Ethnographical research methods and applications

Ethnographical Research

Field observation in a public place: A park at 10am on a Saturday afternoon

Observing people in a park on a nice day might seem to be a field study in peaceful, happy family dynamics. However, I immediately realized this would not be the case as soon as I entered the confines of the park and heard crying. I saw a mother and a father trying to teach their small son to ride a tiny two-wheeled bike. The boy would go a few revolutions, then stop and cry. The mother and father were bending over to the child's height, trying to encourage the boy.

A noticed an interesting dynamic between the two parents. The mother seemed genuinely encouraging. However, the father seemed less comfortable with balancing the role between coaching the boy and providing comfort. When the boy cried, at first the father would imitate the mother's words: "it is okay Chris, you can do it." But as the young boy became increasingly hysterical, the father began to grow frustrated, and offer practical advice, like to try to keep the bike centered. I received the impression that if the mother was not there, the father would have been more aggressive in the way he behaved toward his son, and he was having difficulty negotiating between nurturance and firmness. Our current culture seems to encourage fathers to behave more tenderly to their offspring, and perhaps the more aggressive coaching role his own father played when he was a boy was in conflict with this new parenting model.

Both parents looked fit and athletic, but the mother was not wearing makeup and the father was wearing a baseball cap over his thinning hair. I wondered if their new role as parents was tiring for them, and they would rather have been at the gym or riding bikes together, instead of encouraging a grade-schooler on a two-wheeler. The young boy looked terrified and uncertain, as if he was not able to deal with the pressures of both of his parents, but he also did seem genuinely afraid of falling and getting hurt as well.

This was not the only difficult relationship I saw at the park. Two women wearing fashionable-looking track suits were walking small dogs, what looked like a Chihuahua wearing a small coat and a fluffy Maltese. An older, stout couple had their large, Standard chocolate poodle off-lead. The man had thick glasses, and the woman had hair that was very obviously 'done' in an old-fashioned, almost 1950s-style. The poodle kept walking over and nudging the small dogs. At first the two women walking the dogs tried to walk faster, but the poodle followed. Eventually, they told the couple to leash their dog, but the man just laughed: "he won't hurt you." The women asked again and the dogs began to lunge at one another. "It's only because you're acting nervous," said the wife. They began to argue. "Don't tell me what to do with my dog," said the man, "we have as much a right to be here as you!"

Eventually, the women left with their small dogs, and the panting, barking poodle continued to run around wildly. Some children were playing on nearby playground equipment, and when the dog began to run through the sandy area, the couple called the dog over, and after repeated attempts, they managed to get the dog by the collar, drag it into their SUV, and go home. There seemed to be a certain class-based attitude in their behavior, as if they were asserting their right to be in the park, over the largely more affluent playground-goers by using their dog.

The children in the playground were all attended by mothers. The mothers did not seem to know each other well, perhaps because the children were all of different ages. Some of the mothers just watched their children from a distance, and talked on their cell phones. Other mothers, especially the mothers of smaller children, helped their children climb on the brightly-colored equipment. Many of the children seemed uncertain how to play, as if they did not come to the park often, and the mothers seemed unenthusiastic and hesitant. The children would climb to the top of the small, safe plastic structure in the center of the sand pit and look around, while the mothers would half-heartedly encourage their offspring to slide down the slide. The park seemed built to be very safe, but so safe and small, there was little opportunity for fun. There was no swing set or seesaw. I also wondered if children's opportunities for play are so circumscribed and planned nowadays, that it is hard for children to understand spontaneous, non-directed play in a park.

The other compelling dynamic that I witnessed at the park was the interesting array of joggers getting their early morning/late afternoon exercise. Several types emerged from the runners circling the park. There was a group of fit men and women in windbreakers and shorts, wearing iPods, their eyes fixated straight ahead on their fitness goal. Then there were a few other runners, mostly women, in work-out suits that seemed more like leisure suits not designed for running. They also seemed driven to run because someone had told them to -- for weight loss or for health. I felt bad for one woman who seemed to glare at the fitter runners, when she was not looking at the ground, painfully slogging through her laps. She was wearing jewelry and perfume (I could smell her when she passed by me) and did not seem to understand the pleasures of physical fitness.