Today, after four days packed with experiences and impressions, we are leaving Brasov and Romania again: our fieldwork is done. Sitting on hours of recorded interviews, pages of scribbled notes, gigabytes of pictures, we already find us discussing interpretations of the gathered data.
Notwithstanding the systematic analysis, which we have not even started yet, a couple of things seem clear already.
We learned about the inherent bias or specificity of our methodology and questions. It turned out that some of our questions were not as universally meaningful as we had tacitly assumed. In social-science-speak, we became aware that much of what we had held to be etic, might in fact be very emic representations and concerns.
Specifically, we came to the realization that really, context, in good qualitative spirit, matters an awful lot for our questions and the answers we heard. In our interviews, focus groups and class observation, we encountered more than one of the proverbial “elephants in the room“.
After a lot of “spontaneous operationalizations”, and much more controversial debate within the Eurolektionen Team to come, only one thing seems clear so far:
to travel, indeed, “is to learn that everyone is wrong about other countries” .
(Aldous Huxley 1894 – 1963)
Eurolektionen Team Member Martha Ekkert boarding airport shuttle bus at Brasov
