There is no scene you can watch without joining it. The moment an ethnographer walks in, people begin doing the version of their lives they would like a visitor to carry away. Choose a setting, choose how you are present, and watch how long it takes the ordinary to come back — and whether it ever fully does.
Market day · Day 1
Dashed lines are attention being paid to you. Figures marked ✻ are doing the version they want you to see. Tap anyone in the scene.
What you are actually getting
Staged for you
Ordinary life visible
Meaning you can ask about
The observer effectchoose a setting to begin
The setting
How you are present
How long you have been there
Labov’s observer’s paradox: the goal is to find out how people behave when they are not being observed — and the only way to get the data is to observe them. You cannot solve it. You can only shrink it, and then write down that it was there.
Reflexivity is the discipline’s answer. You cannot subtract yourself from the scene, so you write yourself into the account. That is why modern ethnographies say I — not as confession, but so the reader can see the instrument.