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What is Ethnography? Martyn Hammersley The Open University

What is Ethnography? Martyn Hammersley The Open University. NCRM Research Methods Festival 2008. A Contested Concept. Definition: uncertain and disputed. History: from anthropology through sociology to the rest of social science. Methodology or Method?. One, both, or neither?

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What is Ethnography? Martyn Hammersley The Open University

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  1. What is Ethnography?Martyn HammersleyThe Open University NCRM Research Methods Festival 2008

  2. A Contested Concept • Definition: uncertain and disputed. • History: from anthropology through sociology to the rest of social science.

  3. Methodology or Method? • One, both, or neither? • In an only partly mythical past, ‘ethnography’ referred to a distinctive mentality embedded in the use of a particular set of methods. • Today, there is more diversity in both principle and practice. • The meaning of any methodological label is defined partly by its relations with associated terms, in contexts of use.

  4. The Ethnographic Mentality: A Tortured Soul Key components: • Understanding (But is it possible?) • Process (But also structure?) • Discovery (But also construction?)

  5. Sources of data • Participant observation and its variants. • Interviews (Can there be ethnographic studies that are entirely interview-based?) • Documents and artifacts (Official statistics, material culture, and virtual ethnography.) • Structured data? (Ethnosemantics, questionnaires.) • Ethnographic work as mixing methods?

  6. Processing data • Fieldnotes versus electronic recording. • Audio- versus video-recording. • Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis (CAQDAS): friend or foe?

  7. Forms of analysis • Theme analysis • Thick description • Comparative method • Discourse and narrative analysis

  8. Some divisive issues What is the role of theory? The problem of focus: discourse versus action/practice? What is context? Macro versus micro, actual versus virtual. The problem of representation: writing, the visual, multi-modality. Theoretical versus applied? Value-neutral or ‘critical’?

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