Discussion Questions:Putting Ethnographic Writing in Context/ Seth Kahn

1. After reading Kahn's stories of ethnographers' struggles I think it is a huge responsibility to write one.   On the other hand it is great writing experience. Kahn mentioned that the ethnographer had the participants sign papers to wave any legal situations that may come up. But how did this professor not have any idea of how his actions were affecting his students? If he did know about his actions, then why would he have agreed to allowing the observations then gotten mad at the ethnographer. It's a hard decision to select a discourse community to study. If you select a community of someone who you or another group member is close with and the conclusions doesn't come out in a positive manner it can cause serious interpersonal issues. Though, having a known person in the community can give you the in you need to truly understand the community on another level.

2. Another question that I've had throughout this project and after reading this article was if these ethnography's can be successfully written by a group of people. The situation Kahn discussed was one person writing. We are working on the project in groups. The person in Kahn's example had to be very unbiased, which he/she does a good job of, even though she has already had the professor in class and enjoyed it. With a group of people working on such a project I think it would be difficult to have everyone be unbiased as well as perceive every participant in the same way. One group member may interview a participant and perceive their reactions in a certain way and then another perceive that same participant in another way. These may be minor conflicts but when trying to make a conclusion it could become problematic.

3. Kahn discussed some of the positive effects of ethnographers writing. One situation he discussed was a college escort service which had once been successful now lacked funding and was used less frequently. With the help of the ethnographers' findings, the escort service was able to present the findings to the university and regain the necessary funding. In what other positive ways could ethnographic writing be used? Ethnographic writing pushes you to consider all sides of a situation in the most unbiased way because it's not benefiting you at all, its effecting those participating and being observed. With these unbiased views I believe there are many more ways and situations where ethnographic writing could be a positive tool.