I left our last class discussion on Stoller thinking that we have spent much too much time on discussing subjectivity instead of the aims and goals of ethnographic study. I have always thought that subjectivity is an unavoidable hindrance to research and researchers must do what they can to uncover and neutralize it.  I have always viewed subjectivity at best a bother and at worst an excuse for lazy research which can lead to a dangerous concoction of results,  results that pathologize those we consider as occupying the other side f our ‘normal’.  I remind you of the Moynihan report, and the controversy Brueggemann mentions when Malinowski’s diary was published.  I wonder if these can be seen as examples of subjectivity run amok.

 However, I have to say that the discussion and the readings while not completely convincing to me have allowed me to view subjectivity differently. Pryer was the first surprise.  She helped me realize that subjectivity and the genre of memoir could be used as tools in the research. Then along comes Stoller in this sequence of readings to add another dimension to the discussion. He treats the study of ethnography as a ‘genre’ crucial to helping us understand the human condition.  He mentions the changes that have taken place in the last twenty-five years and the debate on how researchers should represent the results of long term ethnographic studies. Ethnographers at first experimented with textual conventions, dialogical approaches and an acknowledgment of subjectivity in writings to make them more compelling. These experiments, Stoller maintains, were not very good and live only to “…gather dust on library shelves” (180). The tragedy alluded to here is that the ethnographic studies that produced these results are now lost to the world. Indeed, creating scientifically or convention-constructed ethnographic results does no good if no one will read them.

Stoller makes some very specific suggestions on how to create results that will “…remain open to the world” (180). First, forget conventions. We can’t apply a set of rules to different studies as each unique study will require a strategy complimentary to the fabric of that particular research. He next mentions strategies one might employ in fiction: the precise setting or locality made manifest in the text and the development of characters who resonate with the reader.  In doing so, the researcher will create narratives that will be read and last from one generation to the next. As Stoller states, it is the important work of ethnography to  bridge “…two worlds, binding two universes of meaning. It can be a path that entwines the distant lives of others to our more familiar being, a gift to the world” (181). This statement embodies both the benefits of ethnography as well as a warning. I agree with Stoller that we can understand more of what it means to be human by studying other cultures. However, researchers must work hard to remember that it is the “bridge” that is the gift. It is what connects and changes us, and sometimes, what changes the culture being studied. It is not the objectified culture itself that is the ‘gift’, something that an ‘outsider’ or ‘researcher’ packages up and hands to the western world or dominant culture wrapped with a big red ribbon. Through both Pryer and Stoller, especially in thinking about this quote, I realize that being subjective can be perhaps more effective and more work than purported objectivity.