Challenge Question Response

Ethnographies have changed a great deal over time, and the “new fieldwork” discussed by so many authors has led to a great deal of reflexivity in ethnographic works. Scholars place themselves at the center of their work, building stories about their research and making observations about themselves, in addition to the culture they are experiencing. Other scholars may wonder, then, how reflexive a work can become without becoming useless in the field of study; they question where the boundary between the personal narrative and the scientific text should be. Reflexivity in writing ethnography is of utmost importance—by including oneself in the portrait of another, scholars show the reader their magnifying glass.

The painter Diego Velazquez painted himself into the famous portrait of several Royal Maidens, Las Meninas, in 1656. This reflexivity is one of the things students study today about his work; he shows the viewer of the canvas his perspective. Ethnographers practice (and should practice) the same technique by demonstrating their own backgrounds and histories to the reader so that he can better understand the observations.
This “stepping backwards” began to occur only in the last 50 years in the field of Ethnomusicology, and some authors are strong advocates of it. Jeff Titon, for example, suggests that researchers should focus on the experiential aspect of their studies when they write ethnographies so that the reader can identify with the situation. He places himself, thus, at the epicenter of a music-culture and tries to explain from within. Similarly, Deborah Wong writes about her own feelings and experiences, hoping to convey these messages through a performative ethnography to the reader.

Both of these authors strongly believe that ethnography cannot be written objectively by a researcher in safari gear with a voice recorder, who has come to the Field to find himself. They do not subscribe to the idea that a culture is a fixed text that can be set down to be read in the same way forevermore. It is impossible to take a snapshot of a music-culture by writing an ethnography; the snapshot would look the same to everyone. A culture is something with which one must come into contact and experience for oneself in order to understand. It is, therefore, the way a person interacts with a culture that will help him understand it. The reflexive paradigm in Ethnomusicology comes out of a belief that by showing how one person has interacted with the culture, another person may be inspired to better understand it or even experience it for himself.

This does not mean that the new, reflexive ethnographies can be used to generalize. It is still impossible to make any accurate generalizations about a culture—every person who encounters it will find different truths and will focus on different aspects, and most will make viable observations. By being reflexive, the authors give themselves a sort of cushion, which, in a way, grants them permission to make subjective observations. After all, the book is just one person’s thoughts about a culture, right?