Nick agafonoff training day - 2011

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


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.


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:


PURPOSE OF TODAY?

1.   Mapping the ethnographic landscape

2.   Defining ethnography; ‘emic’ & ‘eKc’ 3.   Tips for good pracKce

4.   The rise of video ethnography


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


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


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


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


Ethnography (according to my Mac’s dictionary):

noun the scientific description of the customs of individual peoples and cultures.

?Misleading!


‘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


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).


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’


•  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’


ETHNOGRAPHY IS NOT DOCUMENTATION ONLY

“I video people in natural contexts... and this makes it ethnography!”


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


Thank you

Nick Agafonoff Director of Real Ethnography Pty Ltd


Q & A

Pravin Shekar krea

Nick Agafonoff Real Ethnography


Thank you

Nick Agafonoff Director of Real Ethnography Pty Ltd

[email protected] www.realethnography.com

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

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Nick agafonoff training day - 2011

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