Resum lectura 1 Goffman

RESUM LECTURA 1 Lyn H. Lofland (translator and editor) introduction This is a transcription of a tape-recorded talk given by E. Goffman during the 1917 Pacific Sociological Association Meetings, although at the beginning of his talk he asked that no recordings be made. Premature death in 1982. Goffman never published anything on the topic of discussing data collection and analysis procedures. Goffman speech John Lofland’s remarks that what you get in this entire attempt to articulate techniques is rationalizations and we’re in the precarious position of providing them. By participant observation I mean the study technique that you can feature (and can be useful) in some studies. It’s about getting data by subjecting yourself ―body, personality and your own social situation― to the set of contingencies that play upon a set of individuals, so that you can physically and ecologically penetrate their circle of response to their social, work, ethnic situation, or whatsoever. It’s about pick up on their minor grunts and groans as they respond to their situation. Try to subject yourself which means that you act as if you can’t leave and you try to accept all of the desirable and undesirable things that are a feature of their life. With “tuned-up body” you are in position to note their gestural, visual, bodily response to what’s going on around them and you’re empathetic enough to sense what it is that they’re responding to (core of observation). You have to get in the situation as one more social actor. Artificially forcing yourself to be tuned into something that you then pick up as a witness. Two main issues: 1) what you do after you get the data, and 2) how you go about acquiring the data. Two general problems: 1) getting into place (so that you can be in a position to acquire data) and 2) exploitation of that place once you get into it. [GETTING INTO PLACE] There are certain (explicit but many implicit) rules. You develop rationales for why you should be there and you have to anticipate being questioned by the people whom you study so you engage in providing a story (called “telling” practices). What it would be like to be discredited, but not meaning moral issues, but concerts about the fact they would be discovered and be humiliated. You can act as you’re somebody you’re not and get away with it fr a year or two, but that bears on the ethical and professional issues attached to participation observation. You have to get some story. The next thing is to cut your life to the bone, in the sense of removing yourself from all resources. Naked to the bone and having as few resources as you can get by with. Every world provides substance for the people, provides a life. That’s what you’re about, that’s what you’re trying to get quickly, so the way to get it is to need it. Some self-discipline is required. You have to change your relationship to the way you manage anxieties and stress of the social networks around you. Find out what the various classes of individuals are that are involved in the place and about the internal cleavages within the class and choose which one you’re going to accept as your own. You have to be young to do fieldwork because it requires being an ass. You have to engage in a strategy with respect to costume, this means a mix of changing costume, which the natives will accept as a reasonable thing, that isn’t complete mimicry and isn’t completely retaining your own identity either. There’s the issue of what you do with confidants and unless that friend is in a structural position of not being able to retell the stories, then I don’t think you should talk to anybody. 1

There are also test that you can run on whether you’ve really penetrated the society that you’re supposed to be studying, but the real test of penetrating a group are if you could settle down and forget about being a sociologist, the potential lovers should become attractive to you. In other words, you should be able to engage in the same body rhythms, rate of movement, tapping of the feet as the people around you. [EXPLOITING PLACE] I’ll review this business of “getting in”. Your point is to get as close to some set of individuals as possible. You’ve got to control your associations. You’ve got to really be strategic and militant about the way you handle these social relationships. About exploitation of the place you’re in, you should spend at least a year in the field. The affiliation issue is that you can’t move down a social system, you can only move up a social system. Note taking: two minutes or a minute on note taking (per day). The first day you should take notes all the time and every night you should type up your field notes. Learn to fake offphase note taking. Better write your notes before an act has begun or after it starts so that people won’t be able to link the events. You shouldn’t take too many notes. What to do with information? I try to triangulate what they’re saying with events. You should seek multi-person situations so you’ve got a better chance of seeing things the way they ordinarily are. We tend to try to write defensible statements, defensible prose. That’s the worst possible thing you can do, instead, write lushly and loosely as you can. To be scientific in this area, start to trust yourself and write as fully and lushly as you can. I believe that people shouldn’t read your field notes because it’s going to influence the things you write about. Put yourself into situations that you write about so that later on you’ll see how to qualify what it’s you’ve said: “I felt that”, “my feeling was” or “I had a feeling that”. This is part of the self-discipline.

Preguntes: ●

Tot el seu raonament està basat en recerques a llarg termini i sembla que en societats llargament distanciades de la seva (o la nostra també). Els seus “consells” o coneixements sobre com dur a terme la recerca són aplicables a tot tipus de societats i contextos? O dit de la mateixa manera, aquests arguments es podrien il·lustrar en altres casos?

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Què entén l’autor quan defineix l’observació participant per “so that you can physically and ecologically penetrate their circle of response to their social, work, ethnic situation”?

Font: Goffman, E. (1974/1989). On fieldwork, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 18:123-132.

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