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When describing a character, avoid describing a person with a series of physical or emotional characteristics, such as: tall, fair, brave, frank, aggressive, etc. Instead, we should consider describing them in terms of their actions, showing how they respond to the vicissitudes of everyday life, and you have to capture how your "characters" function within their social system.
*The article is excerpted from "Anthropological Writing Toolbox" (written by Christine Godsey, translated by Bian Simei, Joint Publishing Co., Ltd., 2024-3)
Self Portrait with 'Yellow Christ'
Paul Gauguin
Adding Ethnographic Details (Excerpts) Clifford Geertz's famous essay "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight" takes the reader back to a scene in 1958 when Geertz and his wife were evading the police after participating in an illegal cockfight:
In the high-walled courtyard where people live, fighting cocks are kept in wicker cages. The cage will be moved frequently to ensure a balance of sunlight and shade. Fighting cocks are fed a special food, which varies from owner to owner, but mainly corn. The corn is sifted more carefully than the corn eaten by the average person and then fed to them one by one. Their mouths and anuses are stuffed with red peppers to ensure they are refreshed. They are bathed in the same ritual preparation as baby baths, with warm water, herbs, flowers, and onions, and a winning rooster bathes presumably as often as a baby. Their combs are cut short, their feathers adorned, their pitches cut off, their legs massaged, and then squinted by humans like diamond merchants to check for blemishes.
In his seminal 1973 book, The Interpretation of Culture, Geertz discusses in the first chapter the importance of what he calls "deep drawing," an important part of interpretive anthropology, as exemplified by his writing style in Deep Play. Geertz argues that rituals provide a language for the narration of various cultures. The rich narrative details provide a basis for interpretation and analysis, as well as material for beautiful ethnographic writing. In a short passage quoted above, Geertz captures the Balinese passion for cockfighting through his meticulous description of chicken farming.
Every aspiring ethnographer must master the art of critical observation and learn how to faithfully document the details of everyday life. Articulating critical insights with specific observations of people, places, and events can enrich ethnographic details. Sociologist Elaine Weiner illustrates this point well:
My favorite ethnography is always the books that make me feel like I can "hear" the material. For me, ethnography is essentially stories, and the protagonists of those stories are, in my opinion, the storytellers in a way. As a social scientist, ethnographic writing involves locating these individual stories so that a larger narrative becomes clear, illuminating the interplay between various social forces and people's own agency.
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A readable ethnography needs engaging "people". Because the interaction between individuals in the field drives ethnographic research, present your main interviewees in three dimensions, as real people rather than comic book characters. Of course, ethnographers are ethically obliged to change some details that identify the subject of their study (more or less as required by the institutional review committee that approved the initial research protocol), but this is no excuse for creating a character type, because "you have to change the details" does not mean that you should reduce the details.
When describing a character, avoid describing a person with a series of physical or emotional characteristics, such as: tall, fair, brave, frank, aggressive, etc. Instead, we should consider describing them in terms of their actions and showing how they respond to the vicissitudes of everyday life. The idea of putting behavior before the character or that the figure is a sequence of actions can be traced back to Aristotle's Poetics: "Now the characters determine the qualities of a person, but it is their actions that determine whether they are happy or not." Thus, the dramatic act is not meant to represent the character: the character is only a vassal of the act. "No writer should ignore Aristotle's important insights, especially ethnographers. Novelists can create full-bodied characters by creating fictional deeds, but ethnographers have to deal with real people in the real world who show everyday behavior. You have to capture how your "characters" function within their social system.
bust and palettepicasso
This meticulous attention to people lays the foundation for the best ethnography. Good ethnographic work uses the prosaic to explore the common practices and beliefs of a particular society. Our "characters" operate in everyday, routine situations, and their relative prosaic reveal important cultural similarities and differences. For example, when Americans pose for a photo, they usually smile. Bulgarians don't always smile at the camera, in fact, government regulations prohibit smiling in official photos, including driver's licenses and student IDs.
The official conventions of photography, as well as the social norms of how to pose in front of the camera, affect everyday life. I remember once seeing a picture of an international beauty contest finalist. While the other finalists flexed off their pearly white teeth, Miss Bulgaria maintained a stoic and self-denying face. Was it a conscious choice, or was the cultural practice so ingrained that she didn't realize she was the only one who didn't laugh? In Japan, when someone points the camera at them, many people make the scissor gesture of "peace fingers". During the three years I lived in Kyushu in my twenties, I had hundreds of photos of students and friends raising their hands in a triumphant "V" gesture like Richard Nixon. At some point in the second year, I started doing the same. I don't remember any conscious choices I made, I just felt that it was wrong not to make peace gestures. When I returned to the U.S., I continued this habit, and a keen observer guessed that I had spent a long time in Japan.
Using small details like these can improve the way we write about people. Describing how a person reacts in a familiar situation provides a great window into his or her personality. We know what we're going to do in front of the camera: smile, tilt our head, turn sideways, or strike a pose that looks thin. Some of us hate the camera, be shy, or cover our faces. Novelists use these details to bring their characters to life. If I write "Matthew is shy and has a melancholy personality", I am telling the reader about Matthew's character. Or I could put Matthew in front of the camera and show his shyness: "Matthew is the kind of person who never smiles in a photo. When someone reminded him to say 'eggplant,' he pursed his lips and looked down at his shoes. The second sentence captures more of Matthew's nuances as it describes his reaction to a familiar environment.
GentlemanJoan Miró
This has another example of an excerpt from a novelist's manuscript. If I wanted to describe a woman who was frustrated because things were moving too slowly, I would probably write something like: "Elena is an impatient woman. But the novelist will use Elena's actions to prove her impatience. For example, a novelist might write:
Elena estimated the length of the line in front of the grocery store's cash register. She never reads the headlines in magazines. But instead, Elena evaluates the contents of the other people's carts to decide which team moves forward the fastest. She chooses a team, but jumps to another team if she thinks the other team is faster. If she has a carryco, she will use the fast track even if there are more than 12 items in the basket.
The familiarity with the scene gives the reader a certain understanding of Elena's character. Most of us have queued up at the grocery store, read tabloids or seen chocolates that have been carefully laid out to tempt us. While you're in the field, go to the market or grocery store to see how real people do it, examining the social norms and expectations of grocery etiquette. In Bulgaria and Germany, cashiers sit in chairs, and customers need to pack their own purchases. Cashiers rarely talk to customers. In Maine, customers often chat with the cashier at the checkout counter, such as chatting heat. There are also some bagging people, usually young high school students, who will ask you "paper bags or plastic bags". When I lived in rural Japan, the cashiers there were chatty. They also commented on what I bought and asked me what I was going to do with certain ingredients. Once, a cashier asked me if I had diarrhea because she thought I had bought too much toilet paper, which was very embarrassing to me.
If writing a novel, you can explore a character by imagining her standing in line at the grocery store to check out. Is she cashier friendly, or chatting on her phone? Is she someone who reads magazines or sorts out coupons? My mother always stared at the price of an item that flashed on the cash register to make sure the cashier hadn't scanned the same item twice. After payment, she double-checks the receipt to make sure there is nothing wrong with the store's offer. While standing in line in front of the checkout counter, I use my smartphone to send and receive emails and stuff receipts into my wallet without hesitation. Even without looking at the contents of the shopping cart, you can get an accurate idea of who we are by observing our behavior when we line up for checkout.
The place that the novelist imagines is the place that the ethnographer must observe. You may find it difficult to portray people you don't know, and we all rely on stereotypes when describing strangers. But even in the most brief moments, you have to work hard to capture the details. For example, instead of just writing about a middle-aged man who is "overweight", you can describe how his cheeks become sagging under the jawline and form a bulging double chin. Instead of telling the reader that a man is bald, discuss the shape of his head or the shine of his scalp. Description: The tall man walks through a low door, and the short man reaches for the breakfast cereal at the top of the shelf. Show a clumsy person tripping or hitting a door frame. Describe gestures and postures. Remember Sherlock Holmes, who deduced the most intimate details of people's lives through subtle clues about how they dressed or behaved.
portrait
Salvador Dalì
When describing people, pay attention to the adjectives and adverbs that describe the character. If you want to say that someone speaks "gently" or "boldly," avoid using adverbs and tell the reader how the person spoke: "She spoke in a low, murmuring voice, with long, tentative pauses between each word. Or, "She spoke loudly and articulately, as if she were reading an announcement." Adjectives and adverbs may flood your field notes, but as you sit down to write your final ethnographic text, circle these auxiliary words and decide which ones can be replaced with ethnographic details. Some adjectives cannot be replaced, for example, a green dress is a green dress. You can choose a more specific adjective – a celadon dress, but "celadon colour" is still an adjective. Convert words used to describe character, such as "impatient" or "conceited," into behavior.
社会学家卡琳·莱西（Karyn Lacy）的《非凡的黑人：新黑人中产阶级中的种族、阶级和地位》（Blue-Chip Black: Race, Class, and Status in the New Black Middle Class）一书就是一个很好的深描的例子。 在引言的开篇，莱西通过将她的报道人放在他们的社会世界中来描述他们：
When I asked Andrea Clayton, a 43-year-old federal government information analyst, whether she thought blacks had succeeded in the United States or still had a long way to go...... "They want to be white and not be themselves," she said. She and her husband, Grieg, have two teenage children: a 17-year-old daughter and a 15-year-old son. They lived for seven years on a quiet street in Wood Park, an upper-middle-class suburb of Washington, D.C. Their four-bedroom house is a grand red-brick façade colonial building with shiny black shutters and sits on an acre of manicured lawn. The kids are active members of the local soccer team, and Greg is one of the coaches on the team. Andrea and her husband both drive medium-sized cars and have provided their daughter, who can drive on her own, a car of her own. At first glance, they look almost exactly like the white middle class. But unlike the average middle-class white family, which is almost entirely white, Clayton's upscale neighborhood is predominantly black.
Lacey organized a precisely detailed description of Clayton's lifestyle to explore their similarities to white middle-class families, in contrast to her reporter's opening statement. She uses adjectives (and an adverb) to describe things rather than character traits, such as: quiet, upper-middle-class, four-bedroom, magnificent, shiny, medium-sized, upscale, and manicured. Lacey focuses on how her reporters do it. The kids play soccer, the father is the team coach, and they buy a medium-sized car for their teenage daughter. They lived in a predominantly black neighborhood, and someone (father?) Gardeners for hire? Make sure their lawn is watered, weeded, and mowed.
Before you start writing a book or article, imagine your main reporter as a character in a novel. If you were a novelist, what details of their lives could you better describe them? Check your field notes and outline examples of how your reporters behave in their social environment, showing what makes them unique as individuals. When you're done with these descriptions, go back and count the number of adjectives in your essay and try to replace some of the adjectives with descriptions of the action. The more ethnographers describe characters in terms of actions, the richer the reader's reading experience becomes. Of course, some adjectives are unavoidable, and "showcase" takes up more extra space. Too much deep description can make the article lengthy and tedious, and there are some places where it is preferable to say it directly rather than show it. Create a visible character by giving the character the possibility of action, but don't get bogged down in lengthy descriptions that will distract you from the main line of your narrative. Strike a balance between specificity and narrative efficiency, but give your people in your study the opportunity to act in their own world, and let them be guides to the places and events that guide your interpretive analysis.
Anthropology Writing Toolbox
Written by Christine Godsey and translated by Bian Simei
Life, Reading, New Knowledge Joint Bookstore 2024-3
ISBN：9787108077431 定价：49.00元
Ethnography documents cultural phenomena in the daily lives of ordinary people, but the writings of most anthropologists are filled with language that ordinary people cannot understand. More and more practitioners and beginners are trying to write ethnography, but there is little or no training on how to write it well.
The Anthropological Writing Toolbox fills this gap. Kristen Godsey is an accomplished ethnographer, winner of the American Anthropological Association's Ethnographic Fiction Award and the William A. Douglas Award for Best Book in European Anthropology. From more than 20 years of teaching and research experience, she has identified and solved common problems in ethnographic writing: from how to choose words and sentences to how to combine theory and materials, from how to effectively embed dialogue to how to avoid distracting readers with excessive quotations and annotations. She cites a large number of exemplary writing examples and provides a bibliography of nearly 100 ethnographic masterpieces.
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Triptych News|April 2024