SEEING WITH AN ETHNOGRAPHIC SENSIBILITY 175answer, I did think about what would be expected. Nonetheless, I chose to sleep alone in the
single bed. I can respect another’s culturally constructed preferences and comfortably incorpo-
rate them into my policy work knowing they are situationally appropriate, but that doesn’t mean
I have to make the same choices for myself. That’s the beauty of immersing oneself in an inter-
pretive ethnographic sensibility.
NOTES
First and foremost I thank Dvora Yanow and Peri Schwartz-Shea for requesting this chapter and for their
careful and patient editing. Angela Harris literally walked with me through the early stages of thinking about
this project, and Dvora Pader was instrumental in helping me understand developmental facets of cognitive
processes. I am grateful for a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship and a grant from the
Graham Foundation for Advancement in the Arts for supporting the work that led to this chapter. As always,
I thank the many households who so warmly welcomed me in Mexico and Los Angeles.
- As is common in ethnographic fieldwork (unlike journalism), I have changed the names of all people
and places to protect their privacy (with the exception of large city names). - I received funding for this portion of the fieldwork from the UCLA Program on Mexico and Chicano
Studies. - I differentiate between a cultural relativity—which is what I am discussing here—and a moral relativ-
ity. The latter is far more problematic and complex, and beyond the range of this chapter. - Scollon and Scollon (1981) chose to use the umbrella term “English” or “American” to differentiate
the dominant American modality from the Athabaskans’, although all speak the English language. Although
not perfect, the label works analytically to make the point. - All analysis of this type relies on generalities; not everyone follows the unspoken, learned rules
exactly. However, the patterns are sufficiently well founded, and the people are often not easily able to
articulate the rules because they seem so natural, that it is valid to talk in this general manner. - “The Ethnographic Evaluation of the 1990 Decennial Census Reports discuss behavioral causes and
correlates of undercount in the decennial census among Blacks, Hispanics, American Indians, recent immi-
grants from Asia, and undocumented immigrants primarily from Latin America and Haiti” (www.census.gov/
srd/www/byyear.html; accessed March 2, 2005). The reports on the 1990 census may be found at that site
under “1992.” - I discuss such unintended consequences more fully in Pader (2002).
- For example, in 1997 congressional Republicans authored a bill that, in essence, would have estab-
lished a national two-person-per-bedroom occupancy standard (H.R. 2 §702). Supported by the National
Multi-Housing Association, the major lobbying group for large apartment owners, congressional Republi-
cans rationalized this standard with arguments of increased health and “livability” as well as minimizing
wear and tear. It became clear that the latter argument was really the crux of the issue, that is, maximizing
profit for apartment owners while minimizing the number of property management and maintenance person-
nel. I worked with the Democratic staff to provide talking points for the members of the House Banking
Committee to defeat this bill. In addition I published an op-ed piece in the New York Times on the day it was
scheduled to go to the floor for debate (Pader 1997). The combination of this information with the impres-
sive work of the Democratic staff (in particular, Angie Garcia, with whom I worked) and committee mem-
bers (especially Representative Mel Watts, D-NC) helped defeat the bill before it even got to the floor.