People-Powered Research: Empowering Communities Through Citizen Ethnography

What is Citizen Ethnography?

Think of it like citizen science, but for understanding the messy, complicated, gloriously human stuff that makes up our social worlds.

Citizen ethnography is where ordinary people (not professional researchers) are trained in the tools and techniques of ethnography to study their own communities. Instead of waiting for so-called experts to parachute in, everyday folk learn to observe, listen, ask questions, and collect stories about what's actually going on in their world. Then, critically, they use what they learn to lead change themselves.

This isn't about turning everyone into professional anthropologists. It's about democratising the power to understand and act on social realities. It's about trusting that the people living through the challenges know their context better than any outsider ever could.

Because here's the uncomfortable truth: they do.

Why Does This Matter?

Let's be honest about the traditional consulting model. An organisation or government identifies a problem (often from a distance). They hire experts. Those experts conduct interviews, run workshops, and maybe spend a few weeks "embedded" in the community. They identify patterns, write recommendations, present findings, and move on to the next contract.

The community members? They were subjects, not collaborators. Data points, not decision-makers.

Citizen ethnography flips the script. 

When community members become the researchers, several magical things happen:

1. Power shifts. The people affected by an issue aren't just consulted; they're leading the enquiry. They decide what questions matter, whose voices aren’t being heard, and what changes are worth pursuing.

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2. Knowledge deepens. An outsider might spend weeks trying to understand a community. Someone who lives there? They've got years, sometimes generations, of embedded knowledge. They know the unspoken rules, the hidden tensions, the relationships that matter. They can ask questions outsiders wouldn't think to ask and access spaces outsiders can't reach.

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3. Trust builds. When your neighbour asks you about your experience, it's different from when a consultant with a recording device does. There's an intimacy, a vulnerability that emerges when research happens between people who share context and consequences.

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4. Change sticks. Solutions designed by the community, for the community, have a fighting chance of actually working. Because they're not imposed from above: they're grown from within.

The Messy Reality We're Actually Dealing With

Here's where it gets interesting, and a bit uncomfortable.

As consultants and researchers, we often live between two worlds. Most of us get into the work because we genuinely have a passion for helping the communities we are contracted to study. Yet, organisations and investors want hard metrics, clean patterns, and tidy solutions. But lived reality? That's gloriously, frustratingly messy.

Humans are pattern-finding organisms. We look at complexity and our brains immediately start searching for the narrative, the framework, the model that makes sense of it all. And there's value in that - we need sense-making.

But here's what we often forget: we're not just pattern-finders, we're pattern-creators. The very act of making meaning isn't just deductive (finding what's there), it's constructive (creating what we see through the lens we use). When we research communities, we're not just discovering truth; we're participating in constructing it.

This is why citizen ethnography matters so damn much.

When we create multi-vocal spaces through citizen ethnography, it's not about finding "the pattern" that explains everything. It's about the relationships we form through collective sense-making. It's iterative. Experimental. Ongoing. Dialogic.

It's messy, yes. But complexity requires mess. Citizen ethnography is really all about what Systems Sanctuary calls scaling deep: taking the time and resources to do steady, contextually-rooted work that deepens relationships and understanding in order to create durable, system-wide change. Trying to clean up a project too quickly is how we end up with solutions that look good on PowerPoint but fall apart in practice.

How Does This Actually Work?

Let's get practical. Back in 2021, Habitus was approached by the coastal community of Kiama in New South Wales, where youth suicide rates were devastating. The community knew something had to change, but the traditional approaches weren't cutting it.

Instead of bringing in more external experts, we launched a citizen ethnography project with the community. Local residents - parents, teachers, young people, community leaders - were trained in ethnographic methods. They learned to conduct interviews, make observations, and analyse themes. They researched their own community's relationship with youth mental health, connection, and belonging.

But here's what made it powerful: they weren't just collecting data. They were building relationships. Every conversation was an act of care, an acknowledgment that someone's story mattered. The research itself became an intervention - creating spaces for dialogue that hadn't existed before (find out more about the program here). 

The community members identified their own assets and challenges. They designed their own solutions. They led the change initiatives. And because they were embedded in the community, they could sustain the work long after any consultant would have packed up and left.

This is what people-powered research looks like.

The Tools, Not the Saviour

Now, let's be clear about something: as anthropologists and researchers, we're not claiming citizen ethnography is the universal answer to every problem. We're not peddling another framework that promises to solve complexity with a neat acronym.

We use varied methodologies. Citizen ethnography is simply one tool that deserves a place in the toolkit - especially when we're working on issues that require deep community engagement and long-term change.

The main thing is to see it as an ongoing project, part of an ongoing dialogue. One that constantly asks: "Whose voices are not being heard?" Currently, we’re facilitating a citizen ethnography project with mental health workers at Richmond Fellowship Queensland, working together to leverage their lived experience to catalyse change. 

And this is where the magic really happens. When community members themselves become integral to the research, they're the ones drawing in diverse voices. They're the ones making it a multi-vocal space. They understand the power dynamics, the marginalised perspectives, the stories that get left out.

This is why the anthropological method is so valuable. It focuses on reflexivity and positionality as part of ethical practice. It forces us to ask: Where am I standing? What am I seeing from here? What am I missing? Whose story am I telling, and do I have the right to tell it?

Citizen ethnography doesn't eliminate these questions - it democratises them. Everyone involved becomes responsible for ethical research practice, for representation, for care.

Getting Closer to Reality

Look, community change work is bloody hard. There are no quick fixes. No five-step frameworks that work everywhere. No consultants who can waltz in and solve problems that took decades to develop.

But citizen ethnography offers something rare and valuable: a way to get closer to the messy realities of the people who need change most. Not by studying them as objects, but by empowering them as agents.

It flattens old power structures. It centres lived experience. It builds capacity that remains in the community long after any research project ends.

Does it take longer than traditional approaches? Sometimes. Is it messier? Absolutely. Does it require letting go of control as the "expert"? You bet.

But if we're serious about creating change that actually matters, change that lasts, change that respects the humanity and agency of the people involved, then maybe it's time to stop being the expert and start being the facilitator.

Maybe it's time to hand the research tools to the people who know the territory best.

Maybe it's time to trust communities to study themselves.

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The Bottom Line

Citizen ethnography isn't about rejecting expertise or pretending professional researchers don't have value. It's about recognising that the most valuable expertise often lives in communities themselves, and that expertise has been systematically undervalued and ignored.

It's about shifting from "studying the other" to "studying ourselves." From extraction to collaboration. From expert-driven to community-led.

It's people-powered research for people-centered change.

And in a world that's increasingly complex, increasingly polarised, and increasingly hungry for authentic connection and meaningful action, that's not just useful - It's essential.

Curious about how citizen ethnography might work in your community or organisation? Want to explore what it looks like to flip the research script and empower the people closest to the challenges? Get in touch with our Project Coordinator here.