{"id":5657,"date":"2015-09-10T15:38:00","date_gmt":"2015-09-10T22:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=5657"},"modified":"2015-09-10T15:54:19","modified_gmt":"2015-09-10T22:54:19","slug":"ethnography-leaves-us-changed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/ethnography-leaves-us-changed\/","title":{"rendered":"Ethnography Leaves us Changed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Inspirational, pianist, Holocaust Survivor,  Alice Herz-Sommer - 109 years old\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8oxO3M6rAPw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Imagine the chaotic turmoil of war \u2013 lives vastly changed through one act of terror. Picture yourself on the city steps \u2013 bodies fall before your eyes. You can hear the bombs encircling overhead. You can feel the chill of the wintry breeze hitting your face. Your experience is written within the core of your being, but you lack the ability to express you story. Therefore, your words return to the depths of your mind and remain dormant.<\/p>\n<p>Ethnography seeks to extract your thoughts, experiences, customs and personal perspectives through the use of visual and auditory aids. They provide the individual with a platform and microphone. They wait \u2013 watch \u2013 and listen for your cue. With script in hand, you step up to the stage, and the world awaits your story. As the fears set in and the insecurity ensues, you look past the lights and gaze out to a captive crowd \u2013 a crowd that NEEDS to hear your story. Ethnography translates your story to reach across all cultures, creeds and communities. In a sense, an Ethnographer is much like a Linguist. They tell the hidden truths of individuals all over the world and create visual atmosphere that\u2019s attractive to achievement.<\/p>\n<p>Alice Herz-Sommor had experienced the pain of war much like the majority of those within her generation, but her story was different \u2013 her story was unique and it needed to be heard. Ethnographer and filmmaker, Nick Reedent, sought to give voice to her story through photo elicitation and visual aid. As the interview progresses, we find that this woman, of 109, clung onto music as her hope through the torment she experienced through World War II. The documentary did not highlight the Holocaust in the forefront, it gave one woman the ability to speak in the face of monstrosities. Ethnography seeks to collaborate with the participant and grasp the DNA of the individual. They seek to go beyond the surface and find the heart and soul of the subject in question.<\/p>\n<p>Active observation; like active reading, requires one to interact with the visual story. We must seek to grasp the collaborative story posed by the ethnographer and participant. The Ethnographer and audience must seek to understand, not just be informed. We must ask ourselves the question, what does this research evoke me to accomplish? There must be a relationship between the Ethnographer and the subject being interviewed in order to convey the application or emotional response to the viewer. In order for a reaction to take place, the Ethnographer must create an atmosphere of authenticity \u2013 an atmosphere of collaboration. \u201cIf ethnography is seen as a process of negotiation and collaboration, with participants through which they too stand to achieve their own objectives, rather than as an act of taking information away from them, the ethical agenda also shifts. By focusing on collaboration and the idea of creating something together, agency becomes shared between the researcher and the participant\u201d (Pink, 64). For instance, one might chose to allow the participant the opportunity to film their story and be an observer within the process of visual ethnography. Another option would be to collaborate in design, preparation, editing and directing of the video. This would give both the researcher and the subject the ability to hone in on the main point of the story. In a perfect world, collaboration would be at the forefront of ethical praxis; however, that is not always the case. Participants are misrepresented. Stories and distorted in the pursuit of agenda. Inequality ensues.<\/p>\n<p>When there\u2019s inequality between the Ethnographer and the participant, the person of interest becomes nothing more than a chess piece \u2013 moved about the board to achieve the Ethnographer\u2019s vision. However, when collaboration ensues, it grants the contributor with the position of influence; not simply the researcher.<\/p>\n<p>The ethnographic story of Alice Herz-Sommor, is painted unlike so many from the Holocaust. Her story is more than a documentary of events, it is a culmination of photos, audio clips and video that work in\u00a0 tandem to display her specific viewpoint and voice. The Ethnographer, Nick Reedent, provides Alice Herz-Sommor with a platform. She has a voice. She has a story. Pink suggest, \u201cWhether we are making a video, viewing other people\u2019s videos, re-viewing our own video, or asking other people to view videos with us. Video does not take us or anyone else back either in time or to a place or locality. Rather, video invites us to move forward with it, and as such to engage with it\u201d (Pink, 106) Visual Ethnography does not seek to place us back into the past, but give us a glimpse into the past to prepare us to face the future. The author is challenging us to utilize the various tools of ethnographic research to build a foundation for where we are going. We are asked to be left changed by their stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Imagine the chaotic turmoil of war \u2013 lives vastly changed through one act of terror. Picture yourself on the city steps \u2013 bodies fall before your eyes. You can hear the bombs encircling overhead. You can feel the chill of the wintry breeze hitting your face. Your experience is written within the core of your [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[279],"class_list":["post-5657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-pink","cohort-lgp6"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5657"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5660,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5657\/revisions\/5660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}