Jenny Thompson

War to End All War:

World War One moves further into the historical distance, yet its meanings and effects are still very much with us today. From the technology of that massive, global war, to the government uses of information dissemination, the First World War ushered in a new kind of conflict.

I am currently at work on a study that examines how World War I was experienced in an Illinois city just north of Chicago: Evanston. From the implementation of the draft to the establishment of the city's own "War Council," the city was consumed by the war, and its effects were felt on all levels of society and by all citizens. By focusing on how the residents both reacted to and were effected by the war, the book takes an in-depth, human-centered look at war's impact.

**Ethnography and The Study of Culture**

From Clifford Geertz to Margaret Mead, Barbara Ehrenreich to Tom Wolfe, social scientists and writers have adopted the enthnographic approach to study human behavior and culture. Literally meaning, "writing culture," ethnography is a method of research which generally involves immersing oneself in the world which one is seeking to understand. Through participant observation, that is, conducting research by taking part in the culture, an ethnographer attempts to gain a deeper understanding of his or her subjects than interviewing or conducting quanitative research allows.

This approach is certainly far from perfect. How, after all, can an outsider truly understand a culture of which he or she is not a member? For nearly as long as people have been conducting ethnography, they have also grappled with the questions ethnography raises: How can true understanding be reached and portrayed? Doesn't the mere act of observation alter the observed? And, finally, how do the biases and background of an ethnographer influence his or her research?

Any ethngrographer understands these issues well and takes them to heart. When James Agee traveled to Alabama in 1936 to interview tenant farmers for a piece for Fortune magazine, he ended up staying for a month and then taking years to write a book about his experiences, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Panned by critics when it was published in 1941, the book is now considered a classic. In part, it is Agee's own struggle with the issues, both ethical and otherwise, of studying and portraying "the other" that makes his work so compelling. "This is a book only by necessity," Agee wrote in his preface. "More seriously, it is an effort in human actuality, in which the reader is no less centrally involved than the authors and those of whom they tell."

Like Agee, writer Barbara Ehrenreich wanted to venture into another culture in order to understand its "human actuality,"--an experience she chronicles in her book, Nickel and Dimed. A handful of critics noted that Ehrenreich truly hadn't experienced the reality of poverty or the working class. She could return to her real life at any time. But Ehrenreich states quite clearly, "this is not a story of some death-defying 'undercover' adventure. Almost anyone could do what I did--look for jobs, work those jobs, try to make ends meet. In fact, millions of Americans do it every day, and with a lot less fanfare and dithering."

Despite the cautions inherent in ethnography, I think it is a valuable method. If no one ever tries to put on another person's shoes, how can we ever understand each other? Of course, there are limitations, but in a sense, it's all we have.

And that, in a way, is what is so exciting. We are all capable of taking journeys into another person's world. Whether to the hot Alabama south in the depression, the low-wage job in Minnesota, or the reenactment in Pennsylvania, these ventures are less efforts at reducing culture into scientific reports, their meanings fixed and documented, than they are travels into the world to see and understand something that exists beyond our own daily lives. It can be a complicated, frustrating, and trying experience. But for me at least, it can also be an eye-opening and exhilarating ride.

--Jenny Thompson