Hi Everyone! And welcome to our new members!
This past week’s readings on ethnography were really very interesting to me. Although understanding some (very) basic elements to ethnography in anthropological terms, I had never quite thought about it in relation to any of my own research, partly because I assumed that it was something left for those anthropological folks to do!

I realise now that even if you are only doing a survey, or interview, etc, that there is most likely to be ethnographical elements to your research that need to be considered. To make my point, my research interest revolves around resettled coastal/ island communities in Newfoundland, formalized collecting institutions (such as museums and archives), and representation of these now extinct communities in their holdings. A component of the research would involve surveying resettled individuals because they are now remote and living no longer as a community unit (some remained in Newfoundland while others have gone to different parts of Canada). So, I am not dealing in a research environment that is bound to 1 geographical place, however the notion of being accepted by these communities now in diaspora is of great importance to me. Without their trust, I will not be able to gain a holistic picture of how they remember or want to remember their lost homes, and whether contemporary collecting practices in formal institutions is reflective of their culture/ traditions.... My approach to even structuring (both in format and tone) the survey, and follow-up interviews, is changing and my approach to accessing these individuals will have to be thought out very differently.