What an intriguing concept - the act of studying people. Only speaking from personal experience, people act differently than they normally would when they know someone is watching. We are so comfortable in our own world - until we know someone is keeping tabs on us, then out comes the "preferable behavior" clown. I only use the term clown to signify how silly it is to feel we must adapt our true selves to "fit" better in certain arenas of life. This is why I think ethnography is just the tiniest bit of bullsh*t.
Although it's a grand idea, and I admit I fully agree with Kahn when he notes "People learn more from direct experience than from second-hand experience," I have a hard time imagining people truly acting like themselves when they know another person is observing them. Kawulich touches on this topic briefly in her LONG article, when she discusses different stances an observer can take in such cases. In my opinion, being a complete participant in observational research seems like the only sure-fire way to obtain honest results. The only problem with this method is, the observer has to be somewhat of a sneaky liar (on top of needing decent acting skills).
Both articles did touch on reciprocity as an important factor in ethnographic studies. In order to engage with most people (especially with those from different cultures than your own), usually some sort of cooperation is necessary. If I walked up to a person on the street, smiled, and extended my hand, I would expect that action to be reciprocated. If they just gave me a strange look, or walked away, I wouldn't feel comfortable trying this a second time. This applies on a larger scale as well. If a neighbor invited you to a dinner party, and you show up with a nice bottle of wine and a dessert, you might expect that person to do the same when invited to your home for dinner. If they didn't make this gesture, you might not invite them back again for dinner. Out of all the jargon and mumbo-jumbo I think the idea of reciprocity is what I mostly took away from the readings.
Until Wednesday fellow classmates...
I didn't notice this idea of reciprocity that you are talking about but I think that looking back I kind of get it. Also your clown analogy made me laugh and yes its strange we need to make ourselves fit into certain situations given the setup as opposed to just acting out how one generally would.
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