Go Along Interviews

Although the increasingly older population has been described as a burden (Doron, 2013; Rozanova, 2010), older adults who are willing to take up the hard work of elderhood have important gifts to contribute (Conley, 2018; Jenkinson, 2018b; Pevny, 2014; Schachter-Shalomi & Miller, 2014). Older adults’ contributions have been studied predominantly as tangible services, missing important, less tangible services that were found to contribute to the sustainable nature of communities. This critical ethnographic study reveals the meanings age 70+ older adults make with others in their everyday lives.

Of the main participants, seven were male and two female; one was indigenous (n=9). The other people that older adults interacted with and who were included in this study (n=16) were family, friends, workshop participants, and work colleagues. The researcher conducted “go-alongs” in order to observe and document everyday life. Main participants completed life maps, LifeForward Plans and a questionnaire, including measures of wisdom, generativity, and transcendence.

Two meanings—Create and Share Other Realities and Value the Connection between People and Place— and three meaning-making processes—Turn Grief to Gratitude to Giving, Continue to Grow, and Shape Future through Ordinary Acts of Kindness— were examined for their contributions to more sustainable and compassionate communities. One example of the meaning Create and Share Other Realities is exemplified in the supplementary video to this dissertation Chris opening up worlds that didn’t exist (Southam, 2019). A new model was created where grief and gratitude drive generativity, rather than cultural demand (McAdams, Hart, & Maruna, 1998). A fifth dimension of self-actualization was added to the Foray (4A) model of lifelong learning (Corley, 2011) resulting in a new model Foray (4A+) – Beyond Self.

Future research on the developmental tasks of older adults and on communication approaches that lead to sustainability are needed. Renewed calls for elderhood could strengthen the social, environmental, and economic well-being of our communities.

The ontologies, epistemologies, methodologies and methods – primarily qualitative – not to mention politics, associated with critical psychologies have shaken the foundations of the discipline. Critical (social) psychology is, for many (but not all), synonymous with qualitative research, research which has focused on (participant) meaning, understood knowledge as contextual, valued the subjectivity and reflexivity of the researcher, and (often) treated language as a productive force, rather than a neutral medium for communication. For many, it brought sweet relief from the tight corsets of positivist-empiricism and quantitative experimentation. From the early days, the richness and flexibility of interviews dominated the qualitative research scene; discourse analysis (e.g. Potter & Wetherell, 1987) became de rigueur in certain circles. Then discursive psychology challenged the value and validity of interview-generated data (e.g. Potter & Hepburn, 2008) – but many of us clung the comfort and possibility of the interview; when focus groups offered a way to focus on topics and social-meaning-making (Wilkinson, 1998), we rapidly incorporated those into our methodological tool kit.

Este artículo presenta algunas reflexiones de la investigación realizada en el marco de los programas de formalización de vendedores informales del Instituto Para la Economía Social (IPES) de Bogotá. Se discute desde una perspectiva etnográfica, en articulación con postulados del análisis posestructuralista del saber-poder, cómo se conforman nociones y posiciones subjetivas de ciudadanía. El argumento central sostiene que la formalización es un dispositivo dirigido a la formación de sujetos-ciudadanos por medio del gobierno de la verdad, la normalización de la conducta, y prácticas de gobierno de sí. No obstante, existen tácticas que pueden ser empleadas por los vendedores para contrarrestar los efectos y pretensiones de la estrategia formalizadora. En ese sentido, el artículo ofrece algunas propuestas para ampliar las rutas teórico-metodológicas en el análisis del estado, particularmente desde las técnicas etnográficas móviles y desde la utilidad de la categoría gobierno.

El trabajo de grado analiza la construcción de posiciones de sujetos ciudadanos a partir de los programas de formalización de vendedores informales en Bogotá. Desde un enfoque genealógico y etnográfico, en articulación con la analítica de la gubernamentalidad posestructuralista, se plantea un análisis de: 1) la configuración histórica (desde 1995) de los enunciados discursivos en torno a la ciudadanía, la cultura, el espacio público, la informalidad y la seguridad desde la manera como producen y ratifican verdades; 2) la consolidación de estrategias racionales para la normalización de 'conductas no ciudadanas' asociadas a vendedores desde los programas del Instituto Para la Economía Social (Ipes) y las fricciones producidas en los encuentros entre el estado y el usuario; y 3) las resistencias, tácticas y contraconductas que plantean los vendedores que critican o contravienen la formalización desde la praxis cotidiana en el espacio público. Estos tres niveles constituyen una propuesta de etnografía de las prácticas de gobierno de la verdad, del sujeto y de sí mismo, basada, además, en técnicas metodológicas móviles como el go-along.

KEYNOTE | New Ethnographic Perspectives in Urban Settings
Can new methods be developed to capture urban dynamics and transformation processes? How can an interdisciplinary perspective between ethnography and geography help us?

ABSTRACT | As an urban ethnographer doing research in the field of human geography, Carolin Genz was speaking about new crossroads when it comes to research methods in the urban field – this is to be understood as an interdisciplinary approach on both sides: Geographers doing Ethnography to capture everyday urban life; and Ethnographers doing Geography during the rise of Big Data and urban analysis. Finding tools to structure and materialize our own sensing through creative ways of visualization is one approach to find the blind spots and culturally meaningful spaces and places in urban context. How can we uncover the knowledge people already incorporate and their perceptions of the city? One can write field notes as densely and reflexively as possible, following the influence of Geertz’ (1973) Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture.” Another approach would be to map it. Mapping (Cognitive Mapping) helps in getting access to interpretations of symbolic structures of the city (Greverus 1972, 1994). A map can be understood as “legible notes.” Mapping helps to enter spatial and social structures of the urban fabric and figure the meaningful spaces and places of districts and neighborhoods as well as our own blind spots. During the talk, Carolin Genz gave insights into the various forms and different types of mapping approaches.

For the upcoming workshop day, Carolin Genz created the “Fold-Up Mapping Booklet” to achieve the scale of tangible materialization. Next to Cognitive Mapping the urban ethnographic data only becomes “thick” in the following three layers: (1) Mapping by drawing spatial observations; (2) Writing by structured field notes; and (3) Walking & Talking by using words and language to explain the collected data e.g. Go-Along Method (Kusenbach 2003). Only in the three layers of this methodological research approach can the urban ethnographic data become “thick.” At the end of her talk, Carolin Genz was pointing out the interdisciplinary research gaps in the intersection of Urban Anthropology and Geography.

Initiatives to build supermarkets in low-income areas with relatively poor access to large food retailers (“food deserts”) have been implemented at all levels of government, although evaluative studies have not found these projects to improve diet or weight status for shoppers. Though known to be influential, existing evaluations have neglected in-store social dynamics and shopper behaviors. Surveys and walking interviews were used with shoppers (n = 32) at a supermarket developed through the Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative in Philadelphia, PA. Key informant interviews with stakeholders in the supermarket’s development and operations provided additional context to these shopper experiences. Data were collected in July and September 2014 and qualitatively analyzed in NVivo 10.0. Participants described how the retailer helped them adapt or cope with difficult shopping routines and how it presented a reliable high-quality option (in terms of cleanliness, orderliness, and social atmosphere) in contrast to other neighborhood retailers. Health concerns were also identified, especially among those managing chronic disease for themselves or a family member. These issues underscored multiple points of challenge required to adjust shopping and eating behavior. In-store supports that reflect these challenges are warranted to more fully address food deserts and reduce health disparities.

In this chapter, we explore four particular ways in which innovation has pushed qualitative data collection beyond the familiar focus on face-to-face interviews. We have chosen these methods both for their practicality and because they are tools and techniques we have used ourselves; as committed qualitative researchers, we can attest to their value. First, we identify the way innovation has occurred in response to rapidly changing socio-technological contexts: adaptations and expansions of traditional modes of researching, such as interviewing and focus groups, to utilise the potential of the connected, online worlds we increasingly live in. Second, concurrent with, but not synonymous with, theoretical shifts that have argued against a focus just on ‘the text’, we discuss the blossoming of pluralistic or multi-modal forms of interviewing and focus group research. These two offer examples of how traditionally qualitative methods have expanded beyond their origins; the next two offer examples of techniques which have been released from their quantitative moorings: qualitative surveys offer researchers access to familiar forms of data—personal accounts, perspectives and so on—often conceptualised as ‘representing the self’, somehow; story completion tasks, in contrast, provide something radically different: a window into the social meaning worlds of our participants. Read on—we hope you are inspired!

El trabajo de grado analiza la construcción de posiciones de sujetos ciudadanos a partir de los programas de formalización de vendedores informales en Bogotá. Desde un enfoque genealógico y etnográfico, en articulación con la analítica de la gubernamentalidad posestructuralista, se plantea un análisis de: 1) la configuración histórica (desde 1995) de los enunciados discursivos en torno a la ciudadanía, la cultura, el espacio público, la informalidad y la seguridad desde la manera como producen y ratifican verdades; 2) la consolidación de estrategias racionales para la normalización de 'conductas no ciudadanas' asociadas a vendedores desde los programas del Instituto Para la Economía Social (Ipes) y las fricciones producidas en los encuentros entre el estado y el usuario; y 3) las resistencias, tácticas y contraconductas que plantean los vendedores que critican o contravienen la formalización desde la praxis cotidiana en el espacio público. Estos tres niveles constituyen una propuesta de etnografía de las prácticas de gobierno de la verdad, del sujeto y de sí mismo, basada, además, en técnicas metodológicas móviles como el go-along.

Although the increasingly older population has been described as a burden (Doron, 2013; Rozanova, 2010), older adults who are willing to take up the hard work of elderhood have important gifts to contribute (Conley, 2018; Jenkinson, 2018b; Pevny, 2014; Schachter-Shalomi & Miller, 2014). Older adults’ contributions have been studied predominantly as tangible services, missing important, less tangible services that were found to contribute to the sustainable nature of communities. This critical ethnographic study reveals the meanings age 70+ older adults make with others in their everyday lives. Of the main participants, seven were male and two female; one was indigenous (n=9). The other people that older adults interacted with and who were included in this study (n=16) were family, friends, workshop participants, and work colleagues. The researcher conducted “go-alongs” in order to observe and document everyday life. Main participants completed life maps, LifeForward Plans and a questionnaire, including measures of wisdom, generativity, and transcendence. Two meanings—Create and Share Other Realities and Value the Connection between People and Place— and three meaning-making processes—Turn Grief to Gratitude to Giving, Continue to Grow, and Shape Future through Ordinary Acts of Kindness— were examined for their contributions to more sustainable and compassionate communities. One example of the meaning Create and Share Other Realities is exemplified in the supplementary video to this dissertation Chris opening up worlds that didn’t exist (Southam, 2019). A new model was created where grief and gratitude drive generativity, rather than cultural demand (McAdams, Hart, & Maruna, 1998). A fifth dimension of self-actualization was added to the Foray (4A) model of lifelong learning (Corley, 2011) resulting in a new model Foray (4A+) – Beyond Self. Future research on the developmental tasks of older adults and on communication approaches that lead to sustainability are needed. Renewed calls for elderhood could strengthen the social, environmental, and economic well-being of our communities.