The Oatmeal Squares Project employs a "Continuous Monitoring" approach, to use the terminology of H. R. Bernard (2006:413-425), through the continuous recording and annotation of oatmeal square production instances.
"Continuous monitoring" (CM) techniques, while encountered primarily in ethology, have successfully been applied in anthropological studies of human behaviour, providing "comprehensive and flexible descriptions" of behaviours, scenes, processes, events, and states (Johnson and Sackett 1998:316). The extensive use of visual records as an application of such an approach was attempted by Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson in their work in Bali (Jackniss 1988; see for example Bateson and Mead 1942), yet the potential of photographic CM has largely been ignored by contemporary anthropologists, despite increased interest in visual ethnographic techniques. This situation may be explained in part by the growing preference for interpretive approaches in visual anthropology, coupled perhaps with reservations concerning the potentially invasive nature of surveillance-like recording techniqes; nonetheless, a collaboratively-defined recording arrangement which is sensitive to subjects' privacy concerns can serve as an effective source of records serving complementary intertextual knowledge production strategies. The Oatmeal Squares Project, documenting the oatmeal squares production process and its variants through the automated capture of images in several domestic kitchens, intends to serve as a prototype for such an approach.
The use of CM imagery in ethnographic studies of production processes presents several distinct advantages over "conventional" forms of recording, typically written or dictated note-taking by a human observer (Bernard 2006:415): data can be captured over extended periods without encountering problems of researcher fatigue, which can lead to a reduction in record detail over time; synchronous monitoring of activity in several different areas or from several different perspectives is possible; and process data whose significance is not known and identified at the outset of the study can be collected for extraction later. The particular use of CM in gathering data for time allocation and resource use (input/output) studies in cultural ecology is manifest, and indeed can be of considerable assistance in identifying patterns of overlapping activity, such as the combination of production task, child-rearing (e.g., in the present study, child monitoring in kitchen K1), and socialization (e.g., discussion with off-screen producer in kitchen K2). More significant, however, may be the positioning of the camera as a subject distinct from both researcher and producer, notably to the extent to which the placement of the camera is a negotiated decision; the raw sequence of images—accessible in its integrity to researchers and producers—thus readily invites complementary interpretations, serving as a common inter-text for types of representation that would otherwise be bound to distinct experiences. The raw image sequence is not "objective" in the sense of being devoid of subjectivity, but rather as a means of focusing on a shared object the respective subjectivities of the "poetic" ethnographie d'auteur (consider, for a filmic example, the praises of Rouch's poetic subjectivity reported in Loizos 1993:50), the authoritative technical analysis, and the situated "emic perspective", by supplementing their distinct respective forms of experience and observation. Whereas the ethnographic fieldnote constituted as a subjective diary of (participant-)observations excludes its human objects, instituting a representational power over the "study population" which is carried into the final analysis (Clifford 1990:58), the photographic image has the capacity to serve as an intermediary for collaborative or parallel textual production as intersubjective practice (cf. Pink 2007:67).
Critics of this approach may argue that the use of unmediated photography or filming generates an illusory sense of objectivity, even though subjective decisions are involved in the placement of the camera and when turning it on and off; power differentials may also be present in the access to the camera as an element of technical "superiority", in cases where images are recorded in a less affluent locale, possibly compounded by differential visual or technological literacy levels or unequal access to the technology required to view the images once recorded. Recent visual anthropology theorists have suggested that while visual images do indeed permit collaborative production processes, visual techniques lend themselves best to reflexive and interpretive approaches, given the inherently subjective, affective, and artistic nature of image production (Pink 2007). It can also be pointed out that uninterpreted images can be of little value if they are devoid of contextual interpretation—the "thick description" advocated by Clifford Geertz (1973).
While these points are well made, this project aims to demonstrate that a progressive CM methodology can accommodate both technical and interpretive forms of representation, thus helping to bridge the gap between "scientific" and narrative ways of knowing in applied research situations involving communities of traditional producers. Far from aiming to produce an illusion of realism, the method under development here is resolutely Brechtian in its drawing attention to its technical apparatus: actions are presented as sequences of still frames, which can be explored in time but impose a constant reminder that they are merely a sequence of unmoving images; the camera is not turned on and off; there is no montage; and there is—albeit not yet implemented in this prototype—a de-centring of the vantage point through the use of synchronous recording by multiple cameras whose positioning is negotiated with actors in the scene. Although the utility of technical analysis is fundamental to this method, images also serve to stimulate narrative commentary by subjects (Collier and Collier 1986:99-116; in this project see interview with CT) as well as reflexive and qualitative analysis by the ethnographic researcher. Additionally, CM-produced texts can provide for readings along both synchronic and diachronic axes, and are—despite inevitable differences of interpretation (Pink 2007:68)—relatively accessible to readers across cultural boundaries insofar as competence in a complex human language is not required in order to read a photographic narrative.
This project reads the oatmeal square as a "text" that carries its own internal meaning in addition to a semiotic value acquired in relation to all other oatmeal squares and to all other forms of baking—a value that may be "latent" to the extent that the consumer is unfamiliar with the oatmeal squares product, but that nonetheless constitutes its intertextuality. Unlike an industrial product, no two individual production instances are identical. Consequently, the idea of what constitutes an "oatmeal square" is based on a reduction of product and production process to its semantically significant components; yet this reduction is not universal for all participants. Thus whereas the K2 producer considers cinnamon and raisins to be a useful addition to the "standard" recipe (interview with CT), other producers responded to evidence of this variant with the view that the resulting product no longer belonged to the category of "oatmeal squares", but rather should be considered in the domain of "granola bars" (LT, personal communication), while other variants such as cooking time, which significantly affect the texture of the squares, do not seem to affect the classification of the product. Our primary interest should not be seen as ethnosemantic documentation, however; the Oatmeal Squares Project has produced new technical knowledge—such as that encompassed in documents identifying the cost of production for squares with and without raisins and the market value of embedded domestic labour (cost analysis), time use in production (time analysis), and process variation (process annotations)—as well as non-technical knowledge embedded in narratives concerning the production process, the images, and the product itself. Although the narratives could arguably have been obtained without the benefit of reference to image sequences, these allow us to highlight various aspects of the production process as we show the images of other kitchens to each producer; the resulting responses are made not to a verbal description of what happened in those kitchens—as contingent on the difference identified by the orator/narrator—but to visual representations, which can include difference invisible to the other producers or to the third-party observer. To elaborate, the use of images in instigating responses can produce a considerably increased richness and complexity of interpretation, as well as increasing the density of intertextual referents (Figs. 1-2).
The current project is by no means complete. There are many technical problems yet to be overcome. We hope, nonetheless, that the reader will gain a sense of the theoretical and methodological approach that has been envisaged.
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