This document discusses the potential contributions of ethnographic methods to public health research through a "slow research" approach. It outlines five principles of slow research: prioritizing the local, preserving existing effective practices, resisting anticipation, striving for knowledge over just information, and ensuring research is responsive. The document also describes ethnographic methods like participant observation, interviews and their strengths in providing rich, contextualized insights but also their resource-intensive nature. It provides an example of the author's own ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Nepal.

1. MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow.
Slow Research: What can ethnography
contribute to public health research?
Matt Maycock
MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit
17th February 2015

2. MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow.
The slow movement
• The Slow Movement advocates a cultural shift toward slowing
down life's pace.
• This has resulting in; Slow Cities, Slow living, Slow Travel,
Slow Design, Slow Science and now Slow Research
• “…perhaps, the most powerful reason — why we find it hard to
slow down is the cultural taboo that we’ve erected against
slowing down. ‘Slow’ is a dirty word in our culture. It’s a
byword for ‘lazy,’ ‘slacker,’ for being somebody who gives up.
C. Honore

3. MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow.
The five principals of slow
research
1) Local is best
• Slow research takes the local as a starting point
• It focuses on the importance of particularity and specificity
2) Preservation is good, or value what is already working
• Slow research shifts the question from ‘will the new work
here’ to ‘what works and what does not work here already?’
• This shift moves away from a priori valorising ‘the new’
3) Deliberative temporality, or resist anticipation
• In the moment of pause, attention is drawn to the
immediacy of the present and to its rich complexity
• Anticipation eviscerates the impulse to remain local in time,
or to remain attentive to immediacy and problem solving in
the near tenses.

4. MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow.
The five principals continued….
4) Quality takes time, or strive toward knowledge rather than information
acquisition
• Information tends to displace knowledge through a focus on the mass
(and often mass-mediated) production of information.
• Therefore, the question of ‘what to study’ is governed not by concerns
with what matters to the communities targeted for interventions but by
concerns with what would provide ‘good numbers’ or enough data to
run quantitative analyses.
5) Responsiveness improves research, or allow the iterative process to
inform our work
• Results are analysed in the course of the research in order to
recalibrate the methods and techniques, getting at more targeted
goals.
• This reciprocal process produces knowledge that is deeper and more
responsive to context, and liberates research from its temporal
constraints (faster is not always better; newer is not always more
productive).

5. MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow.
Ethnographic Methods
“From one point of view, that of the textbook, doing
ethnography is establishing rapport, selecting informants,
transcribing texts, taking genealogies, mapping fields,
keeping a diary, and so on. But it is not these things,
techniques and received procedures, that define the
enterprise. What defines it is the kind of intellectual effort
it is.... Ethnography is thick
description”
(Geertz 1973: 6, 9-10)

6. MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow.
Ethnography entails…
• Participant observation
• Observation,
• ‘Just being around’ or
‘Deep hanging out’ (Geertz)
• Group discussions
• Recorded discussions/ Interviews
• Informal interviews
• use of existing sources
• Surveys
• Genealogies
(Willis, 1974: 12–14)

7. MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow.
Some Practicalities of Participant Observation
• live in study site for extended time
• learn local language and dialect
• participate in wide range of daily activities
• use everyday conversation as interview technique
• informally observe while participating
• record observations in fieldnotes
• continually reflect on experiences and data
• use both explicit and tacit information in analysis
(adapted from Dewalt and Dewalt, 2002)

8. MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow.
Strengths of Ethnography
• Produces rich and detailed research material
• Validity of research material:
• Research material does not arise from artificial research
setting
• Reported behaviour can be compared with observed
behaviour
• Actions can be seen in relation to specific social contexts
• Area of enquiry is only partially pre-defined
• inductive

9. MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow.
Strengths of Participation
• Greater understanding of how life is experienced
• embodied experience
• tacit knowledge
• Development of trusting relationships
• long-term contact
• solidarity of shared experience
• Almost continually open to new data over long
period
• observe different social contexts
• witness unexpected
• continually testing/ confirming appropriate behaviour

10. MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow.
Limitations of Participant Observation
• Relatively expensive
• very time consuming
• both collecting and analysing data
• requires skilled researchers
• Can create substantial amounts of research
material
• Private behaviours v. difficult to observe
• Difficult to replicate
• Inherently conservative

11. MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow.
Ethics
• Informed consent
• initial introductions but continual process
• fully informed consent undermines main strength of PO
• concealing specific foci
• Confidentiality and reciprocating gossip
• Intervening against local practices
• Maintaining integrity across different groups
• degree of candour about own views

12. MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow.
PhD research far-west Nepal
Masculinity, Modernity and Bonded Labour: Continuity and Change
amongst the Kamaiya of Kailali District, far-west Nepal (School of
International Development, UEA, Norwich)

13. MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow.
PhD fieldwork far-west Nepal 2009
Yearlong fieldwork in Nepal:
• Three month language training and key informant interviews
• Nine months in two fieldsites
My thesis addressed the the following research questions:
• How have the links between Kamaiya bodies and Kamaiya
masculinities changed following freedom from slavery?
• How are working patterns changing following freedom, and
what implications does this have for Kamaiya masculinities?
• What are the Implications of modernity for Kamaiya
masculinities in family settings?
I have subsequently visited the my main fieldsite in 2011, 2012
and 2014

14. MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow.
Methods
• Household survey
• Life History interviews
• Participant observation
• I wore clothes similar to my research participants and made a
conscious effort not to display conspicuous signs of consumption.
• I tried to behave like the men of my age at both fieldwork sites as
far as possible. On occasion this involved doing the work that the
men in Kampur were involved in, although this did not include
driving a rickshaw as the rickshaw drivers found the idea ridiculous.
• I took part in various agricultural and hunting activities.
• I took part in the social life, which posed various difficulties for me.

15. MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow.
Positionality
• As Reinharz (1997) indicates, researchers have multiple identities
apart from those associated with being a researcher; mine include
being white, Welsh, heterosexual, male and, at the time, unmarried.
• My positionality through the various identities I brought to the
research – my gender, race, class etc. – influenced both how I
collected data and its interpretation (Mullings, 1999)
• My position constituted both an advantage and a disadvantage. West
(2003) found that being positioned as an ‘outsider’ brought certain
benefits in his research with victims of torture in Mozambique’s war
for independence. It allowed some of his research subjects to discuss
issues that they found it difficult to speak about with members of
their community.

16. MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow.
My home for nine months…

17. MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow.
Participant Observation - Going ‘hunting’

18. MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow.
Ethnography – commercial uses and
abuses
• Intel started using ethnography in the early 90s
• Ethnography helped to illustrate the potential for home
commuters, through deeper understandings of domestic
spaces
• The “Anywhere at work” study of fishermen in Alaska
helped Intel focus on mobile computing
• Intel has one of the biggest corporate teams of
anthropologists
• In house anthropologists now focus on a range of
healthcare solutions and technologies
• Intel is studying people in an effort to drive healthcare
solutions and technologies to help people look after
their health in their own home…

19. MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow.

20. MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow.
Conclusions
Do we have time for slow research?
If we do:
• Ethnography is well suited to slower approaches to public
health research
• Ethnographic methods can contribute rich and illuminating
insights into health and illness within and between cultures
• Ethnographic methods are being utilised in an evolving and
diverse range of contexts, illustrating the unique contributions
these methods can make to public health research

21. MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow.
Thanks…
I'm slowing down
the tune,
I never liked it
fast,
You want to get
there soon,
I want to get there
last.
Leonard Cohen,
Slow, 2014