received a ticket on her way home from church when she failed to move into the center lane as she passed a police officer who had pulled…

We had just finished spending two hours with a handsome, lovely young couple in Boston for our study on facial hygiene. We got a tour of their home and spent a good chunk of our time in their bathroom as…

People often wonder how we’re able to go into people’s homes for several hours, with a video camera, and talk to them about their lives–not to mention that they are willing to show us inside their cupboards, trash cans and…

Top 10 things we recently discovered during fieldwork with kids about family gaming and communication/technology. 10. Just how quickly a video game can suck them into “the zone”. And what the zone actually is. 9. Just how fast a text…

For the past several months we have been talking with families to learn more about how different generations communicate and how technology impacts their day-to-day decisions about communicating. Whoa, is this ever a rich, broad and diverse ethnography! We’re talking…

We spent time with women and mothers to learn more about how they approach the holiday season, and specifically, how they go about sending holiday cards. We learned about their annual traditions, how they decorate their homes, what they try…

Of all our projects on health and illness, this was one of our favorites. We wanted to better understand how having acromegaly impacts the daily life of the men and women who have it. To learn, we spent time with…

Tis’ the season for wishful thinking. That’s why here at ERI we have put together our holiday wish list of ethnographies we would just LOVE to undertake. Take a look, and if you think of something else that might be…

We tell our clients that ethnography brings us up close and personal with their consumers and allows us to journey into their lives–be it for a week or more, a day or a few hours. Travel is an ethnographic necessity.…

I love working as an ethnographer because I get to be a perpetual student! Each project I work on, each fieldwork I do, is fresh and exciting in its own right. Every one has a story to tell, given the…

I always knew that I wanted to be a sociologist, I just didn’t know what it was called! Growing up in a family of 9 kids sure taught me a lot about people and the nature of social interactions. Then…

Hujambo rafiki! As some of you may know, this summer I went to beautiful Tanzania for 3 weeks with National Geographic Student Expeditions. I did some things I expected (like meeting some wonderful new people) and some things I didn’t…

There are so many things I love about working as an ethnographer — traveling and experiencing new places, meeting new people and learning about their lives and traits, looking inside new unknown subcultures, and being able to go to spaces…