When people are broadcast their ethnographies. Text, mass media and voices from the field*

Abstract

After the publication of my ethnography on the dual organisation of a German village, I returned to the field to present it to the people. Villagers invited the local press to write about the book presentation. When a review article appeared in a national newspaper, television and radio stations tried to establish contacts with the villagers as well as with myself. The paper will reflect upon the complexity of power and representation, and will identify the different discourses, which emerged from the interplay of several agencies: television, press and radio, as well as different fractions and voices from the village itself mobilised. Conflicting ideas of cultural authenticity, relational difference, confidentiality, and the tensions between representation in speech and in writing will be examined. The case study throws light on the facets of reading, understanding, misunderstanding and interpretation in the politics of ethnographic writing.