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Ethnography

INFO 272. Qualitative Research Methods. Ethnography. Introduction. Participant-observation ≠ Ethnography Classic Ethnographic Practice Challenges to the Classic Model Subjectivity, The Researcher as Research Instrument. Ethnography.

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Ethnography

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  1. INFO 272. Qualitative Research Methods Ethnography

  2. Introduction • Participant-observation ≠ Ethnography • Classic Ethnographic Practice • Challenges to the Classic Model • Subjectivity, The Researcher as Research Instrument

  3. Ethnography • not a ‘method’ or ‘procedure’ rather a methodological approach: combination of subject matter, epistemology, and practice • ethno [nation] + graphy [writing]

  4. Ethnography – characterized by… • subject: the holistic study of people, culture, societies, social relations, social processes, behaviour in situ • method: some component of participant-observation • analysis and writing style: inductive analysis, use of ‘thick description’ and narrative, emic accounts

  5. Ethnography – characterized by… • Thick description • Keeping intact (holism) • ‘You are there’ feeling • Not just observing action, understanding symbolic action

  6. methodology vs. method [OED] • methodology, n: Originally: the branch of knowledge that deals with method generally ... the study of the direction and implications of empirical research, or of the suitability of the techniques employed in it; (more generally) a method or body of methods used in a particular field of study or activity. • method, n: d. The principles or procedures of any mode or field of cognitive activity, themselves considered as an object or branch of study.3. a. A special form of procedure or characteristic set of procedures employed (more or less systematically) in an intellectual discipline or field of study as a mode of investigation and inquiry, or of teaching and exposition.

  7. a brief history...

  8. Ethnography ala Malinowski 1922-1960s • Researchers Role: • scientific detachment • be neither preacher nor politician (Weber, “Science as a Vocation”)

  9. Ethnography ala Malinowski 1922-1960s • Spatial Aspects of Field Work: • fieldwork: the study of distant cultures through total immersion in particular sites, participant-observation • assumed to take place in one distinct site (‘the field’) • Assumption that site = focus of ‘whole culture’

  10. challenges to the model • 1) Subject Matter • Chicago school (urban ethnography) • ethnographies of ‘the West’ and “studying up” (Marcus, 1986) • scientists and engineers (Latour, Traweek, Orr)

  11. challenges to the model • 2) Spatial Aspects of the ‘Field Site’: • questioning cultural isolation and cultural ‘purity,’ ‘authenticity’ and whether it ever existed • ambiguous spatial terrain (cyberspace, media studies, transnationalism). • Marcus (1995) proposes multi-sited ethnography

  12. challenges to the model • 3) Researchers Role and Reflexivity • cultural research implicated in colonial practices – the politics of ‘objectivity’ • The ‘subjects’ of research begin to talk back (negritude movement) • insights gained from examining subjectivity (Rosaldo reading) • Action Research

  13. subjectivity “the attempt to understand another life world using the self … as the instrument of knowing” Sherry Ortner

  14. subjectivity, example 1 Emotion: - Briggs, Never in Anger

  15. subjectivity, example 2 The Everyday, common sense (ethnomethodology): Garfinkel

  16. subjectivity, example 2 Frozen in Grand Central Station - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwMj3PJDxuo

  17. subjectivity Other forms of knowledge: • Embodied • Tacit (what cannot be articulated)

  18. When is ethnography NOT ethnography When there’s no context (holistic) When there’s no empathetic understanding (emic) When there is no symbolic understanding of action (thick description) When there’s no situated participation (experience) When you’re not prepared to be surprised (assumptions) When there’s no interpretation/framework (models)

  19. For Thursday Discussion of your observation exercise

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