Ethnography - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Ethnography

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... a method or body of methods used in a particular field of study or activity. ... intellectual discipline or field of study as a mode of investigation and inquiry, ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Ethnography


1
Ethnography
  • INFO 272. Qualitative Research Methods

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?vjwMj3PJDxuo

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

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

19
For Thursday
  • Discussion of your observation exercise
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