Studying Communities

As part of my summer internship, I'm working with a professor from IIM-A, Dr. Navdeep Mathur, on a project funded by the Ford Foundation. We are studying the effect of displacement of the urban poor due to the Sabarmati Riverfront Development Project. As part of my preliminary field visit, we interacted with people who had been relocated into an area called Pirana. Some insights and observations:

While in the field, it is important for the ethnographer to gain the confidence of the people he/she is interacting with. Small gestures such as greeting them in their traditional language, bowing one's head, smiling, accepting things they offer (such as water or a drink), taking photographs of things they express desire to be photographed etc. will go a long way in making people look at the ethnographer as a friend of the community.

An ethnographer should also be able to appease people around him/her, especially when he/she has misunderstood or misjudged an event. When a mantally ill patient came to the shop near which we were seated, something we had said seemed to hurt the man. He explained his condition and told us his story and Binaji (the lady from the NGO, Action Aid, who was assisting us with the survey) apologised to him. This hopefully made him less hostile towards us. By patiently listening to the other person's narrative and expressing through body language that he/she is interested in their story, he/she can boost the confidence of the person being interviewed. This also attracts more people to come over and share their views and stories with us.

It is common when talking to people that they look at the ethnographer as a bridge to their solutions. They expect results, improvements, aid. A researcher is merely studying the community. He/she may be powerless in the face of reform, but his/her writing may be a tool that would enable the formation of the bridge that the people see him/her as. It is thus important that he/she explains his/her purpose of research and assure people that his/her writing would help have an effect on the educated class.

When talking to people, the ethnographer should be conscious that they are not subjects but real people, with real problems and emotions. It is important, hence, that he/she sympathises with them and is able to transcend the difference in educational qualifications, background and comfort zones to enable him/her to experience the life of the community he/she is studying.

I see the ethnographer as one who records the life of people, communities as they live, their traditions, their practices, their way of life, their work conditions, their family values and their response to the world outside their comfort sphere. He/she should be able to distinguish information that he receives from people as factual, real, impressionistic or biased. To enable a neutrality in recording, the questionnaire can be kept as close-ended as possible. Identifying oneself as part of the community and gaining the confidence of the people around can help record realistic notions but has ethical connotations attached to it. An ethnographer should also be able to keep his/her personal biases away from his/her work.