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Whyte’s ethnographic studies in the Italian slum and his findings

   In Whytes study Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum, William Whyte began his research into the social structure of the Italian slums in a place called Cornerville in 1937, he found the best way of doing this was to observe people in action. His original idea was to commute to Cornerville, though he later realized that if he was to build any kind of relationship with the people or be accepted by them he needed to be living amongst them. He himself came from an upper middle class background and had been living at Harvard University, he now found himself lodging in a room with an Italian family.

   “I began as a non participating observer. As I became accepted into the community, I found myself becoming almost a non-observing participant” (Whyte 1955: 321) He had established a relationship of trust with the group he was studying and they accepted him as part of their group he realized he had to balance familiarity with detachment. “If the researcher is living for an extended period of time in the community he is studying, his personal life is inextricably mixed with his research” (Whyte 1955: 279)

   Whyte found that he learned more from the people by listening rather than interviewing. “If people accept you, you can just hang around, and you’ll learn the answers in the long run without even having to ask the questions” (Whyte 1955: 303) The researcher has to be careful not to ask leading or threatening questions because in certain situations it can do a lot of harm as Whyte found out when he posed a simple question to one of the group whilst discussing some unlawful activity he was involved in. Whyte asked whether or not the police had been paid off not intending the question to be threatening, but later found out that you do not discuss police matters with a stranger. However he wasn’t aware of the criminal code of silence.

   He found when amongst the group he was studying when he tried to use their terminology the group was surprised because he wasn’t supposed to talk like that, they accepted that he was different and they wanted him to be that way as long as he took a friendly interest in them, therefore he abandoned his efforts at complete immersion. He had to learn that in order to be accepted by the people in the district he did not have to do everything that they did for instance if they were to break the law it didn’t mean that he had to because his own standing in the community would have been lessened and he would have been reduced to their position and this would have risked his research project.

    After spending 6 years in Cornerville, Whyte found out that the only way to understand the group was to observe the changes through time. Ethnographic studies of society and different cultures can take many years to carry out and a large proportion of that time is spent beforehand planning hypothesis before the research even begins, the researcher must allow for a certain degree of modification to these hypothesis as the research progresses. Another important aspect of ethnographic studies is that it is important to remain objective even more so when like Young when one has to overcome any of his pre-existing prejudices against the criminal classes. Researchers going native have to be aware of the consequences of becoming too immersed in their surroundings.

Bibliography:
1. Fielding, N. (2001) ‘Ethnography’, in Gilbert, N. (2nd Ed.) Researching Social Life, London: Sage
2. Hammersley, M. (1990) Reading Ethnographic Research: A Critical Guide, New York: Longman
3. Whyte, W.F. (1955) Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum, Chicago: Chicago University Press
4. Young, M. (1992) An Inside Job: Policing and Police Culture in Britain, Oxford: Clarendon Press
 

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