Psychology of Work / What Kind of [Thing that You’re Not] Are YOU?

Intimidating Projects

In the last week I’ve been working on curriculum for our online ethnography class. It’s been a hard project for me. Although I agreed in theory that it could and probably should be done, =I= didn’t want to do it. This was a matter of timing more than anything else. It came on top of a winter/spring schedule I’d filled up months before. I knew, if the project intimidated me for one reason or another, I’d end up working hours much longer than I’d like (and that those hours might be spent not so much working on the project as avoiding it).

That has proved to be the case. That is a pity, because – please hear me on this, before you get indignant on my behalf – it’s ethnography, and training, and writing, I love all of those things. Also, they are things that by and large other people do not want to or know how to do, and I really value doing the things that others can’t or won’t do, if I can.

I’m disturbed by how often I see this pattern; that the things that are most important and significant – not just to others, but to me, too – are the things I sabotage and/or fail in most brilliantly.

What do you suppose is behind that? I’m rather afraid to ask. If I’m willing to peer between my fingers and face up to what I might see in the darkness of my mind and heart, I may just discover something that would change my life and set me free. Am I willing?

Defining Ethnography

“If research is aggressive, intentional learning, then ethnography is aggressive, intentional SOCIAL learning,” I wrote in one of our early lessons for the online class. “We’re learning about people, from people. We’re inviting them to teach us. Our goal is to see their world from their perspective.”

“That allows us to find out what is important to the people and what affects how they live. What we’re doing when we do ethnography is making friends and asking them to teach us to see the world on their terms, in their categories, from their point of view.”

Don’t I make it sound fascinating? Well, it is. But getting people from understanding it to habitually doing it is quite a process. How will I know they really “get” it?

Which One Are You?

I was thinking about using the following as an example of the opposite of ethnographic inquiry - of putting trying to understand people by putting them into an outsider’s categories.

Are you aware of the epidemic of “quizzes” floating around the Internet these days? They seem to have really proliferated with the growth of Facebook, although you’ll find them in lots of places it seems.

Which [character] in [fictional world] are you?
What color are you?
What movie represents your life?
If you could be any fish in the sea, what kind of fish would you be? (I haven’t seen that one on Facebook, actually, but I haven’t looked.)

They all work the same: You answer a handful of proscribed questions and are put into one of a handful of boxes, complete with an elegant description of what you’re “really” like.

Ethnography is not like that.

It's more along the lines of, “Help me understand... Tell me about yourself…”

I suppose that can be more difficult for people to answer. But the answers that unfold over time are infinitely more likely to be helpful.