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Moral and Political Ethnography
Nina Eliasoph
To do ethnographyalso called participant-observation, the researcher both observes and
participates in situations in the research "subjects" o!n spaces, during the noral ties that the subjects
are there, doing !hatever it is that they norally do# This $ind o% research is di%%erent %ro intervie!ing,
because in an ethnographic study, your subjects are interacting already, !hether or not you are there# &t is
di%%erent %ro survey research because you cannot test variables, cannot design your hypotheses in advance
and test the, but discover categories as you go' since you are in the %ield %or a !hile, you can change your
coparisons and categories over tie# (ou are not loo$ing %or !hat is deep and hidden, but %or !hat people
can do and say together, !here, !ith !ho# )bservation is obviously the central %eature o% participant-
observation, but it !or$s best i% the researcher has a role in the setting, so that he or she can %eel %irst hand
!hat it is li$e to have to solve the pu**les that participants theselves have to solve#
+tudying political or civic involveent through ethnography allo!s you to as$ ho! people create
everyday places !here they can learn about society, learn to care about society, and epress their
coitents publicly# +tudying social coitent this !ay includes an iplicit theory o% citi*enship as
inevitably shared and interactive# &n contrast, ost research on political engageent is ore disebodied#
&t relies on surveys, intervie!s, and %ocus groups the researcher creates the contet, !hile, %or
ethnography, the !hole point is to as$ ho! participants theselves iagine and re-iagine their
relationships together ho! the participants theselves create contets# &% !e iagine deocratic or civic
virtues as inhering in people.s heads, as objects that they can carry around !ith the unused all day, and
just ta$e the out !hen it.s tie to vote, then !e !ould not !ant to do this $ind o% research# &ntervie!s
and %ocus group can approiate the ethnographic ethod, but they are still very di%%erent# / %ocus group
gives people a chance to tal$ politics, but the researcher still cannot $no! ho! the contet o% the %ocus
group di%%ers %ro the ore usual contets in !hich intervie!ees conduct political dialogue#
(ou are not trying to get to the botto o% things, %ind out the real reasons !hy people have their
opinions' you are just observing !hat they can do or say, !here, !ith !ho# &% !e !ant to understand
political engageent, !e need to understand ho! and !here people create everyday contets that a$e
political dialogue possible#
This essay !ill be very hands-on, a ho!-to that gives soe pointers about ho! to study civic
engageent and identities in everyday li%e# 0ut theori*ing is inescapable the people you are studying have
their o!n theories about !hat they are doing together, so you ust both reveal their theori*ing and copare
it to your o!n, !hich ay not atch theirs# The ethod is inetricable %ro theory, so ost o% this
hands-on !ill be about ho! to do !hat soe o% us call theory by !ay o% ethnography 12laeser 34456#
Most o% the essay gives conceptual tools that allo! you to practice the art o% ta$ing %ieldnotes,
since these notes are the heart and soul o% an ethnographic study# &n that long section on ho! to ta$e
%ieldnotes, !e highlight !ays o% organi*ing your perceptions,
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7# 0y closely observing the !ays that people translatethe sae eperience into di%%erent !ords
depending on !ho the spea$er is, !ho the listeners are, on !ho the iagined listeners are, on !hat
$inds o% epectations8or %un9 +piritual %ul%ilent9 0attle9that participants and other
audiences bring to the scene'
3# 0y noticing incongruous,funny, or di%%icult oents 1:at* 34476'
;# 0y noticing ho! the stories eet %riction in situations !here they never per%ectly %it, depending on
the devicesthat are in the situation, such as account boo$s that need to be %illed out, co%ortable
or unco%ortable %urniture, and other things that !e could call aterial conditions 1i% that
epression did not coe !ith the !hole boatload o% Marian baggage6#
5# 0y noticing $ey phrases
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graduation reBuireents, %lu%% up their C.s %or college applications, get pri*es %or having done good
volunteer !or$, and publici*e their !or$ to voters !ho vote %or %unding %or such progras# The youth
progras have to count the hours, and publici*e the volunteer spirit, %or any reasons they.re al!ays
scrabling %or %unds, and governent and N2)-sponsored grant application o%ten deand evidence o%
local grassroots involveent# +oe progras include college bound $ids, and those $ids need to easure
and publici*e their volunteer !or$, because it loo$s good on their college applications# These progras
have to a$e volunteering happen, and have to docuent it in rapidly digestible %orats, so that distant
publics can assess it Buic$ly in nubers o% hours spent volunteering, nuber o% people served, nuber o%
volunteers involved, tons o% %ood delivered to the needy#
+o, easuring volunteer hours is iportant# &n %act, in soe groups, ore tie in eetings is
devoted to the Buestion o% ho! to easure the hours spent volunteering than to any other Buestion# This
typical eeting o% a county and N2)-sponsored service club is all about the %ors that $ids have to %ill out
%or President.s 744 Four Challenge, a national a!ard %or youth !ho coplete 744 hours o% volunteer
!or$#/n N2) !or$er as$s, Dould you reeber to send it in9
+oe o% the eight teens in the eeting ans!er No#
/nother adult Dhat i% you got a reinder9 Dhat i% you %orgot to sign the %or9 !ho.ll pay %or
copying and postage9 Dould it just be an etra burden, a%ter having already done the volunteer !or$, to
have to %ill out a %or9 Dhat i% you couldn.t %ind the9 Fo! can !e distribute the to you9 De just !ant
to encourage re%lection# Dhat i% soe o% your hours didn.t get recorded9 Dhat i% you %orgot to send in the
sheets9 +hould there be an event id-year, to give recognition to youth !ho.ve per%ored %i%ty hours o%
service9 ;4 hours9 34 hours9 Dho !ill record this data9
Teens got volunteer hours credit %or entering the data about volunteering# Teens got volunteer
hours %or attending eetings deciding ho! to count volunteer hours# &% the !or$ !as unpleasant, adults let
the teens count the hours double# +ince soe college scholarships also reBuire volunteer !or$, $ids could
get credit %or each hour in t!o di%%erent progras at once#
+oeties, the di%%erent audiences. reBuireents con%lict# 8or eaple, a group o% poor youth at
a counity center !ins a city-!ide copetition' their a!ard is supposedly %or having done so uch
counity service# 0ut !hen the group goes to the event to receive the a!ard, the teens see on the list o%
a!ardees that the a!ard is called an a!ard %or needy youth# The adult leader o% the teens. progras is
horri%ied that the teens have seen this' she !ants the to %eel proud, %or having been good counity
volunteers, not li$e pathetic recipients o% pity %or their neediness# Fere are any audiences, each !ith its
o!n eigencies#
+oeties, the audiences are not even thereG +oe o% the ost in%luential audiences are long
dead, or invisibleghosts# 8or eaple, a guy sees a !oan !ith a heavy suitcase, dragging it across the
side!al$# &% he o%%ers her help, he has to de%end hisel% against chorus o% invisible judges poised to accuse
hi o% seis he has to a$e it clear to her that he !ould o%%er help to anyone, not just a !oan' that he
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is really not going out o% his !ay' that it is just coon decency' that he is not trying to pic$ her up or put
her do!n 1iaud-2ayet 344
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about !ho !e are together# 8or eaple, 8rancesca Poletta 134436 sho!s that the phrase participatory
deocracy eant very di%%erent things in di%%erent grassroots groups in the Civil Iights Moveent,
depending on !hat iplicit cultural odel %or solidarity the group held %riendship 1in student activist
groups6, %ello!ship 1in church groups6, or tutelage 1in & %orget !hich $ind o% groups6# / study o%
congregations %inds the sae thing even Hutheran churches that read the sae chapters and verses o% the
0ible and sing all the sae sons and have all the sae belie%s on paperhave di%%erent iplicit de%initions
o% !ho !e are and ho! !e do things, as the church-goers put it 1Edgell 7AAA6# =i%%erent congregations
use the sae !ords o% +cripture to do di%%erent things together#
&% you !ant to $no! !hat to do in this bureaucracy this year, you cannot learn it just by consulting
the guide boo$ or rules' you have to learn ho! the other people in the o%%ice !or$ together# (ou, as a
noral participant as !ell as an ethnographer, hang bac$ at %irst, !aiting to see !hat the group style is#
Calvin Morrill.s The Eecutive Day, %or eaple, ta$es us inside three high-rise corporate headBuarters#
=o !e go by %irst naes, !ear jeans, and !or$ by Buic$ly %oring and dissolving cool, net!or$-style,
intense %or a oent relationships9 )r !ill it be suits and ties, gol% every +aturday !ith the boss, andloyal, %aily-li$e paternalistic relationships9 These are just t!o possibilities# &n this and any other
ethnographic and historical studies, !e learn, %irst, that $no!ing each individuals. inner ideas, values or
interests is certainly not enough# +econd, !e learn that $no!ing soething about the participants. shared
ideas is not enough, either eployers. rules, or judges. la!s, or church-goers. theology !ould not be
enough# The !ays people %or relationships and tal$ to each other in the group help deterine !hat the
group is, !hat it can do, ho! ebers in it norally act#
Dhen noticing $ey phrases, the tric$ is to as$ !hat !or$ do they do9 Consider, %or eaple, an
eaple, %ro a %il ade by t!o anthropologists, o% +outh &ndians in the J:# / highly Buali%ied &ndian
librarian is see$ing a job as a librarian' his 0ritish intervie!ees as$ hi Dhy do you !ant this job9 and
he ans!ers, because & need a job# )bviously, to /erican or 0ritish ears, this is the !rong ans!er' !e
all $no! that he !as supposed to lie# &n soe societies, or soe relationships, spea$ing too directly %eels
!rong' i% you are in a cold roo !ith your boss, you ight say 0rr, cold in here i% you !ant the !indo!
closed, but you probably !ould not say close the !indo!# 1the eaple coes %ro Faberas 7AK
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People spea$ !ithout !ords, usually# Clothes, usic, iPods, consuer goods spea$ %or you
oha!$s, blac$ shredded tights, tattoos and s$ateboards, %or eaple, but also ore subtle ites li$e
plastic bags %ro the AA cent store# These, li$e other stories, only !or$ %or soe people but not others, in
soe situations and not others# / iddle aged dad.s s$ateboard and tattoo says soething di%%erent %ro a
teenage boys.#
+oe devices help people tell the stories that they !ant to tell about theselves, and soeties,
the devices a$e the story-telling hard# The stories eet %riction# 8or eaple, the story that ebers o%
the youth civic engageent projects !anted to tell, about the volunteer spirit, eets %riction !hen it has to
be counted and easured %or public consuption# Ta$en together, the eplicit stories and the devices create
each other#
Social Structure Cannot be Presumed
It is tempting for ethnographers to presume the existence of social structures, but it is a mistake.
This will probably be the most controversial suggestion of the essay: it seems to be saying that social
structure does not exist, but it is not saying that. It is saying that structure is as structure does; part of your
job as an ethnographer is to figure out what kinds of ghosts are haunting the situations, and these ghosts are
often what sociologists call social structure.
When social researchers say structure, we usually mean either structures like race, class and
gender inequalities, or structures like capitalism, bureaucracy, religious institution, and the family. If
these are in play, you can see their footprints, in speech as well as silences; such as when participants
assume that a little citizens group like theirs is politically powerless, or when the black speaker at the
Martin Luther King Day event gave prizes to blacks who got Bs and played flute, thus implicitly
acknowledging the uphill battle. Or: when underprivileged immigrant youth are sent from Paris to the
tropical island of Madagascar to work as volunteers, painting and refurbishing a hospital, some of the boys
in the group spend the whole two weeks lounging under the palms on the beach, figuring that they are
finally getting what they deserve; it is not clear to them who the recipient of aid should be, considering how
hard they think their lot in life is (Hamidi 1999).
Then, lets take the structures like bureaucracy or government. Common sense says that
bureaucrats are governed by rules, churches by god, families by affection, civic groups by camaraderie, and
the like. But people in bureaucracies never simply follow the letter of the law (Blau, 1956); thats why
different offices have such a different feel to them (Morrill 1993), a different style. In some Brazilian
youth activist groups, members try hard always to agree and bond and express their feelings; in other,
members sharpen their swords with loud debate verging on fights; in still a third type of activist group
there, members explore ideas without feeling the need to conclude anything (Mische 2001). You cannot be
a normal and decent member of the bureaucracy, or the activist group, or whatever, until you know what
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the unspoken group style is. Anger, jokes, light teasing, or fury are typical signs that someone has
violated the usual group style.
(Parenthetically, what goes for activists and volunteers goes for religion and other institutions,
as well. People can act religiouslyboth in and outside of religious organizations (Besecke 1999). And
conversely, most religious organizations spend a great deal of effort and time figuring out how to pay rent.
People in a workplace can can act civiclywithout being self-described civic associationsthey can
widen members horizons, open up space for free deliberation, and solve shared problems together;
bureaucrats fall in love with each other).
Another way to discover the structures that relate to your fieldsite, you have to ask what the site
is connected to, and how. For example, where does it get its money? Where else do people in that site
usually godoes your group often interact with the police, landlords, real estate speculators? Ideally, you
would follow your group around, as its members interact with other organizations in its field. But in a
short project, you can get a lot of this by gathering newsletters, meeting agendas, reading bulletin boards,
watching who comes and goes through the door.
Finally, people bring ghostly structures with them to new places, and the ghosts do not die (maybe
call them zombies?!): for example, when East and West Germany merged after the fall of the Berlin Wall,
police officers from the former communist East and capitalist West had to get along and forge a new
government body in their new republic. But their habits and presuppositions about work and life were all
different, in major and minor details. A famous architect once said God is in the details, and
ethnography abides by that theory: for the East German officers, for example, it was normal to take off the
uniform at home, while for the former West Germans, it was proper to take it off before leaving the
precinct office. In East Germany, housing was allocated mainly through a persons job; in the former West
Germany, private, home life was as separate from work life as it is for us; home and work were more
separate, and the taking off of the uniform solidifies this in a convenient device. How sorry should we feel
for someone who is unemployed; very, if we are from the East, where the whole concept of poverty and
unemployment was foreign (even for laggards); but not so sorry, if we are former Westerners, who figure
that an unemployed person is probably just lazy. Quickly, the Westerners and Easterners different
presuppositions start to grate on each other: the birth of a poisonous stereotype (Glaeser 2000).
Do nottry to construct a statistically significant sample and then write 40% of the males in the
group said x, while only 10% of the females did so. Ethnographic studies have extreme difficulty
controlling variables: to so so, you would have to find a big sample of organizations that differ on only one
variable20 upper class homeowners associations vs. 20 working class homeowners associations, who
were otherwise identical by race, age, gender balance, and whatever variables you thought might matter.
But you cant usually FIND two groups that differ only on one variable. This is a problemno denying it:
you cant control your categories in advance.
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And thats another beauty of ethnographic research: you are on site for a long time, so you
discover categories as you go. You final finding might be that the categories with which you entered the
field were wrong. That is a fine contribution. If your essay ends up by saying, I went in asking all the
wrong questions and here are some better ones, and heres why I think they are more interesting that is a
perfectly respectable, even laudable finding. This is called asking a sensitizing question, as Herbert
Blumer put it (in Symbolic Interactionism): using evidence showing that asking your new questions
sensitize us to issues that we might have otherwise overlooked, if we had not read your study. That is,
hypothesis-testing and making causal claims about variables is not the only way to do good social research.
Not being able to develop fully inclusive categories is not just a possibility: it is inevitable. No
category (bureaucracy, female, table) fully accounts for all the activity that goes on with and around
it. women and men routinely have to work to maintain their status as full-fledged members of their gender
(Butler 19xx). So, the fieldwork will always show how people themselves typify their actions, how they
themselves put names to what they are doing. Your writing will inevitably take a dialogic form, then,
because you will be bluntly pointing out what they are excluding when they typify their actions in such-
and-such category. And you may be wondering if it might be better if people typified their actions some
other way.
0last apart your coon sense assuption that !ords are siply representations %or things that
eist be%ore people naed the# )% course, a chair or a table eists as a set o% olecules, but i% you do not
$no! !hat a chair is, you ight enter a roo and sit on the table# &t !ould be very rude# (ou $no! not to
do this because you have a sybol o% chair and can recogni*e even an unco%ortable one, as being
distinct %ro a table# Dords bring the chairs into eistence, as objects that you can use in a socially-
acceptable !ay# +o, part o% !hat you should observe is the coon, shared !ays that people lup soetypes o% activities together!hat counts as a volunteer project vs# !hat counts as soething else9 =o
ebers assue that volunteering is di%%erent %ro and opposite to political activis9 Can people
a$e oney !hile volunteering, as they can in &taly 1Haville 3447, an Til, 3444, itale 3445, e#g#6 or
!ould people categori*e those t!o activities as pretty uch opposite one another9
+ection T!o +oe Fo!-To.s that 8ollo! %ro The /bove
Driting a prospectus#
Dhat do you epect to %ind, both as a social researcher and as a regular person !ith hisLher o!n
presuppositions9 Driting a short prospectus helps a$e you a!are o% the assuptions !ith !hich youare entering the %ield' the ore you are a!are o% the, the ore you can notice your surprises ore clearly#
The prospectus should clari%y your theoretical Buestions and categories# 8orecast theoretical Buestions that
ight develop in your %inal paper# The point o% clearly outlining the Buestions and categories is precisely
so that you can see how your questions change over the course of the research. Changing ones ind is the
goal, in %act# 0ut you have to have a ind be%ore you can change it#
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There are al!ays ore things going on in any setting than you could possibly portray, uch less
analy*e' part o% !hat you eaine, as the ethnographer, is ho! people anage to $eep all the other
possible alternate realities at bay !hen they do, and ho! the various realities enter into play !ith one
another# The ethnographic ethod gives less control to the researcher than other ethods, so you siply
cannot set up your categories in advance they !ill al!ays be !rong#
Briefly, either in your prospectus or elsewhere (your personal diary?), you should write down your
personal and political agendas and questions: Why would someone who is not a scholar care about your
questions? What political ax do you have to grind, if any? Do you have any personal agenda, aside from
the scholarly and possibly political agendas? Are you studying up (corporate executives, e.g. Morrill) or
down (homeless people, street vendors, the usual thing that sociologists do)? Sideways, such as you, a
former high school geek perhaps, studying people who obviously were cheerleaders and jocks in high
school? In that latter case, how do you feel, trying to act like them when youve spent your whole life
trying to distinguish yourself from them? How, if at all, are you going to address demographic differences
(race, class, age, for example) between you and the people you are studying?
Deciding before you enter, how you will introduce yourself.
When you meet people, will you tell them you are studying them? Will you position yourself as
someone who already agrees with them (what if you studying racist fanatics in a White Aryan Resistance
organizationhow far would you go? What if you turned out to be a really terrific fund-raiser for them?)?
A potential convert? Curious observer? There are often good reasons to make it clear to your subjects
that you are planning on writing about them: if you do not, you will feel uneasy, and they will wonder why
someone like you, whatever that is, became a member.
Ethnographer and Confidante; complementary positions
However you introduce yourself, you might become someones confidante. It is always interesting
to compare what people can say to you vs. what they can say to someone else, or to a group. If you do hear
people saying things to you that they would not say elsewhere, take note of what gets screened out, where,
but do not assume that you will be like a therapist or counselor who gets deep into the real inner person,
that is more real than the other selves that the person shows to other people.
Taking field notes
Your first observations are often the most interesting, since you dont have to work very hard at
making it strange (I think this phrase comes from literary theorist Tzvetan Todorov, describing the work
of the novelist). Write notes as soon as possible after you have been at your site. If other people are
taking notes in a gathering, you can, too.
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Focus especially on interactions that make you laugh, that make someone laugh but not you, that
make people angry or confused. Record as much as you can of interactions that you do not understand,
since their meaning will probably become clear later. Initial contacts are especially interesting, because the
mistakes you make and misinterpretations you have reveal a lot about the expections you had.
Take notes on your processes of selecting and entering a site--was it difficult? Upon entry, did
you know how to act? Did other people assume you would, or did they help you get accustomed to group
participation? Was it hard to find the place, or hard to get there because of locked doors and forbidding
security guards, or were there welcoming soft chairs? How did it smell and sound? What has initially
confused you? Repelled, charmed, frustrated you? What obstacles, if any, have you faced in contacting the
group?
Of course, your analysis will change each time you go, as you learn more. Take notes on every
conversation remotely related to your (ever-changing) question. Try to notice and remember as much as
you can. Best is to remember them clearly enough to be able to write, "he said x, then she said y, etc." (If
something is really worth remembering happens, could you find a place--the bathroom, perhaps?--to go to
write it down while youre still there?). Always tie your observations back to your (ever-changing)
theoretical questions. Don't wait till you write the paper to do your analysis; do it all along the way.
Your own feelings as sources of data
Your ownfeelingsare valuable sources of insight, so write these down, too. Did you physically
uncomfortable? Surprised? bored? eager to do more? inspired? furious at one member? terrified? feel
guilty not volunteering for enough, or awkward in starting conversations? And of course, if we can say it
again, what made you laugh? Did you feel awkward with the silverware, or worried that youd dropped an
olive on the floor at the elegant event? Describe howyou know what your feelings were, and whether you
could tell if other people shared them, and how you know they were shared if they were, and why you think
you had those feelings.
Vary the context
Try to listen to people before and after the meeting, in a variety of situations, not just one. Notice
who associates with whom, and where people feel more free or constrained. Notice whose agenda gets
taken up, whether some kinds of ideas or people tend to get ignored, what gets said, andjust as crucially,
what DOES NOT get said, what members take for granted.
Dont just say So-and-so was mad about the new rule, but say, So-and-so flailed his arms in the
air and shouted. That is, always say howyou know that the person felt or thought something. And report
and analyze the actual words they used to express their feelings or thoughts. This is important
methodologically, because you might, early on in your research, interpret an action as a sign of anger, but
later learn that it was in fact a sign of enthusiasm, for example!
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Notice not just what people said, but their tones, gestures, actions, how others interpreted it;
speculate on why you think they talk that way as opposed to another way of addressing the same topic.
This is how participants themselves build up a sense of who they are and how they are attached to one
another, so you should do the same. That is, no one expects to know someone after a few minutes, except
maybe a sociologist!
+electing a site
We can end with what comes first and then comes in the middle and then comes last: selecting
sites. In a long-lasting ethnographic study, as opposed to one that you begin in as a class project, for
example, you expand your sites as you discover how your first site fits into a field, as you discover
comparisons. But even for a short class project, the selection of a site is theoretically interesting.
When studying political and civic involvement, it is tempting to look for research sites that call
themselves explicitly political or civic. But that is a mistake. Whats politics? Whats a civic group?
Ethnographic studies of political involvement should not presume to know where "politics" happens. For
one thing, over the past forty or so years, the definitions of politics keep expanding. Consider this list that
Robert Dahl, a preeminent mid-century political scientist, composed, in1961, of topics that were obviously
NOT politics: food, sex, love, family, work, play, shelter, comfort, friendship, social esteem and the like
(cited in Schudson, The Good Citizen, ch. 6). We could add to this list of formerly un-political topics:
nature, art, identity, birth, and science are obvious candidates. The point is that now, when people talk
about the seemingly unpolitical web of everyday life, they often recognize that they are simultaneously
talking about politics and justice.
Second, also over the past forty or so years, throughout much of the world, grassroots activism has
become inseparable from the work of giant, bureaucratically-organized non-governmental organizations,
and also, often, government funding (Marwell, Anheier, Salomon, Dekker, eg.). In the youth civic
engagement projects described above, for example, or in the dense web of community development
programs in Belleville, a one-time slum, now on the road to gentrification (Cefa2004), participants could
categorize their own actions, and each others actions, in various ways: the organizations aimed at
redeveloping Belleville act as social work agencies, activist groups, casual neighbors with family-like
relationships, legal and political organizations; at the same time, some are funded by government agencies,
and some rely on funding and organization from big national or international non-governmental
organizations (NGOs).
Politically, why do we care? Around the world, governments and the World Bank fund local,
grassroots organizations to establish little businesses, like bakeries and small grocery stores. The point is
to create responsible citizens, which, according to these agencies, can only happen when people have
worthy employment, work with dignity (Rius forthcoming?). And sometimes, these local organizations are
sponsored by the political oppositions party and the government at the same time! Government,
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international aid agency, business, grassroots organization, small business, political party project: which is
it? Should we call these movements? Should we call what members do politics or civic? That
depends, partly, on how participants talk and act in these places. People, with all their varied ghosts and
audiences and devices, make the road by walking it.
8inally, the oral o% the story The point, %or a good ethnographer, is not to say that !hat peopleare doing is isguided or !rong they are brain!ashed, tric$ed into becoing consuers or racists or
reproducing gender ineBualities by !earing their Fello :itty bac$pac$s# &t is priarily, to sho! ho! !hat
people are doing a$es sense on their ters, in real li%e contets# 8or soe social research, the goal is
deysti%ication' sho!ing that people are inadvertently reproducing po!er and doination# That is a %ine
goal, but it tells only hal% the story# The ethnographic attitude invitesin %act, coands-- you to engage
in a real dialogue !ith your subjects. coon sense categories, and to entertain the possibility that they
invest soe oral value to their everyday practices# / deysti%ying approach al!ays points to soe
iaginary !orld !here nobody is oppressed or doinant, !here ideas transparently describe reality, !here
!ords and deeds atch, !here people are rational# 0ut society cannot be organi*ed that !ay, not just
because people are irrational, but because people cannot get along !ithout iaginations, shared passions,
sybols that tell the !hether that %our-legged !ooden thing is %or sitting on or %or eating on# Dhenever
you are not on an )ut!ard 0ound trip eating !ors in the !ilderness, you $no! ho! to use soething
only because you $no! ho! other people have used it# Even the ost practical activity is also social and
oral#
)rienting yoursel% in a social situation reBuires that you use all your senses, %eelings, and
thoughts# &%, %or eaple, you violate the noral !ays o% doing things%ro ta$ing care o% a child, to
spea$ing,ieating, or even driving 1:at* 7A6people consider it not just incorrect, but o%ten also
disgusting or ioral 1Tro 346# +oeties, the %eeling o% oral violation is so deep, it %eels physical
=on.t pic$ your nose !ith the sae hand you use to grab the eat %ro the shared platter, is the advice
given in an etiBuette boo$ in 75thcentury !herever 1Norbert Elias6# Dhen pissing on the church !all, do
it on the side !all, not the %ront# &% you siply deysti%y, by sho!ing that people are not doing !hat
they thin$ they are doing, you !ill iss the !ays that judgents, %eelings, desires, and action connect#
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iThe literature on cultural di%%erences in speech is vast# Consider, %or eaple, an eaple %ro a %il
produced by linguistic anthropologists @ohn 2uper* and @enny Coo$-2uper*, on ho! incorrect
people in the anglo-/erican !orld consider it to be i% a person in a job intervie! to ans!er the
Buestion Dhy do you need this job9 by ans!ering, as does an &ndian applicant in a job intervie! inEngland, 0ecause & need a job# /s all /nglo-/ericans $no!, the right thing to do is lie# &n soe
societies, or soe relationships, spea$ing too directly %eels !rong' i% you are in a cold roo !ith your
boss, you ight say 0rr, cold in here i% you !ant the !indo! closed, but you probably !ould not sayclose the !indo!# 1the eaple coes %ro Faberas 7AK