Good Listening: Validity and the Literary Imagination in Ethnographic Studies

• In Event: 130 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 04. Race and Ethnicity Beyond the United States

Abstract

Human beings exist as part of social structures. But we also live in our imagination. Sociologists need to understand how the literary imagination and the ability to listen are linked to the search for validity in research design. The author explores this nexus in her ethnography study of sharecroppers in rural Bangladesh who though illiterate, belonged to a rich oral tradition. She analyzes her process of unlearning dominance paradigms and learning indigenous oral culture. She argues that the transformation of the inner psychic space of the researcher is a first step to understanding the inner world of the villager. The tools of the novelist helped her adapt her research design to the oral culture in three ways: 1) a stream of consciousness interview style that also reflected indigenous rhythms; 2) Respecting silence and its different meanings; and 3) using proverbs and metaphors, units of analysis in oral culture, to discover indigenous hypotheses.

Author

• Fauzia Erfan Ahmed, Miami University-Ohio