Don’t Bank(s) On It – Lecture 4 Post-Op

Our second lecture with John Banks, oh what joy. This time he spent the first half of the lecture explaining to us what ethnographic research entailed, and the second half (which I admit I didn’t stay for) was going to be about his time he spent utilizing ethnographic research at Auran. I’ve read over the lecture notes so I get the gist of what he said in the second half. I also want to point out that I have nothing personal against any of the lecturers, and if I make what seems like a negative comment on their lecture it will probably be about the way they presented the lecture or the content itself.

Now, ethnographic research is an interesting technique, although it does seem somewhat common sense that you get a different outcome of research if you involve yourself in what your researching instead of staying behind the metaphorical glass wall. A good example of this is actual when I went to Japan, and why I went to Japan. I had studied Japanese in grade 9 and 10, but that was sooo boring I stopped. But I was still interesting in the Japanese language, culture and people, so I decided right at the end of grade 12 to do an exchange for 10 months. I went over to Japan, went to a school there and by actually being in the culture, speaking the language with the people, I learnt much more, and in a much different way to when I learnt Japanese in the classroom. So I suppose I was unknowingly participating in my research. I mean, all forms of research include some form of participation, even if it is simply to try and ‘think’ from the point of view of your subject.