What is the similarity between production of a text and a film?

 Traditionally, sociology and anthropology have relied on the written word to tell us about societies and social life. Sociology and anthropology follow certain techniques in order to investigate societies. These techniques are varied and include techniques like observation-participant and nonparticipant, focus group discussions etc.

When we gather data it is in a rough format and is often referred to field notes, the collection of data is dependent on our interest and the research problem at hand. The researcher may spend a few months or a year writing down observations in a notebook. The ethnographer may also record interviews using an audio device. The researcher then goes the field notes and transcribes the interviews.

Once that is done then the researcher analyses the data and starts to put it in a structured format depending on the research problem. There is a lot of writing and rewriting of the data. Each time the researcher writes she will refer to her field notes and write and rewrite the data. The rough notes get translated into sentences and paragraphs.  The researcher has to work with the data that she has. The only way that she can get new data revisiting the field and gathers fresh data. What we finally read i.e. what is available to the public is the final edited version in the form of a book or an article.

What we read is a smooth finished narrative which is not patchy but finished product.. The written texts like the Nuer by E. E. Evans Pritchard (Pritchard, 1940) tell us about the Nuers of Southern Sudan or the Argonauts of the Western Pacific by B. Malinowski (Malinowski, 1922) about the Trobriand Islanders of the Western Pacific Ocean are ethnographies that have been written in the above manner. The monographs that we read are based on field notes of the researcher. Let us try and understand this through an example.

For instance, if the research problem was analysis of social interaction between individuals on the basis of the caste system in a village in India then how would we go about it. The researcher would spend several months in the field observing social interactions and the impact of the caste system on these interactions. All observations would be recorded in a notebook. As would be analyzed from the perspective of caste based social interaction. If interviews have been recorded, they too would be transcribed.

The final written monograph that we produce will be based on observations carried out over a period of time. The researcher collects data from the point of view of the research problem. However the most important data is data that is gathered from the fringes. This data is often gathered through research techniques that are not pre-established. For example one could be relying on the memory of the researcher or the memories of the informant.  Heider (Heider, 2006) refers to 1 it as the peripheral vision of the researcher. Writing cultures mean that ethnographers construct narratives. We select some material and leave out the rest.

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