The Ethnography of Everyday Life: Theories and Methods for American Culture Studies

Abstract

OTHERWISE DIVERSE STUDIES OF EVERYDAY LIFE TYPICALLY SHARE THE assumption that ordinary human life is not, as it seems, an obvious, natural, or simple phenomenon, but rather a problematic, complex process in need of exploration and explanation. Those of us who do such studies also like to assume that it is not through investigations of national politics, or biographies of great men, or telephone attitude surveys, or laboratory experiments, but through in-context investigations of everyday life that we can best frame an adequate understanding, not only of particular human groups, but of human thought and behavior generally. This essay will focus on literature dealing with fieldwork approaches to everyday life. There are other methods, but it can be argued that participant-observation-interview research provides the most direct access to the phenomenon. These ethnographic methods, and studies based upon them, provide an important base line for considering less direct forms of everyday life study. Furthermore, in American Studies, the fieldwork approach is gaining increasing acceptance as an important supplement to traditional historical and literary methods. This trend is exemplified by the current research of American Studies scholars and by the presence of