nick agafonoff training day - 2011
TRANSCRIPT
Training Day – 31st October, 2011
Ethnography: What and How Nick Agafonoff – Real Ethnography
A Presenta*on from the Fes*val of NewMR Training Day – October 31, 2011
Nick Agafonoff, Real Ethnography, Australia Training Day - Festival of NewMR 2011 - Session 2 Schedule: 7:00am – 7:25am (GMT)
Ethnography 101: Tapping the ‘emic’
Nick Agafonoff Director of Real Ethnography Pty Ltd [email protected] www.realethnography.com
Nick Agafonoff, Real Ethnography, Australia Training Day - Festival of NewMR 2011 - Session 2 Schedule: 7:00am – 7:25am (GMT)
Why ethnography?
Sunday night roast... on a Tuesday night because of Dad’s shi5 work schedule
Ethnography promises to take us on a journey into peoples’ real worlds... To understand who they are, how they live and what they live for... Within the context of their everyday lives, challenges and communiBes.
Nick Agafonoff, Real Ethnography, Australia Training Day - Festival of NewMR 2011 - Session 2 Schedule: 7:00am – 7:25am (GMT)
Why ethnography?
I need a way to separate work from life... so that I don’t have to give up either
1. Connect as an insider 2. Make meaningful the
mundane 3. Unlock deeper codes
of idenBty 4. Shi5 paradigms 5. IdenBfy contextual
barriers 6. InBmacy and
empathy with key markets
REASONS FOR DOING IT:
Nick Agafonoff, Real Ethnography, Australia Training Day - Festival of NewMR 2011 - Session 2 Schedule: 7:00am – 7:25am (GMT)
PURPOSE OF TODAY?
1. Mapping the ethnographic landscape
2. Defining ethnography; ‘emic’ & ‘eKc’ 3. Tips for good pracKce
4. The rise of video ethnography
Nick Agafonoff, Real Ethnography, Australia Training Day - Festival of NewMR 2011 - Session 2 Schedule: 7:00am – 7:25am (GMT)
Three groups of ethnography...
Highly InterpreKve/ Academic imperaKves
Evidence-‐based/ Managerial imperaKves
• Involved research • TheoreBcally driven • ParBcipant-‐observaBon • Full parBcipant • SubjecBve frameworks • Longitudinal studies
• In-‐home audiBng • Survey-‐type interviews • ObservaBon only • Consumer diaries • ObjecBve facts • Mostly ad hoc projects
Big ‘E’ LiUle ‘e’
InterpreKve/ Commercial implicaKons
• Immersive episodes • Technique driven • Reflexive interviews • Observer-‐as-‐parBcipant • Emic-‐informed insights • Rapid & syndicated
The new ‘E’ Cultural Anthropologists
Documenta4on-‐driven market researchers
Market ethnographers
Goal is to learn what it means to belong as an ‘insider’ naBve to a community
Goal is to align products, services and brands to ‘lived experiences’, local meanings and group idenBty projects
Goal is to prove or disprove hypotheses for best markeBng strategies and tacBcs
Nick Agafonoff, Real Ethnography, Australia Training Day - Festival of NewMR 2011 - Session 2 Schedule: 7:00am – 7:25am (GMT)
Big ‘E’ ethnography
Malinowski Anthropologist
Teaches us the importance of immersing ourselves in peoples’ worlds in order to understand how cultural and social contexts impact how and why ‘insiders’ consume But doesn’t usually produce specific, acBonable implicaBons for markeBng strategy or planning
• Outsider to insider research • Anthropological and sociological studies
Nick Agafonoff, Real Ethnography, Australia Training Day - Festival of NewMR 2011 - Session 2 Schedule: 7:00am – 7:25am (GMT)
Little ‘e’ ethnography
African safari metaphor
ObservaBon is conducted from outsider ‘eBc’ vantage points of what people say and do, rather than exploring ‘emic’, subjecBve and local frameworks of meaning and experience through parBcipatory methods Its value is that it provides tangible proof of human behavior and a^tudes in real world contexts
• U&A studies • Accompanied shops • In-‐home product audits • Consumer diaries
Nick Agafonoff, Real Ethnography, Australia Training Day - Festival of NewMR 2011 - Session 2 Schedule: 7:00am – 7:25am (GMT)
The new ‘E’
On the one hand, draws on Big ‘E’ theory, concepts and methods On the other hand, has a firm eye on small ‘e’ markeBng challenges and objecBves Most criBcally taps into lived experiences (‘emic’ frameworks) through parBcipatory methods to inform insights and representaBon
A logging family in Tasmania... Show and tell their story in the face of ‘demonizing’ media
• Design and innovaKon research • Flesh-‐to-‐bone research (segmentaKons) • Cultural and emergent trends studies
Nick Agafonoff, Real Ethnography, Australia Training Day - Festival of NewMR 2011 - Session 2 Schedule: 7:00am – 7:25am (GMT)
Ethnography (according to my Mac’s dictionary):
noun the scientific description of the customs of individual peoples and cultures.
?Misleading!
Nick Agafonoff, Real Ethnography, Australia Training Day - Festival of NewMR 2011 - Session 2 Schedule: 7:00am – 7:25am (GMT)
‘Scientific’ = process, not detachment
Trace Tools + Methods Gold’s conBnuum: Complete observer,
observer-‐as-‐parBcipant,
parBcipant-‐as-‐observer, full parBcipant
Anthropological/sociological thinking: Cultural analysis
Emic-‐to-‐eBc inquiry Symbolic
interacBonism
+ InterpretaKon
These are our tools for documentaBon of observaBons i.e. trace evidence/data
How we engage peoples’ subjecBve worlds to extract ‘emic’ insights and data
How we understand what the ‘emic’ data means through reference to ‘eBc’ frameworks
RICH DESCRIPTION
Nick Agafonoff, Real Ethnography, Australia Training Day - Festival of NewMR 2011 - Session 2 Schedule: 7:00am – 7:25am (GMT)
Real ethnography taps the ‘emic’
Kenneth Pike (1954) defines the emic perspective as focusing on the intrinsic cultural distinctions that are meaningful to the members of a given society; the native members of a culture are the sole judges of the validity of an emic description.
The etic perspective relies upon the extrinsic concepts and categories that have meaning for scientific observers.
An ethnographer engages emic perspectives and references them back to etic frameworks as part of an iterative process of analysis (Lett 1990).
Nick Agafonoff, Real Ethnography, Australia Training Day - Festival of NewMR 2011 - Session 2 Schedule: 7:00am – 7:25am (GMT)
A guide to real ethnography
NON-‐ETHNOGRAPHIC
RAW DATA
ETHNOGRAPHIC RAW DATA
NON-‐ETHNOGRAPHIC
INSIGHTS
ETHNOGRAPHIC INSIGHTS
EKc only observaKons & analysis
Emic to EKc observaKons & analysis
Raw observaKons/trace evidence
Contextualized evidence as ‘rich descripKon’
Nick Agafonoff, Real Ethnography, Australia Training Day - Festival of NewMR 2011 - Session 2 Schedule: 7:00am – 7:25am (GMT)
• How can we employ editing and emic-to-etic analysis to augment the raw trace evidence/data in order to connect audiences to what it means to belong?
‘Description’ = insight-rich & evocative
Contextualizing the insights
• What does this representation say about insiders’ lived experience and how they interpret/frame the context?
An ethnographic ‘portrait’
Nick Agafonoff, Real Ethnography, Australia Training Day - Festival of NewMR 2011 - Session 2 Schedule: 7:00am – 7:25am (GMT)
ETHNOGRAPHY IS NOT DOCUMENTATION ONLY
“I video people in natural contexts... and this makes it ethnography!”
Nick Agafonoff, Real Ethnography, Australia Training Day - Festival of NewMR 2011 - Session 2 Schedule: 7:00am – 7:25am (GMT)
Market Ethnography (according to Real Ethno 2011):
1. Engages directly with people in their natural habitat 2. Attempts to gain ‘insider’ perspectives through a level of participation
and induction 3. Captures how people consume brands, products and services in the
context of their everyday 4. Explores what these rituals, practices and interactions mean to people
through reflexive techniques of inquiry 5. Conducts analysis and interpretation of subjective data by employing
anthropological/sociological thinking 6. Produces an intimate and holistic portrait of what it means to belong –
who people are, how they live and what they live for 7. Relates key insights and understandings back to the research and
business objectives of the client
Nick Agafonoff, Real Ethnography, Australia Training Day - Festival of NewMR 2011 - Session 2 Schedule: 7:00am – 7:25am (GMT)
Show & Tell Approach
– Let respondents lead instead of a discussion guide structuring interacBon
– ‘De-‐focus’ to explore the context (this is where the rich data lies)
– Employ reflexive techniques to unpack ‘emic’ meanings behind your observaBons
Emic-‐to-‐EKc Analysis
– Be prepared to be changed by the experience... good ethnographers go ‘naBve’
– Refer to social and cultural theory/literature... to help interpret your observaBons
– Reserve an extra session of analysis... to establish what the implicaBons are for the client’s business
Tips for the new ethnographer
Nick Agafonoff, Real Ethnography, Australia Training Day - Festival of NewMR 2011 - Session 2 Schedule: 7:00am – 7:25am (GMT)
VIDEO IS THE NEW BLACK...
• As a medium... video is a powerful and compelling way to document and represent research data, (whether it is ethnographic or not)
• To do video ethnography right we need to respect that two disciplines are required to master the art and the science
Nick Agafonoff, Real Ethnography, Australia Training Day - Festival of NewMR 2011 - Session 2 Schedule: 7:00am – 7:25am (GMT)
A Good Trace: How we document video trace evidence limits or extends the possibilities of representation
ü Filming with an ethnographer’s eye
ü Framing vantage points ü Editing to explain and
to evoke ü Best representations
are textured layers
Frame 1 Frame 2 Frame 3
Frame 4 Frame 5
Nick Agafonoff, Real Ethnography, Australia Training Day - Festival of NewMR 2011 - Session 2 Schedule: 7:00am – 7:25am (GMT)
Experienced filmmaker
Experienced ethnographer
No experience
DATA RICH
DATA POOR
VTE does not reflect observer’s
eye
VTE not informed by methods or analysis
VTE = Video Trace
Evidence
Rich description depends on expertise in ethnography and filmmaking
Nick Agafonoff, Real Ethnography, Australia Training Day - Festival of NewMR 2011 - Session 2 Schedule: 7:00am – 7:25am (GMT)
IF YOU REALLY WANT TO LEARN!
• Do some training in sociological/cultural theory and pracKce
• Develop parKcipatory and reflexive
techniques (observer-‐as-‐parBcipant and parBcipant-‐as-‐observer) this takes years of pracBce!
• Learn the language of film to inform how to document and represent insights evocaBvely as well as factually
Nick Agafonoff, Real Ethnography, Australia Training Day - Festival of NewMR 2011 - Session 2 Schedule: 7:00am – 7:25am (GMT)
IF FILMAKING IS REQUIRED... (and you aren’t confident)
• Think about teaming up with a video ethnographer partner
• Or do your documentaBon in tradiKonal ways (i.e. wriien notes and sBlls photography)
• Then get a filmmaker to bring-‐to-‐life your findings at the culminaBon of the research
Nick Agafonoff, Real Ethnography, Australia Training Day - Festival of NewMR 2011 - Session 2 Schedule: 7:00am – 7:25am (GMT)
Thank you
Nick Agafonoff Director of Real Ethnography Pty Ltd
Nick Agafonoff, Real Ethnography, Australia Training Day - Festival of NewMR 2011 - Session 2 Schedule: 7:00am – 7:25am (GMT)
Q & A
Pravin Shekar krea
Nick Agafonoff Real Ethnography
Nick Agafonoff, Real Ethnography, Australia Training Day - Festival of NewMR 2011 - Session 2 Schedule: 7:00am – 7:25am (GMT)
Thank you
Nick Agafonoff Director of Real Ethnography Pty Ltd
[email protected] www.realethnography.com