This morning I am updating my makeshift database of contacts. At the moment I am in (ir)regular contact with almost 60 possible interviewees with various pseudonyms, skype aliases, and e-mail names – who live all around the world. I’m organising face to face interviews, skype interviews with time differences, e-mail conversations, and sending out surveys. And then on top of that I have 33 online sources I want to refer to (oops, still need to add a list of online blogs… add that to the to do list!).
Without an excel spreadsheet I simply wouldnt be able to keep up to date! I did wonder how ethnographers did this before programmes and even digital notebooks existed. But then I realised that mosts ethnographers lived in their villages. I am trying to live ‘in’ a global village that is really a network of often anonymous individuals ideologically bound beyond time and space. I’ve really given myself a difficult job but I wouldnt have it any other way 🙂
Although, studying a village somewhere sunny does have its appeal when the Cambridge rains keep on pouring!
Professor Beth Singler 