In our last class, Dr. Devries mentioned an instance where she was shocked to learn that an acclaimed researcher had used a cut and paste method of recounting his research to showcase certain theories.  I too was puzzled because how can one trust research that is, in a sense, made up from different parts to reflect a desired reality?  In this week’s reading, author Bonnie Sunstein presents a different perspective.  In her article, “Culture on the Page: Experience, Rhetoric, and Aesthetics in Ethnographic Writing,” she writes that anytime ethnographers try to write an account of their research for an intended audience, they are treading a fine line between fiction and non-fiction.

            According to Sunstein, ethnographic writing is an art in which the researchers must employ all their knowledge of the craft of writing to create their final representation.  The writers must do three thing to be successful.  The first is represent themselves as the window through which this study was conducted.  I agree with her on this point because it is important to know the history of the writer or researcher.  In the article, Sunstein uses the example of the researcher viewing the neighborhood from a position on a bench.  The researcher gave her background and relationship to the community that could have had an effect on her research.  The second step in writing is to take into account the reader and use wiles as a skilled writer to draw them(the readers) into the text.  Here is where the line between fiction and non-fiction is blurred because, as in our reading last week, Sunstein argues that we are re-creating actual events as viewed from one perspective and in so doing are creating a new reality.  We must acknowledge that, no matter how hard one tries, when one renders research for an audience, it becomes a different reality and can change how that research is viewed.  Thinking this way makes it easier to see each set of research as only one “still-life” from the real world (Brueggemann 1). Third, researchers must set aside the inevitable guilt that they may feel at recreating the cultural events of people’s lives in words other than their own. 

            In her article “Still-Life: Representations and Silences,” Brenda Jo Brueggemann wrote that she agonized over taking “ownership” of her subjects’ stories and knowledge (Brueggemann 21).  In re-creating students’ stories, she felt that she was taking ownership and saying that she was more capable than they were of telling their own stories.  I find it interesting that this “guilt” is emerging from our readings as a consistent problem for ethnographic researchers.  Is there a solution to this “guilt?”  I would think that by making sure to represent the information as clearly and in as detailed a way as possible, one could alleviate some of the guilt.  In situations where the researcher befriends some of her subjects, then I can see the guilt lingering “to sneer” back from the written page (Sunstein 198).