Acting for the Local Community: Hybrid Ethnography in the Careers of Local Culture Animators

This article focuses on the innovative methodology used to collect data. We describe how we have utilized the diary method and what analytical potential it contains. We also flag the limitations we have perceived during the research. At the same time, so as not to refrain entirely from a discussion of the study findings, we recreate selected shared attributes in the careers of culture animators. A hybrid research method was used to report and interpret the reality of our surroundings. This involved the use of a diary in which the animators described facts and events from the previous day while also plotting data concerning their location on the Google map; they enriched their notes with short essays, pictures, and video clips. Then, the animators as subjects in the research took part in one-on-one indepth interviews to summarize their experience. Deliberations on the utility and innovativeness of these ethnographic methods are accompanied by considerations as to the variety of experience held by culture animators and the factors driving their occupational choices.

an awareness of causation, and they shape the competences required to participate actively in a civic society. The research discussed in this article responds to the need for more extensive research into 1 In its original meaning, animation denotes 'initiating action'. The word comes from Latin: anima -'soul', animatio -'enliven', and animare -'enlive, give life to something'. In turn, we as the authors will understand the type of animation that is of particular interest to us -namely cultural animation -as follows: first, creating conditions in which people -individuals and groups -can satisfy their needs as part of culture which they discover or find on their own. "The goal of animatory activity conceived of in this manner is, therefore, not in any way to be understood as the dissemination of the so-called "high culture" or the most valuable products of mass culture; […] Here the fundamental frame of reference is the entirety of a person's cultural potentiality, the entirety of his or her cultural personality" (Godlewski et al. 2002:64). In turn, an animator is a person who inspires others to discover their own potential, an inspirer or initiator; a person who 'raises interest in something, who encourages'. He or she is a person who has the capacity of apprehending the problems encountered by a given community and responding to them in a skillful manner. The local activities initiated by such a person also stimulate mechanisms that are characteristic of a civic society. 2 This research was launched and funded by the National Centre for Culture. The subject matter of the research involves the functions discharged by cultural centers: starting with the ones that are stricte related to culture, to those concentrated on the local social capital, including local institutions involved in building the community and, as a consequence, a civic society. the environment of social workers. "There is a need to engage in more extensive research into the community involved in non-profit activity than to date.
This type of research will make it possible, in our opinion, to obtain knowledge about the 'morphology' of the Polish civic society while also possibly becoming a component of the collective identity of activists involved in non-governmental activity (Nowosielski and Nowak 2008).
Local leadership is also included among the local resources capable of strengthening the mechanisms of a civic society on top of the strong bonds linking members of the community or the community's access to personal and material means. The latter element is directly associated with the activity of culture animators, because the terms "cultural leader and "culture animator" frequently have an overlapping meaning. 3 For this reason, the tasks of a leader in the context of local cultural activity can in practical terms be treated as tantamount to being that type of activity which is also ascribed to a culture animator. With this convergence in terms of their definitions and meaning in mind, we made the decision during the research to link leaders and culture animators, and treat them as people fulfilling the very same function. 3 As Magdalena Dudkiewicz and Marek Dudkiewicz have observed, "Leaders of culture deliberately 'create culture' in their local environment which constitutes their natural backdrop and strengthens the force of their impact having regard for the possibility of effecting factual (conceptual, mental, educational, social) change and fulfilling the postulate of local adjustment, chiefly through discovering and taking advantage of local cultural resources" (Dudkiewicz and Dudkiewicz 2017:4). When defining a culture animator in her lexicon entitled Słownik Teorii Żywej Kultury [The Lexicon of the Theories on Living Culture], Barbara Fatyga states as follows: "The distinctiveness of an animator's charisma stems from his or her authority, whose requisite constituent element is the skill of being able to withdraw into the shadow when the animatory activities start to accrue results" (2014).
The purpose of this article is to present an innovative methodology enriched by a reflection on the advantages and imperfections of the adopted solutions. For these deliberations to be fully graspable, the text includes a reference to analyses in order to recreate the characteristic elements of the activity of local culture animators and map their activity. The research questions focused on two issues. The first one pertains to the advantages and disadvantages of the presented methodology. The second one concerns the activity of culture animators. It investigates issues related to what inspires and motivates them to work for the benefit of the local community.
It also concerns spatial analyses, namely the locations and the conditions in which animators carry out the duties entrusted to them. The portrait of the prosocial activity of local culture animators reconstructed in this manner has been used to ponder on their professional position.
Multiple scientific texts have been published on the careers of selected occupational groups 4 ; for this reason, we will not focus on analyzing this term. We would merely like to emphasize that we understand a career to denote the vocational path of a person, in particular during those periods of life when that person is professionally active (see Domecka and Mrozowicki 2008). As Howard S. Becker and James Carper (1956) have observed, the notion of a career can be examined twofold: an objective aspect related to promotions within an employee hierarchy or the role of a given person in an organization, as well as a subjective aspect related to how an individual per-4 The concept of a career in an interactionist sense pertains to its objective aspects (Goffman 1961) as well as the subjective ones (Hughes 1958;Goffman 1961). Krzysztof Konecki (1988), Markieta Domecka and Adam Mrozowicki (2008), as well as Ewa Krause (2012)  Recognizing the activity of animators in terms of professional activity does not exhaust the subject.
The tasks of a leader are identified with stimulating mechanisms that are characteristic of a civic society: "According to Max Weber's well-known division, a culture animator is a calling and -let us add -a social role, not a professional role. It is also possible to use Weberian inspiration by characterizing a culture animator as a special type of charismatic leader in a local community or group" (Fatyga 2014 Table 1). 3 interviews and 1 short poll (brief conversation in a public spot), completed with the representatives of a school, non-governmental organization, office of a commune, and a parish in a commune in which there is no cultural center in operation 3 Diary research (7 days) with elements of ethnography and IDIs to summarize 6 interviews with local culture animators, with the use of the diary method 4 FGI online 2 focus group interviews with the directors of cultural centers (10 participants in total) Source: Wiśniewski et al. 2021 Before we conducted the diary research, it had been necessary to pick the animators. The research pro- This made it possible to identify communes under the following schematic: (1) low activity and low budget (n=3); (2) low activity and high budget (n=2); (3) high activity and low budget (n=2); (4) high activity and high budget (n=3). 7 The schematic for selection has been presented in Figure 1. The tentative analysis of the information regarding communes' expenditures and activities made us realize that on top of communes reporting their activity to the Statistics Poland there is also a group of entities whose budgetary data and number of cultural events organized in their areas are unavailable. We considered that to be an indicator of how differently those communes conduct their cultural activity. This is also why we selected one commune on top of the previously chosen ten local government entities; it had not furnished information about its activity and expenditures, and in its territory there is no local state cultural center. Therefore, category (6) was formed on account of the absence of information on activity and budget, and the lack of a cultural center within the territorial limits of the commune (n=1).  After selecting the communes, one-on-one in-depth interviews (IDIs) were held with the representatives of schools, non-governmental organizations, the offices of communes and parishes, or the entities that undertake cultural activities in the confines of the very same administrative unit as the studied cultural centers. We recruited people to participate in the ethnographic research from among the leaders discovered during the analysis of the data originating from the qualitative research (IDI) in a given commune. 8 We posited that a person we intended to recognize as being a local leader should be mentioned in at least one of the four one-on-one in-depth interviews conducted in the territory of a single commune. We We chose to employ diary research on account of the ability it provides to observe animators during their daily activities. This method also facilitates the recording of contents at the time they appear naturally, and the persons can share their observations over a longer period of time. In such instances, some researchers 8 The research team made this identification on the basis of recordings or transcripts of individual in-depth interviews. In the interview script, the body of the question was worded as follows: "In your community or in its closest vicinity, is there a person who exerts a significant influence on culture and the local community? I am thinking about a person (not about an institution) who gathers others around him or her and who has clout. A person who initiates and co-organizes many cultural events in your parts. Are you capable of identifying someone like that? Perhaps, there is more than one such person who acts as an animator of cultural life? Please tell me why you consider this person or persons to be a leader or leaders? [If no spontaneous response is given, one might ask about local activists, well-known people associated with the region and acting to the benefit the local community, artists, celebrities]." In reality, the wording of the question could have slightly deviated from the adopted template.
stress the significance of participatory research (Stage, Eriksson, and Reestorf 2019). Changes in technology and people's attitudes have meant that the set of skills needed to run modern field research has undergone transformation, because it calls for developed digital competences, including IT skills (operating hardware and software) and information-related skills (searching for content, selecting content, and critical evaluation).
Internet ethnography is one of the newly-formed research techniques. Some studies suggest that it is a type of a shortcut to obtain multiple-source data, but thinking about ethnography as using the Internet as a certain shortcut or facility can evidence that the essence of the issue has not been perceived correctly (Kozinets 2006). This type of research method is part of hybrid ethnography. According to Liz Przybylski (2020), hybrid ethnography 9 should be understood as a researcher's work with the interviewee' multiple sources of expression that have various distinctive attributes and which the researcher must interpret to grasp the meaning conveyed by the participants (see Seim 2019).
The research reconstructed in this article contains elements of the hybrid approach. We chose to utilize the classic method of structured diaries, which entailed the animator writing down their activities related to a chosen type of activity in a specially designed questionnaire. 10 Additionally, however, the participant 9 Many areas of life, especially those that are related to expressive culture, exist in both digital and physical space. Liz Przybylski's book abounds with pragmatic hints on how to prepare, run, and analyze ethnographic research situated in a hybrid field reality. Special emphasis is placed here on media and the visual layer, including images and sound as elements constituting an inseparable part of modern research into the culture of expression. 10 Over a period of seven days, the respondents copiously documented the events from this period. During the research, they described their observations, feelings, and thoughts related to the method of organization and execution of cultural events held in their nearest vicinity. They also documented their contacts with the representatives of institutions of culture, communes, schools, parishes, and non-governmental organizations, as well as their informal relations with the residents of Utilizing a visual message helps one understand and illustrate the practices of the person without having to give extensive explanations thereof (Gibson et al. 2013). We perceive that as an advantage, because an image replete with the respondent's commentary potentially provides more information than the very same description, even if it is highly detailed. Another undeniable advantage of the diary method is also the immediate capturing of the person's events, thoughts, or observations at the time when they occur, which minimizes the possibility of distortions related to retrospection. Similarly to any other method, this one does have certain inherent limitations, including the most important one, namely that keeping a diary may affect the interviewee's behavior, as he/she modthe same community/commune. Every day, the subjects filled out several fundamental information sheets with regard to the people with whom they spent their time, what they did, and where they had been. Additionally, every day they received one task calling for more work.  The hybrid nature of ethnography creates an opportunity to employ the diary method in order to secure a number of digital materials (photos, 13 13 The research participants took pictures during special assignments which formed a part of the diary method. One of these assignments involved illustrating regular activities which the person usually performed every day. In the second assignment, in turn, the participant assumed the role of an ambassador for the local community and was supposed to tell a stranger about the local community. The instructions were as follows: I. "Please take several photos to illustrate five regular things you usually do during the day. Please prepare captions for the photos and tell us why these rituals are important to you." II. "Today we would like for you to start telling us about the local community's life. Your assignment is to play the role of an ambassador for your local community and tell a traveler about that community. Please provide thorough answers to the following questions and document your story with several photos:  14 On account of its modest share and form (self-presentation of the subject), the video clip has not been included in the analyses presented in this article. 15 In research techniques requiring greater involvement -and there is no doubt that the diary method is one of them -what appears to be key is: 1. maintaining (for the full length of the measurement period) the greatest number of persons who have elected to participate in the measurement; and 2. maintaining the motivation of the people to work with the tool with commitment. In the described project, the decision was made to collect data for seven full days, as this time period makes it possible to fulfill the two foregoing conditions, and additionally capture the person' routine activities. 16 Some of these assignments have already been mentioned in footnote no. 13. The animators were also asked to report a local event (especially a cultural one) that had taken place during the week covered by the measurement. 17 Representatives of the company doing business as 'Danae' conducted the conversations, as the business is responsible for running the entire project under the name of 'Comprehensive Research into Cultural Centers in Poland', including the research modules described in this article. the opportunity to verify the researcher's original interpretations.

Common elements in the actions of local animators
As was already mentioned, we have observed several recurring patterns of activity in the interviews and the diaries. What appears to be import- Another similarity is activity in many areas of life and not restricting activity to one selected local organization, but multi-pronged activity for the entire local community: The extensive network of informal contacts with local decision-makers, civil servants, directors of local cultural institutions, city council members, and business owners is an accompanying element.
The rule of reciprocity 20 (Cialdini 1995)  The statements of the research participants simultaneously allude to the fact that even though they are active people, they do not have a sense of great control over their professional choices. Their social activity is sometimes dictated by their feeling of internal emptiness, while their activities to benefit the local community are a way for them to fill that emptiness. In this article, we have employed the voluminous category of social activity. We define it -using Weber's conceptual framework -as an "action that according to the intentional sense of the agent refers to the behavior of others and is thereby oriented in its course" (Weber 2002:6). Therefore, we are operating within the area of the sociological theory of action for the good of  The animators participating in the research are well-known in their local environment. This is evidenced at the very least by the fact that they were identified as leaders by representatives of the local institutions. Since in the past they had completed the tasks entrusted to them many times, they have also gained great social trust: [The name of the river] flows through a historical park that has been beautifully revitalized, the park also The participants usually do not glean any financial benefits from their animation activities and they also sacrifice their leisure time. This is why one can say that a culture animator is chiefly a social role, not a professional role.

Pictures as a testament to animators' commitment
As access to digital techniques becomes more widespread, the trend of using pictures or video clips as source material in research has become more pronounced. Researchers came to widely recognize visual material as a valuable source of primary data.
Some scientists even state that "some contemporarily important research problems may be explained in full only by using such 'soft methods'" (Żuchowska-Zimnal 2013:100).
In the project discussed in this article, we have secured a small representation of visual materials (47 pictures and 6 video-clip recordings of several minutes in length). This is also the reason why we did not choose to interpret these photographs as part of visual sociology, or to discover hidden meanings and sense (Stańczak 2007;Konecki 2012). In his 2011 article, Tomasz Ferenc points out that English-language literature uses the terms 'visual anthropology' and 'visual sociology', which -when translated into Polish -fail to fully convey the underlying sense of these disciplines. In this author's opinion, at present, i.e. in the day and age of audio-visuality, visual culture forms the principal field of interest in visual sociology and anthropology. That is also why the Polish terms proposed by Krzysztof Olechnicki (1999), namely "socjologia obrazu" and "antropologia obrazu," appear to be more suitable. search. Based on this, we construed maps depict-25 Contemporarily, many publications are devoted to slightly different aspects of perceiving space −, creating mental maps or the supporting technique of photographic walks (see Nóżka and Martini 2015:34-50). In turn, in the book titled Socjologia przestrzeni [The Sociology of Space] written by Martina Löw (2000 and, space appears as a complicated and dynamic structure undergoing incessant change. As Marta Bucholc relates, "(There is] not only space as such, but rather the processes of constituting or forming space. Thus, the assumption is that we are dealing with a dynamic, process-related, syncretic and (in the broadest sense) constructionist approach. However, what is considerably more important is the relationary approach. On the one hand, therefore, the author opposes visions of space which she calls 'absolutistic', in which space is grasped as inflexible, an empty receptacle for things. Instead, she proposes thinking about space in terms of a system or order of living bodies and social goods that maintain certain relationships with one another" (2018:17). In this theory presented by the German sociologist, people are not the only ones to shape space. They are also joined by institutions, things, and even certain symbols. She does not directly present the hypothesis regarding the causality of inhuman factors, contrary to what Bruno Latour (2010)

Conclusion
The presented forms of autoethnography were help- The creativity of local animators and the motivations associated with the inherited social activity prevent others from seeing the value of their work.
Their commitment is often seen as something obvious. The dearth of support from members of the local community can lead to a lack of appreciation for the work done by local leaders and, as a consequence, to their diminished motivation to work for others.