Maintaining Diversity: An Ethnographic Study of Oak Park, Illinois -
Progress Reports
by
Jay Ruby
Temple University

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As Of December, 2006 This Project is complete. See Final Report Below.

Five Oak Park Stories Now Available.

Documentary Educational Resources (DER)

101 Morse Street, Watertown, MA 02472

by email - docued@der.org    web site - http://www.der.org

by phone - 800-569-6621 or 617-926-0491

DER announces the release of five digital ethnographies on CD-ROM. The ethnographies, designed to be seen on a computer, combine text, photographs and video in an interactive way. These innovative works bring together the traditional publishing outlets of a book, a photo essay and film in a way that enhances the usefulness of all three.

Oak Park Stories is a series of reflexive ethnographic explorations of a Chicago suburb - one of the most successfully integrated places in the U.S. Employing interactive and digital technologies four portraits present an anthropological perspective of this "social experiment" through written and video portraits of African American, lesbian and WASP families and an institutional portrait of the Oak Park Regional Housing Center, the core of the community's integration maintenance polices.  

Walking the Line: The Taylor Family is an Oak Park Story portrays a middle-class African American family who appear to exemplify values and aspirations that make possible the success of the village's long term hope that Oak Park will continue to be a welcoming place for everyone.

Rebekah and Sophie - A Lesbian Family is an Oak Park Story that portrays people living in one of the most "gay-friendly" suburbs in the U.S.   The family lived through the gay civil rights battles of the 1980s and 1990s and have settled into raising a family and being part of the middle-class life of the village. Like the Taylors they present another aspect of Oak Park's desire to accommodate and accept difference.

DEAR OLD OAK PARKERS (DOOPERS) is an ethnographic family portrait of Helena Gervais McCullough, her daughter Katherine and son-in-law, Bob that explores the role of white Oak Parkers in the transformation of their community into an integrated and gay friendly place.

Oak Park Regional Housing Center is an ethnographic portrait of a unique organization that has, for over thirty years, aided in the Village's quest to achieve and maintain a geographically integrated place. It is the cornerstone of these efforts.

VAL (a 30 minute film on DVD) is an Oak Park Story about Val's Halla, an independent record store that is a cultural institution in Oak Park.   For thirty plus years Val has offered her customers an incredible array of recorded music from classical to rap, both new and used.   In addition, the collective knowledge of Val and her staff makes it possible to carry on an informed conversation about music and recordings.   Concert information is always readily available.   As these cultural founts of musical knowledge are being rapidly replaced with Wal-Marts where employees know nothing about music, Val's Halla has become part of the disappearing commercial landscape of small businesses run by knowledgeable people interested in what they sell. In this film, Val talks about the changing role of the record store and muses about what Oak Park looks like   from the vantage point of its counterculture.

Oak Park Stories is authored by Jay Ruby, a recently retired visual anthropologist, who has spent the last forty years exploring the relation between culture and the visual/pictorial world.  

"Jay Ruby has long espoused the use of visual data as a powerful tool for academic research. In his Oak Park Stories he has provided a clear example of how his theories can work and bridged the gap between visual and mainstream written anthropologies. "Prof. Sarah Pink, Anthropology, Loughborough University, Leicestershire, UK.

Each CD-ROM is available from DER for $29.95 each with a 20% discount of two or more are purchased together..

Additional Information can be found at http://www.der.org/films/oak-park-stories.html