Questionnaires and the right to ask questions / Kwestionariusze etnograficzne i prawo zadawania pytań
Journal Title: Etnografia. Praktyki. Teorie. Doświadczenia / Ethnography. Practices, Theories, Experiences - Year 2016, Vol 2, Issue 2
Abstract
The main topic of this paper concerns the process of shaping textual research tools, such as surveys and questionnaires. Their use in fieldwork affects the nature and type of collected data. This paper analyses this problem by using concepts from anthropology and media studies, combining Jack Goody's literacy theory, the Foucauldian concept of biopower, and the term aparatus from Vilém Flusser. Although the data has been mostly drawn from Polish Ethnographic Atlas documentary materials, this paper also relies on Polish and foreign questionnaires from the 19th and 20th centuries. This choice of material allowed to reconstruct and identify the ways in which anthropological discourse operates. The paper focuses on the executive dimension of biopower, which in the case of anthropology is based on research of selected communities, their description, and, finally, their classification. Biopower determines the degree to which these communities fit the norm and whether they should be accepted or excluded. The surveyed are to be both extracted from the general population and controlled. This aim is best achieved by means of questionnaires that not only allow for specifying the direct interest of the researchers, but also show the hidden assumptions and thinking about the Others. Questionnaires take form of lists of questions. Their composition is associated with a hierarchy of topics (subjects and their order). By highlighting some issues and ignoring others, they direct and mediate the focus of researchers. As a result, the description is distorted through (a) simplification, (b) adapting the description to the categories imposed (demanded) by the questionnaire, and (c) coercion to answer questions. As a consequence, the form of a questionnaire affects the type of collected data. The materiality of a questionnaire makes it a tool of continual influence and control over both researchers and informants. For anthropologists, questionnaires provide psychological comfort facilitating the organisation of fieldwork. For informants, questionnaires are a “magical” mark of authority and evidence of professionalism of those who employ them. Additionally, using questionnaires is linked with methods of disciplining the anthropologists themselves by implying their responsibility to this research method and by the existence of published stigmatising lists of “bad” fieldworkers. Therefore, questionnaires serve the biopower aimed at acts of recording and supervision. They legitimise the collection of data about people and their further handling. As a kind of a census, a questionnaire is technique of social control, revealing hidden functions of anthropological discourse, such as utility, information, and justification.
Authors and Affiliations
Filip Wróblewski
Keywords
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- EP ID EP687931
- DOI https://doi.org/10.4467/254395379EPT.16.009.6488
- Views 138
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