24 Jun The importance of being an ethnographer online

One of the best parts about living abroad is the window into different lives that your relationships can provide. Just by becoming friends with people in your new country of residence, you’ll find yourself taking part in new customs and rituals, and sometimes incorporating them into your own life. You may find these rituals exciting and want to share them with your readers, but when you try to do more research online about them, your searches come up empty.

The further afield you are from the capital city, the more likely you are to find and take part in customs and rituals that likely haven’t been written about in English before, which makes you as a blogger an important voice for your community, and the world at large.

There are several ways to approach writing about these in a cross-culturally sensitive way. Pick one that suits you and your blog’s voice and style best.

Narrative

Stretch your creative writing muscles and tell the story of your unique experience from beginning to end. Remember to include good storytelling conventions such as building tension, climax and a resolution. Engage all of the senses of your readers, describing not just what is going on during the ritual, but the sounds, the smells, the tastes. Be sure to include some dialogue, or paraphrased dialogue from your community members, as they are going to be the best explainers for what is happening and why at the event. Try to center them and what the ritual is for them and their culture, rather than your own interpretation of it.

Ethnographic

Think of yourself as an anthropologist; anthropologists, when working on ethnographies try to generate cultural understanding by providing context through an in depth look and multiple data sources. Your writing for this may be more technical and formal than the narrative style. You’ll want to talk to a number of people about the custom and include their points of view and interpretations. Allow them to answer questions that are open-ended. Try your best to remain objective and leave your own experiences out of the writing.

Interview

Oftentimes, there is someone who is the center or facilitator of a cultural custom. Find out who that person is for what it is that you want to write about, or someone who would have in depth knowledge, and interview them. Prepare a set of questions ahead of time and format your blog post as a sort of Q and A. As in the ethnographic style, try to ask open-ended questions, to allow them to talk about what they think is important for the ritual. But don’t be afraid to ask about any specifics you may have noticed when you took part.

Visually

So many customs, festivals and rituals provide such a rich visual feast. These are also often the time that we as guests in the community are encouraged to take pictures and videos. Use that to your advantage, if it is something that you are encouraged to do, and take as many pictures and videos you can. Compile a photo essay or edit together a video of what you saw and experienced. However, this doesn’t get you off the hook from talking to people. Make sure that you are captioning your pictures or perhaps adding a voiceover to your video explaining the meaning and reasoning behind what is happening in the visuals. Try to place the pictures in context, both culturally and for what is happening in the custom.

Dive in deeper and check out some great examples of culturally-focused writing from our Blog Challenge round-ups:

• Ancient Traditions Seen By Modern Eyes | The Philippines
• Weddings for Days | Burkina Faso

Is there anything you’ve written about that seems like it’s the first time in English? Are there any things in your host culture that you’ve tried to learn more about, but haven’t been able to? Let us know in the comments; we’d love to hear your thoughts on how to write about these things.

This is a guest post by Christine Bedenis, a well-traveled twenty-something from the Midwest. She is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (Thailand), now living in Ghana, and was a winner of Peace Corps’s annual Blog It Home contest in 2014.