Voices of a City Market

An Ethnography

Adrian Blackledge, Angela Creese

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781788925112
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book breaks new ground in its representation of the voices of people in a superdiverse city as they go about their everyday lives. Poetic, polyphonic, and compelling, it places the reader at the heart of the market hall, surrounded by the translanguaging voices of people from all over the world. Based on four years of ethnographic research, the book is a gift to the senses, evoking the smells, sights, and sounds of the multilingual city. This is a book that reimagines the conventions of both ethnographic writing and academic discourse.

PART ONE

Meat

Characters

The pragmatic butcher migrated from China 13 years ago. He is co-proprietor of a butcher stall in the city market. He is married to the genial butcher. They have three young children. The pragmatic butcher is a version of the pragmatic butcher in Part Two.

The genial butcher migrated from Malaysia 12 years ago. Her parents are Chinese. She is co-proprietor of a butcher stall in the city market. She is married to the pragmatic butcher. They have three young children. The genial butcher is a version of the genial butcher in Part Two.

The researcher is committed to her profession as an ethnographer. She migrated from China 10 years ago.

The documentary novelist writes accounts of ongoing life. She values the polyphonic novel for its blend of documentary material and literary art. The documentary novelist is a version of Svetlana Aleksievich.

The dramaturg believes in a theatre for the people that allows the audience to reflect critically on human life. He is concerned with the relationship between theatre and politics. The dramaturg is a version of the dramaturg in The Messingkauf Dialogues by Bertolt Brecht.

The entrepreneur is a patron of, and an investor in, the arts. He prides himself on spotting new talent and promoting success.

The photographer proposes that photography can be used to create a new repository of cultural history. She is drawn to the power of the mundane. The photographer is a version of Dorothea Lange.

The poet responds to the rhythm and rhyme of everyday life. For him, poetry has the ability to distil experience and to reveal the human condition. The poet is a version of Don Paterson.

The professor seeks to represent the complexity of human life through research. She has an interest in the relationship between ethnography and the arts.

Nine wooden chairs face inwards in a circle. On the chairs sit the pragmatic butcher, the genial butcher, the dramaturg, the documentary novelist, the entrepreneur, the photographer, the poet, the professor and the researcher. The researcher has brought coffee and croissants. She hands round the cups of coffee. She places the plate of croissants on the floor in the centre of the circle.

The researcher

The entrepreneur. I want to explore the question of what it has been like to be a research participant. [To the genial butcher and the pragmatic butcher] How has it been for you? I mean having microphones clipped to you, and video-cameras pointed at you, with these two [gestures to the researcher and the professor] writing down every single word you utter, and describing every action you perform. Was it, I mean, intrusive? Did it feel like you had been put under the microscope in a scientific experiment? Were you like rats in the laboratory? Was it uncomfortable?

The genial butcher. It was all right. As it happened, our third baby arrived the day before the field work was due to begin, so I wasn’t much involved to start with. But it was fine. After a while you forget about the fact that the researchers are there, and get on with your work. I was sorry that the baby coming at that time meant I couldn’t do the university training and the qualification. I would have liked to learn more. But there was no way round that.

The pragmatic butcher. Yes it was fine. It was a bit strange at first, especially with the voice recorder and the microphone. People did ask questions, but overall it was fine. No problem. If I needed to switch the recorder off I could, so whenever it was not appropriate to record I just did that. I suppose I wasn’t all that keen to hand over my mobile phone to them so they could copy my social media messages and all that, but even then it was okay. I really only use the phone for taking orders.

The entrepreneur. What I’m interested in is the question of your role as a character in the, well, if you like, the play, or the novel, or the ethnography Do you feel that you were being directed, your lines written for you, and performed by you, that you were being constructed as a character in that way? Did you feel as if you were being directed to behave in particular ways by the research team? How did that seem to you?

The pragmatic butcher. I’m not sure that I understand the question. I did what they said, they told me to be myself, they said don’t do anything different from normal. That’s what I did. I carried on selling meat as usual, talking to customers, going about my business.

The entrepreneur. So they did say that to you at least. To that extent you were directed. They gave you that direction, telling you what to do. Did they want you to behave in certain prescribed ways?

The pragmatic butcher. No, no. They said just do what you normally do.

The professor. Oh come on, explaining the research project doesn’t constitute directing the action, or creating a character. As a research team we had to give some sort of context to the butchers. We talked to them about our research questions. You can’t just say nothing. You have to have some kind of relationship with the character, I mean the participant. There has to be a dialogue between the research team and the subject of the research. We didn’t ask them to do anything other than be themselves.

The researcher. That is what I was going to say. As researchers, we didn’t create the butchers, or their customers, or the other stall-holders. They were what they were, and we recorded what we saw and heard. We did not make any kind of intervention. We were there, we observed everything, and we recorded everything. But the life of the market would have gone on exactly the same if we had not been there.

The entrepreneur. You’re arguing that your presence as researchers made no difference at all? That really can’t be true. Everything makes a difference. Everything changes something. The butchers clearly were under observation, and they must have behaved differently because there you were, writing in your notebook, and because you were recording them with a digital voice recorder. They must have changed the way they spoke, because they were very well aware that every syllable would be transcribed and scrutinised.

The poet. I don’t think it’s inevitable. People usually forget about the recorder after about ten or fifteen minutes, then occasionally remember again, maybe to check that it is still on.

The researcher. It is certainly possible that the butchers were aware of the recorder and that they spoke differently because of it. But that doesn’t invalidate the material we collected. It only means that there was an element of performativity in the butchers’ interactions. If anything, that makes the data more valid, rather than less so. If they remembered that they were being recorded they were possibly more themselves rather than less.

The genial butcher. I don’t remember doing anything different. We just carried on as normal.

The researcher. Yes, that is how it seemed to me. You carried on your everyday lives.

The dramaturg. I’m not so sure. You don’t feel that, having now represented the voices of the butchers as text, having textualised and recontextualised them, made films about them and whatever else, you don’t feel that this process makes them into newly created characters? That is, in some sense you are their authors?

The researcher. It is still their voices. It is still them. We are taking authentic material, transcribing it, analysing it and presenting it. Are we creating new characters? No, I don’t think so. Are we giving voice to those whose voices are normally unheard and unrepresented? I think yes, I think that is what we are doing.

The professor [to the entrepreneur]. I know where you’re coming from. It’s both, I suppose. Recording what’s there and making something new. It’s a kind of dynamic. There is a sense in which whenever you represent a voice, you are creating a new character, constructing someone quite new. The recontextualisation of the voice can never be the same as the original voice.

The pragmatic butcher. What, so when you record me selling a kilogram of chicken feet you are making me into someone else? Really? I have to say I think that’s bollocks.

The entrepreneur. That’s interesting. Do you want to say a bit more about that?

The pragmatic butcher. Look, I’m a working man. For a living I chop pigs into pieces, remove their guts, their entrails, the whole lot, and I sell the meat and offal for a few pennies so I can put bread on the table and provide for my kids. That’s it. That’s the long and short of it. I’m happy to be part of their research project because they’re paying me, and anyway it’s something different from the usual stuff. It makes a change. But I’m a butcher selling meat and offal. It’s as simple as that.

The dramaturg. But you must not make the mistake of believing that you are free of the structures in society which govern us all, the discourses which produce us as entities. After all, you look like a butcher, you sound like a butcher, you smell like a butcher, because you have learned how to be a butcher. You have been produced by the history of butchery. And the market has constructed you into becoming and being a butcher. You are a corollary of the discourses of the market.

The genial butcher. A what, a corollary? That’s just not, I mean, it’s too simplistic, surely? What about agency? Are you saying we are nothing but the product of our environment? We were in catering before. What does that mean? Your job doesn’t define you entirely We are not only butchers. We are individuals with lives. I am a woman, a mother, a wife, a multilingual, Malaysian, Chinese, British, feminist and a hundred other categorisations which are not reducible to a corollary of the discourses of the market. We might be the product of our time and place in history, but we are more than the discourse of the market.

The pragmatic butcher. I learned how to be a butcher, for sure, because I had to. I had to learn how to cut the meat, find out how much I needed and how to sell it. I had to learn how to be civil to people when it was the last thing I felt like doing. I had to learn how to make a living from buying and selling. That isn’t some abstract, academic exercise. It’s about feeding your family, putting food on the table at the end of the day

The researcher. I have to say that I agree with you. Although I am originally from China, I have lived here for a long time. I studied in this country and I have worked here. My friends are mostly local, but some are from further afield. I don’t speak Mandarin very often, unless I call home. Technically Mandarin is my own language but something about it isn’t mine anymore. I would call myself an academic. I have worked as a researcher in universities over the last few years. Of course, being Chinese was really important in securing my role as a researcher on the project. The research team wanted to explore migrants and the language of workplaces. I repeatedly spent time observing the Chinese butcher’s stall in the market. I spent many days conducting an ethnographic study in the market, standing around with the professor, watching people as they interacted with the butchers, and chatting to them about all sorts of things when business was quiet. At the end of each day I would type up my field notes for later analysis. In the project I am the Chinese researcher. Sometimes I feel that I am treated as if all I bring to the project is speaking Chinese. But a Chinese speaker is not all I am.

The professor. I’m not sure it’s fair to say that you are treated as if all you bring to the project is speaking Chinese. We needed to recruit someone who could speak and understand Chinese languages, of course, but more than that we wanted to work with someone who was able to establish good relationships with participants, work easily in a range of contexts, be independent, contribute to analysis from an insider’s point of view. Actually our intention was to recruit a researcher of Chinese heritage who had lived in this country all their lives. But as it turned out, your background was ideal, because you shared much of the migration history of the research participants. It meant you could offer the perspective of an insider.

The researcher. But that’s just it. I don’t have an insider’s point of view. Just the fact that I am from China doesn’t make me an insider. In fact in some ways it is irrelevant.

The entrepreneur. But you have been in this country for about the same number of years as the two butchers. You must surely feel that you share that experience with them, the migrant journey, the becoming, belonging and being, the integration into society. You have that same hinterland to draw on. Don’t you?

The researcher. That’s only part of it. How much do you share with everyone else who has lived in this country for the last fifty years? Are you all the same? Do you have everything in common? Do you choose to be characterised as a white, male, middle-class, fifty-something has-been? As a more-or-less liberal but too-pompous-to-listen intellectual who would have produced the perfect piece of theatre if only circumstances had not been against him? Do you share this experience with all the other white, male, middle-c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• PART ONE
• Meat
• PART TWO
• Tea
• Blood
• Eel
• Intestine
• Fish
• Milk
• PART THREE
• Bread
• Notes