1. This is a field-based exercise in ethnographic methods using observation techniques.

(a) Choose a social setting where you can act as an observer more than a participant. Examples of suitable settings are: council meetings; student union meetings; libraries; interaction between people providing a service (shop workers, doctors’ receptionists and so on) and clients; pubs; launderettes; public transport; waiting rooms.

(b) Record what you see and hear as fully and as neutrally as possible, that is, without making inferences about why people are doing whatever they are doing. Note the sequence of events, the frequency, any patterns you can discern as well as groupings and non-verbal behavior. Briefly describe the physical setting of the room. You may find it necessary to concentrate on a particular group, or person.

(c) Write on-the-spot observations on one side of a double-sided page of a notebook; on the opposite side of the page write down your own thoughts about what is going on so that you separate your observation from your interpretation. Write down any difficulties you experience and note any instances of when your observing seems to be affecting the scene you are observing. If you are doing this with a partner, you may find it interesting to compare notes, looking for any similarities and differences in what you recorded.

(d) Then try to interpret what you have seen. You should be concerned with trying to explain what you have been observing and hearing, and to a degree participating in. Your interpretation should try to understand what has been going on from the perspective of those you have been observing.

(e) Consider whether there are any aspects or themes that seem worth exploring further. Discuss what you have learned about the problems and possibilities of participant observation as a method of data collection.

2. Box 14.6 contains an extract from the field notes of a practicing ethnographer, Daniel Miller, who did fieldwork in Trinidad in 1988 (published in Miller, 1994, 1995). These sections of the notes contain records of conversations, observations and other techniques relevant to how Trinidadians liked to view and talk about a US-made soap opera, The Young and the Restless, which in Miller’s words concentrated 'on the domestic life and turmoil of wealthy families in a generalized American city' (1994: 247–8). In his final research report Miller argues that Trinidadians use their viewing of this program to express a spirit which they call 'bacchanal', which 'can refer to [a] general level of excitement and disorder, [but also involves] the emergence into light of things which normally inhabit the dark ... directed against the pretensions of various establishment forms, revealing their hollow or false nature' (Miller, 1994: 246–7).

Examine these field notes and answer the following questions:

• Which of them describe people’s actions, and which their words?
• What details of the context of actions and words are given? Are there any notes that suggest what Miller was doing? For example, is there any evidence of his having questioned people?
• Is any counting involved? Where do the numbers appear to come from, and what do they tell us?
• Are there any analytic memos, in which Miller reflects on what the observations mean to him?
• How objective and representative do these observations appear to be?
• How could notes like this be improved?