Tag: ethnography

  • Infantilization and deinfantilization of adolescence, part 1

    In the last year I read and was deeply disturbed by the book, Teen 2.0. If you are going to read a book in 2011, make it that one. It shook me.

    One of the primary things that Epstein brought up in the book and has dramatically impacted my view of youth ministry is the concept of infantilization. For years, youth workers (myself included) have lamented about how students are less and less mature and less and less willing to make adult steps. Epstein points out and asks us, “Why are students less and less mature?” To that question I offer something to chew on, Maybe because we’ve made them that way? And maybe we like it that way?

    I’d like to encourage you in the next 10 days to start recognizing infantilization in action.

    • Where are points where we don’t expect adolescents to take responsibilities for their lives?
    • Where are points in your ministry where you take away students ability to own their faith?
    • What are ways parents are holding their adolescent children back from healthy adult behavior?
    • What are words that you use which infantilize 12-18 year olds in your life?

    Don’t do anything but observe. Write them down in Evernote or on a piece of paper so you can keep track.

    And then, if you are so inclined, come back and share what you’ve observed.

  • Best of 2007

    Note: I’m on vacation this week. My family has a rule for daddy– It’s not a vacation if daddy brings a computer. Each day this week I’m highlighting my favorite post from the adammclane.com archives. These are oldies but goodies.

    Why Ethnography is Important

    Missionaries know it. Businesses know it. Documentarians film it. Marketers make money from it. But what is it? It is ethnography.

    Ethnography ????? ethnos = people and ??????? graphein = writing) is the genre of writing that presents varying degrees of qualitative and quantitativefieldwork. Ethnography presents the results of a holistic research method founded on the idea that a system’s properties cannot
    necessarily be accurately understood independently of each other.

    It doesn’t matter if you are a youth pastor in a community. An insurance salesman. A high school math teacher. Or a physician. If you want to succeed in a community,  you need to take the time to understand how the community works. Understanding ethnography helps you understand how the people think, how the politics of both elected and unelected people control things, and understand how cultural phenomenon dictate community behavior. (Holidays, local business practices, etc)

    Here’s the thing. Most doctors, pastors, insurance salesmen, and high school math teachers that fail, do so for cultural reasons and not because they are bad doctors, pastors, salesmen, or teachers. They fail because they failed to grasp the culture they are working in. Yet they blame themselves, their training, or even the people they want to sell to, provide services for, or teach for their failure!

    Success at Romeo depends not just on us teaching doctrine and working hard.     It depends heavily on us adapting and developing methods to reach our community by first understanding how the community works. Stick with me. Read the rest

    Looking through blog posts in 2007, I can see my blog taking a big turn. For years I just blogged about what was going on in my daily life. Occasionally, I tossed in a thought or a principle. But in 2007, posts like this one started to creep up as I found a more comfortable voice.

    The biggest advice I have for anyone who wants to get started in blogging is… write, a lot!