Learning from Mistakes:

1
Learning from Mistakes

• Little record exist of mistakes and learning from
  them, and of the role of chance and accident in
  stumbling upon significant problems, in
  reformulating old ones, and in devising new
  techniques, a process known as serendipity
  (Powdermaker 1966)
• Ones ethnographic understanding of others is
  never arrived at in a neutral or disengaged
  manner, but is negotiated and tested in an
  ambiguous and stressful field of interpersonal
  relationships in an unfamiliar society (Jackson
  in Minima Ethnographica 1998 5).

2
What can these mistakes teach us about others and
ourselves?
3
Ethnographic research is not without problems
4
What does the fact that anthropologists dont
have all the answers teach us?
5
Become aware that

• there is no right answer
• there is no formula
• in the process of ethnographic research we need
  to acknowledge our mistakes

6
Acknowledging mistakes teaches us that

• 1). the relationship between objectivity and
  subjectivity
• 2. the ethnographic experience cannot be taken as
  face value but should be studied in its
  sensational depth beyond language
• 3. that meaning is not a fixed relation between
  discourse and objective reality (Grasping
  meaning is an event of gradual understanding)

7
Serendipity the unique and contingent mix
insight coupled with chance (Gary Fine and James
Deegan).

• Temporal serendipity (happening upon a dramatic
  instance)
• serendipity relations (unplanned building of
  social relations)
• analytical serendipity (connection of discoveries
  with a theoretical paradigm)

8
Question

• How do the three readings differ and resemble one
  another with respect to the notion that
  ethnographers also learn from mistakes and
  chance?