

Margaret Mead

ethnography library

Since I started working at the Yunus Centre in 2011 I have been the sole ethnographer/social anthropologist. As the centre has grown I have happily given up this role and I now get to share this with an influx of new colleagues eager to use ethnographic methods within their work. With this in mind, a group of us from the CommonHealth project signed up for a course in Collaborative Ethnography and on Monday we travelled through to Edinburgh to learn more.

I took a lot from the course and could spend a few thousand words describing exactly what Collaborative Ethnography is and all the things I learned. Instead I’ll focus on one of the key issues that is at the heart of Collaborative Ethnography, which raised interesting questions about the ways researchers can engage with communities outside of traditional educational institutions in more meaningful and long lasting ways.

Core to the definition of Collaborative Ethnography is the explicit emphasis on collaboration across all parts of the research process and a shared commitment to the end product– whether that is a film, book, documentary or report. It is this end product that most interested me. Many people might engage in forms of collaborative research, using various methods and it could be argued that most, if not all, forms of qualitative research have an element of collaboration; although this is often limited to the data collection stage. However, within collaborative ethnography the analysis and final write up is a vital part of the process. I found this idea challenging but was keen to hear how it had been done.

The two academics running the course, Elizabeth Campbell and Eric Lassiter, had found ways to make this work and the research they helped initiate had resulted in the production of a highly respected academic text ‘The Other Side of Middletown’. They set up a collaborative ethnographic process in response to a request from a community leader who was concerned with the lack of African American voices in a previous study of the small town of Muncie, aka Middletown. Using resources from the university Elizabeth and Eric were able to set up a course for students at Ball State University who worked alongside community consultants and collaborators to conduct interviews, focus groups and oral histories and eventually write individual chapters that featured in the book. Eric and Elizabeth described to us the ways that drafts of the texts were written and rewritten in response to individual meetings, small focus groups and large community forums. The interpretation of historical events was discussed and details of each chapter pored over until there was agreement over the text, or at least the agreement to disagree. Beyond the production of traditional academic papers, books and presentations the students involved in the study remained involved in the Muncie community. They have helped to produce photo exhibitions, develop multicultural educational programmes, participate in discussions in schools and churches about race relations in Muncie and work with a local mediation team to research specific experiences of racial conflict in the area.

Reflecting on the course and the discussions we had I’m eager to consider how I might apply some of this to my own work. As I write my thesis I know the ship has sailed on using this approach within my PhD but my hope is that the relationships I have formed might serve as a basis for future collaboration. Within the CommonHealth project collaboration with WEvolution has been vital in terms of their involvement as research partners. Yet I’m wondering as I start to enter the final year of my CommonHealth involvement whether the stage is now set for collaboration in the outputs of the research and the consideration of the ways that we can continue to work together beyond the lifecycle of this specific research programme.

Take only notes….leave only memories


‘Just being there for someone can sometimes bring hope when all seems hopeless’ (Dave G Llewellyn)

The Growth at the Edge project will be measuring the impact that social enterprises have on health and wellbeing in rural communities. In designing a methodology I am becoming increasingly aware of the effect that ‘just being there’ will have on participant’s wellbeing, particularly in areas where community members may have little contact with external practitioners, such as researchers. This led me to ponder further about how open people might be to experiences that may affect their health and wellbeing, and their perceptions of their environment and relationships around them. What kinds of emotional tendencies do people have? What if someone’s life is filled with pessimism and scepticism? But mostly, to what extent can a very small encounter influence someone’s feelings of wellbeing?

The World Health Organisation (WHO) states that “wellbeing exists in two dimensions, subjective and objective. It comprises an individual’s experience of their life as well as a comparison of life circumstances with social norms and values”. The subjective side of wellbeing relates to how people perceive the quality of their lives; their emotional judgements towards happiness and how content they are with specific areas of their lives. Antonovsky (1967) expressed this with ‘Sense of Coherence’ theory, which describes how feelings of health and wellbeing are underpinned by three main components. Firstly, having a comprehension that things happen in an orderly fashion and life events are predictable; secondly, that life is manageable and you have the support and resources to take care of things; and thirdly, a belief that things are meaningful and worthwhile, giving you a sense of purpose.

My project will be adopting a participatory action research (PAR) approach embedding the principles of design thinking to measure the health and wellbeing impacts of social enterprises. Potentially, by taking part in social enterprise activities, individuals and communities may feel empowered and less socially isolated. Communities may gain collective and individual responsibilities, and work in collaboration with stakeholders to develop and engage in something socially beneficial; the health and wellbeing effects of which could be increased physical, mental and emotional health. I can only hypothesise at this stage.

Nevertheless, in using participatory action research to measure the effects of social enterprise I will be working alongside individuals and communities to co-produce research methods and will allow them to guide the research topics. Individuals will be given the resources and support to engage in issues that are important in their lives; they will be given a voice and will become important stakeholders in the future of their social enterprise. PAR will allow participants to take part in meaningful practices such as workshops, interviews and focus groups, giving them a sense of purpose in the research arena. PAR methods could be as big as organising a community wide photography project, or as small as visiting an elderly community member for a cup of tea. I may form friendships and bonds with participants, much like Clemmie has highlighted in her previous blog https://commonhealthresearch.wordpress.com/2015/05/01/objective-or-subjective/. The very nature of PAR is that it goes straight to the heart of community engagement, much like social enterprises themselves.

So going back my original question- to what extent can a very small encounter influence someone’s feelings of wellbeing? What if the processes involved in participatory action research has more of an effect on individual’s wellbeing than the actual social enterprise itself? How do we unpick this, and should we unpick this?

The answers to this may be as simple as explicitly stating what I am aiming to measure from the outset, and asking participants to only comment on the social enterprise. Yet one cannot foresee the impact the presence of the researcher may have on the social enterprise itself.

The web continues to weave.