Review Essay

Family Literacy from the Eyes of an Empathetic Ethnographer: An Appalachian Case Study

Victoria Purcell-Gates (1995). Other People’s Words: The Cycle of Low Literacy.
New York: Teachers College Press. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Particularly relevant to this discussion are the preconceived stereotypes of minority cultures held by mainstream members of society. These stereotypes interact in pernicious ways with minority learners’ attempts to gain access to literacy and the literate world (p. 187).

Research Traditions

Based on the academic discipline of cultural anthropology, ethnographic studies seek to examine something of the “lived experience” of the subjects of their study. Requiring direct observation and “thick description,” the ethnographer walks a delicate balance between the more distanced stance of the traditional academic scholar and the emotionally committed posture of empathy as a participant-observer in the lives of the subject of the study. The scholar trained in positivistic social science research traditions may be limited by a posture of detachment and a methodological framework that masks as much, if not more than what it discloses in the quest for “objectivity.” The ethnographer faces the opposite temptation of “going native” in embracing the culture that is being researched at the risk of muting a critical attitude in the effort to achieve a sense of empathy toward the subjects of a study. This tension may well be inescapable as research traditions are embedded in a variety of ideology and power discourses reflecting various canonical perspective that have given shape to 20th century social science discourse (Mertens, 1998). Calls to consider strengths and weaknesses of various viewpoints are always pertinent. So is the difficulty of its achievement, particularly in such a value-laden field of adult literacy education, as interpretation is embedded in the moral value system, politics, and pedagogical assumptions of the researcher.

As a participant observer, an ethnographic researcher, “a teacher, a guide, a mentor, and a friend” (p. 2), Victoria Purcell-Gates, then director of a university-based Literacy Center, does not escape this tension. As the author of Other People’s Words expressed it, “[w]e [Jenny and the author] established a close personal relationship and affection that continue to this day” (p. 3). The main line of the narrative, Jenny’s desire to be able to help her young son Donny with his homework and the capacity to negotiate the print demands of her own environment, is characterized by a profound empathy that drew the author into Jenny’s world where Purcell-Gates brings the reader. Clearly, Jenny is the central protagonist of the story.