ethnography: principles in practice pdf

2005). In particular, every attempt is made to eliminate the effect of the observer by developing an explicit, standardized set of data elicitation procedures. (1988a) Conversations with a purpose: the ethnographic interview in educational research, in R.G. Moreover, anthropology has developed genres that reflect the intellectual traditions associated with particular geographical regions (Fardon 1990). The accounts produced by the people under study must neither be treated as valid in their own terms, and thus as beyond assessment and explanation, nor simply dismissed as epiphenomena or ideological distortions. It offers a systematic introduction to ethnographic principles and. . Lacey, C. (1970) Hightown Grammar, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Thus, Lincoln and Guba argue that when participants do not own the data they have furnished about themselves, they have been robbed of some essential element of dignity, in addition to having been abandoned in harms way (Lincoln and Guba 1989: 236). While sharing a common identity, in some respect, is often seen as facilitating the process of building rapport, what is and is not shared, and its importance, is in an important sense defined, and perhaps redefined, during the course of the interview. The principled use of synecdoche will almost certainly be regulated by craft judgements rather than by rigid formulae. Atkinson, P. (1982) Writing ethnography, in H.J. This involves their physical manipulation, through techniques such as staining, in order to render them visible and legible. And you know why? And yet they too, trusting entirely to the force of their understanding, applied no rule, but made everything turn upon hard thinking and perpetual working and exercise of the mind. This view therefore leads directly to the second image, that of the critic. I also followed The Boys football team closely each week and went to the match with them when I could. Cyber-ethnography deals with social action and social organization in such virtual settings. Actor-network theory takes such an interest to an extreme (occasionally absurd) length. The volume offers a systematic introduction to ethnographic principles and practice, and includes a new chapter on 'Ethnography in the digital world'. As we saw earlier, Ethics 219 1EEE 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 EEE3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5EEE 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 41EEE though, there may be good reasons routinely to expect a negative reaction from at least some of the people studied. . Fieldwork, 4 vols, London: Sage. Angela: I noticed after three or four lessons Carol started speaking more. DIRECT DOWNLOAD! Chandler, J. Moreover, wherever possible they must put themselves into the position of being an acceptable incompetent, as Lofland (1971) neatly describes it. Perhaps this can be illustrated by reference to research where too literal a notion of access would be particularly misleading. From the perspective of the marginal reflexive ethnographer, there can thus be no question of total commitment, surrender, or becoming. The blaring rock Muzak, the dour looks of the customers, and the splitting headache I developed (from what I later learned was the odor of amylnitrite, a drug inhaled to enhance the sexual experience) effectively killed any desire I had for conversation. Option C could not have been managed. Despite this, there is still a tendency to think of written language as the privileged medium of scholarly communication, and there are some tensions in the use of visual materials in a discipline of words (Ball and Smith 1992: 5). It makes no principled distinction between human and material actants within a complex of interrelationships. The development of explanations and theories involves a narrowing of focus and a process of abstraction. (2005) Poetics for a planet: discourse on some problems of being-in-place, in N.K. . Lincoln, Y.S. Our approach here will be a catholic one, ruling out neither of these forms of research. The homespun example of the mantelpiece also directs ethnographic attention towards the more self-conscious cultural phenomenon of collecting art and other material artefacts (see Painter 2002; Belk 1995; Pearce 1994). The reconstruction of such trajectories is a powerful way of ordering ethnographic analyses. Oboler (1986) provides a striking example of this, discussing her husbands acceptance among the Nandi of Kenya: His first trip to the river to bathe was a crucial test. and Scott, M.B. Of course, if their interest lies mainly with specific groups, and they wish to explore them in great depth, they may not always find sufficient documentation bearing on them. Indeed when everyone realized I supported Preston (as well as Liverpool, of course) it was always a good joke since they were so often getting beaten. These can then be assessed for the extent to which they capture the desired dimensions or categories; the appropriateness of connotations; their value in suggesting new lines of analysis and comparison. Here, sensible judgements have to be made about what to do and what not to do; and about what precautions to take. Among other things, the fieldworker will want to ask what to write down, how to write it down, and when to write it down. Central to positivism, then, is a certain conception of scientific method, modelled on the natural sciences, and in particular on physics (Toulmin 1972). It allows them to relax much more than they would in less familiar surroundings, and it may also provide insight into their sense of themselves and their world (Herzog 2005). She comments that they represented in their most condensed and dramatic form some of the key themes of her book (Hey 1997: 2).3 At the other end of the spectrum are sources of a more formal nature, and these include other published ethnographies. The process of analysis 185 1EEE 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 EEE3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5EEE 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 41EEE on various grounds. The ethnographic text that uses this writing strategy, therefore, has a recurrent pattern. Holdaway, S. (1983) Inside the British Police: A Force at Work, Oxford: Blackwell. As Devault (1990) and Stanley and Wise (1983) have argued, the feminist standpoint may subvert and transgress time-honoured modes of writing and representation that implicitly reproduce dominant modes of thought and discourse. Moreover, there is a sense in which this usage reflects the character of the wider society; in which interviews designed to elicit the inside story, to lay bear peoples feelings, and so on, are ubiquitous (Atkinson and Silverman 1997). Of course, note-taking is not always possible or easy even in overt research. . As Measor (1985) notes: God forbid that one should fail to laugh at an informants joke! This underlines an important feature of much ethnographic interviewing: that, within the boundaries of the interview context, the aim is to facilitate a conversation, giving the interviewee a good deal more leeway to talk on their own terms than is the case in standardized interviews. Learn how we and our ad partner Google, collect and use data. But this is not the only source of problems; he quotes a senior police officer: I think most policemen cant relate to sociology at all, because, you see, the way were taught everything is black and white: those who do bad should be punished, those who do good should be rewarded. 128 Lazarsfeld, R.P. Further, it should be eventful: endowed with concrete interactional events, incidents, occurrences, episodes, anecdotes, scenes and happenings someplace in the real world (Lofland 1974: 106, 107). The legitimate businessman he wont even give you the time of day. Should these notes be filed under Racketeers, attitudes toward? It is revealed for the first time that advocating for the environment is emotional labour, additional to the previously-recognised emotional labour associated with caring for patients. Generally, then, the interviewer needs to give clear indications of acceptance, especially at the beginning. Generally, such suspicions quickly dissipate as contact increases; but this is not always the case. What is the structure of the career of the deviant pupil? Drinking at the club bar on a regular basis gave me the opportunity to get to know the Rebels and gave them an opportunity to size me up and check me out on neutral ground. How do teachers link deviant acts to persons so that persons are defined as deviant? While there were recurrent debates among them regarding the relative advantages and uses of the two approaches, there was general agreement on the value of both (Bulmer, 1984; Harvey 1985; Hammersley 1989a; Deegan 2001). (Krieger 1979a: 1701) 10 One of the strengths even of open participant observation, of course, is that in natural settings other audiences are generally much more powerful and significant for participants than the ethnographer, and their effects are likely to swamp those of the researcher. It would, for instance, seem odd to describe work in a modern office setting without paying heed to its physical layout (walled rooms or open plan, number of floors, connections to other buildings, etc. As Crow et al. Ethnography cannot provide a definitive solution to the problem of generalization, but then neither can any other form of social research. There was little or no discussion of the general issues I was trying to raise or the overall arguments of the chapter . However, even in this situation, it may still be advisable to try to distance oneself from the roles of both expert and critic. As Warren (1988: 30) notes, the question of sexuality in fieldwork first arose in the context of safety from rape of white women alone in primitive Field relations 93 1EEE 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 EEE3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5EEE 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 41EEE societies. (1999) Beyond netiquette: the ethics of doing naturalistic discourse research on the internet, in S. Jones (ed.) Everybody up! It allows the ethnographer to exploit the capacities of digital recording in different media. The presence and significance of documentary products provide the ethnographer with a rich vein of analytic topics, as well as valuable sources of data and information. and Holstein, J.A. On other occasions we reported the teachers statement back and then asked why the teacher had said or done something. Sometimes, of course, ethnographers conduct interviews where more than one other person is present, and here the question of audience is even more complex. In addition to the fact that group interviews allow a greater number of people to be interviewed in the same time, they also have the advantage that they may make the interview situation less threatening for interviewees, and thus encourage them to be more forthcoming. . (Malinowski 1922: 89) Sometimes the starting point for research is a well-developed theory from which a set of hypotheses can be derived. Pidgeon, N. and Henwood, K. (2004) Grounded theory, in M. Hardy and A. Bryman (eds) Handbook of Data Analysis, London: Sage. Having become friends with one of the Mohawks, he tried to revert to the role of anthropologist. and Geoffrey, W. (1968) Complexities of the Urban Classroom: An Analysis Towards a General Theory of Teaching, New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. and Engels, J.D. Speer, S.A. (2002) Natural and contrived data: a sustainable distinction?, Discourse Studies, 4, 4: 51125. Styles (1979) provides an example of the early stages of learning to be a participant observer in his research on gay baths. There is now a very substantial literature on narrative analysis and we do not intend to recapitulate it all here.7 What we will say is that it is necessary to recognize that narratives should be studied within the context of an overall ethnographic strategy. Maxwell, J.A. and she led me into a room where five members of the Council were gathered the Priests Armat and Wif, and the Masters Firth, Huf and Lare. Barrett, R.A. (1974) Benabarre: The Modernization of a Spanish Village, New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Why? Ryan (2006) provides an example from a life history study of Irish gay men: Darren . Whyte (1953) provides an illustration of the non-directive steering of an interview in the questions he puts to Columbus Gary, a union official handling grievances in a steel plant: Whyte: Im trying to catch up on things that have happened since I was last here to study this case. Spradley recounts: On my next visit to the treatment center I invited Bob into my office. This textbook was first produced in 1983, and was targeted, in general, at a social-science and, in specific, a sociological readership. Mann, T. (1996) The Magic Mountain, New York: Vintage. There is also a new prologue and epilogue. 63 Karp, D.A. Even if permission for the research is not withheld altogether, gatekeepers may, as we have suggested, attempt to guide the research in directions they prefer, or away from potentially sensitive areas. We do not need a separate specialism or subdiscipline of material culture in order to address these issues. 128 Documents and other artefacts, real and virtual Given the historical and intellectual roots of ethnographic work, one can often detect a romantic legacy that privileges the oral over the literate. Indeed, there is often a considerable amount of uncertainty and variation in the scope for negotiating access. The skilful activities of inspecting physical traces of peripheral blood or bone-marrow are embedded in the exchange of talk between professional colleagues, or in teaching encounters. They include the ethnographic analysis of processes of design, an aspect of contemporary material culture that has attracted considerable interest on the part of social scientists.7 This includes ethnographic analysis of the design process (e.g Henderson 1998; Salvador et al. These alternative textual 204 Writing ethnography formats include ethno-drama, in which research findings are transformed into dramatic enactments, fictionalized narratives, and poems.3 Such transgressions of conventional realism in ethnographic texts have been advocated by a number of authors in the pursuit of postmodern aesthetics and ethics in ethnographic representation. We need to do so in order to inform our craft skills as producers of ethnographies, not in order to transform ethnography into a branch of literary studies. And there is the problem of confidentiality. The aim is not to gather pure data that are free from potential bias. What these all have in common is the sense of repeated forms of activity, carried out with some degree of self-consciousness, in which the repetitious and formulaic character of the action itself has a degree of intrinsic significance. Ideas are emergent from ones experience in the field, and from ones preliminary analytic reflections on the data. 242 References Cassell, J. He explicitly notes the value of combining such data sources: The sociometric questionnaires failed to pick up the casual friendships that existed between pupils outside school, and made it appear that they had no such contact. Finch, J. (1948) The Plague and I, London: Hammond. . I. Atkinson, Paul, 1947 II. In her study of gender and schooling in a rural English setting, Mason (1990: 106) reports becoming aware of details of covert practices such as moonlighting, taxdodging, and various details of gossip, 222 Ethics which she was asked to keep confidential. . Similarly, the ethnographic study of scientific work especially the genre of laboratory studies cannot proceed adequately without acknowledgement of the work of writing. Moreover, any setting may contain several cases. The problem became one of discovering how, and by whom. Morgans research on women factory workers was picked up by national daily newspapers (Morgan 1972), and the Banbury restudy was described in a local newspaper under the headline: New probe into snob town (Bell 1977: 38). 1.) On the other hand, things are not necessarily so straightforward. The precise selection of settings, and the lessons drawn from them, will depend on the analytic themes being pursued. Ethnography: Principles in Practice. Guba, E. (1978) Toward a Methodology of Naturalistic Inquiry in Educational Evaluation, Los Angeles, CA: Center for the Study of Evaluation, UCLA Graduate School of Education. 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