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Early
fieldnotes like Rene’s on Christopher Edley’s talk in January were
not uncommon: Rene’s notes directly reported Edley’s talk, almost
to the point of transcription, with little discussion of the feel of the event
itself—the ambiance of the room, the reactions of the audience, etc. Later
team discussion and reading excerpts from Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes by
Robert M. Emerson, Rachel I. Fretz, and Linda L. Shaw, helped student researchers
to develop their own note-writing techniques, and to record more than just the
information conveyed by speakers at events. |
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Afterwards, in one of
her fieldnotes, Rene wrote: “I typed most
of this before I read the chapter on writing ethnographies. In the future,
I plan on writing more about the people in the room, the mood, what elicited
strong reactions, and less word-for-word detail. The chapter was helpful
and I wish I would have read it sooner.” Hindsight suggests that
earlier reading about fieldnotes, and discussion of them, would have
helped us. By March, we were devoting several sessions to sets of fieldnotes
from each of the student ethnographers, discussing what kinds of fieldnotes
were most effective and why. Through “workshopping” each
person’s fieldnotes, we hoped to develop a shared sense of the
ideal fieldnote, one that Nicole, Paul, Rene and Teresa could keep in
mind as they observed and wrote up events. (Chapter
3) |
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