When first looking into ethnography, the concept confused me as I initially interpreted it to mean something else all together. I understood the research aspect of ethnography studies, however the route word of ‘ethno’ led to assume that this was based off of people of different ethnicities and research into this. Anyhow, when I looked into this in more depth, I discovered that ethnography is actually quite a broad term for researching how groups of people live, react, and behave. What is important to remember, however, is that whilst ethnography may be a fairly broad term, the research is actually rather narrow. What I mean by this is that an ethnographic study may give an indication into how groups on a wider scale than those in the research behave, yet in actuality behaviours etc. of groups can’t be generalised as different factors may affect different people, and therefore the results of ethnographic studies are specific to those involved. Ethnographic research has ethical questions that need to be considered too. An example of this is that consent will be required from all participants in order for the producers to continue with their research. Another part of my research was looking into popular ethnographers within the media. The figure that stood out to me the most was British documentary filmmaker Louis Theroux. With Theroux, a particular interest of mine was his 2 part series ‘Louis Theroux: Miami Mega Jail’ (Theroux 2011) which looked into life in a notorious prison in Miami, Florida. Theroux’s ethnographic style was evident throughout this series as he had little to no interaction with events, going as far in one episode as checking on one particular inmate by conducting a group interview rather than singling this individual out, which could have caused hostility towards this inmate caused entirely by Theroux’s intervention. Part of ethnography is partial aspects of interviews, provided that they don’t cause any events to change and that they take part in the subject’s natural surroundings. Theroux’s series embodied that perfectly as Theroux would interview subjects within their environment (the jail in Miami) in order to get a better understanding of their thought process etc. and as mentioned, Theroux went out of his way to stop his study having any impact on the situations that he found himself viewing. Another key part of ethnography that I found was the idea to stay impartial and that whilst an ethnographer may not necessarily agree with the views or behaviours of subjects, they must stay impartial. Whilst this was evident in Theroux’s miniseries, the most shocking example of this to me was the research of British comedian Jamali Maddix in his episode ‘We’re the EDL’ in his ‘Hate Thy Neighbour’ series (Vice 2019) This was for a couple of reasons. Firstly, as he is a comedian, I assumed that he would attempt to satirise the message of the subjects in this study. Maddix, however, avoids this, instead opting for a serious approach for the most part. Furthermore, the EDL are a British nationalist group and as Maddix is descended from migrants, interviewing and being amongst the EDL may firstly have been difficult as they are on the apposing side of an issue that he may face, and also may put his safety into question due to the EDL’s adversity to migrants. The only criticism I have of Maddix is that in this documentary, he does eventually succumb to his own personal views and is unable to keep his impartiality, which as previously mentioned is a key skill for ethnographers.

References:

Theroux, L. (2011) Louis Theroux: Miami Mega Jail, Part 1 [online] available from <https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/01CAA9B3?bcast=126463845> [16 November 2019]

Vice (2019) “We’re the EDL”: Jamali Maddix Meets England’s Far-Right (Hate Thy Neighbour Full Episode) [online] available from <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0441WeGSn8> [16 November 2019]