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Ethnography

Ethnography. Participant observation Boom in the last 40 yrs Qualitative interview Narrative Analysis A method and a product School of thought. What it means-. Literally means ‘writing about people’.

macaulay-whitehead
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Ethnography

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  1. Ethnography Participant observation Boom in the last 40 yrs Qualitative interview Narrative Analysis A method and a product School of thought

  2. What it means- • Literally means ‘writing about people’. • People as meaning makers, how people interpret their worlds, need to understand particular cul worlds in which people live • Which people construct and utilize

  3. Key Ideas • S Be. Cannot be reduced to predictable ‘variables’.(Blumer, 1967) • People actively collaborate in the ‘construction’ and maintenance of the cul. Meanings which inform their actions • Researchers therefore need to find ways of engaging with those meanings and the processes through which they’re constructed. • By its ambitions and nature tends to focus on ltd range of cases, often only one case

  4. Purpose • To get in this or that s. world, to see how the participants find that world, and to be able as Researchers to describe how its cul ticks. • Hospital world (Roth), school (woods) or any society • Strong links with Anthropological research- participant observer of everyday life.(not always)

  5. Variety, but common grounds • Anthropological, feminist, cultural studies, media studies, urban studies • Reaction to positivism and quantitative approaches • Key link- interpretative theoretical ideas of one form or the other. • Informed by ethnomethodology, symbolic interactionism, phenomenology, critical theory, and strands of feminism, postmodernism.

  6. Orientation of the researcher • Insider-researcher • Action researcher • Practitioner researcher

  7. Early works • Exhortations that ethnography stands or falls on the provision of ‘rich’ details of cul. Scenes-traveller’s journeys- Anthropology naiive and romantic • Thick descriptions- Geertz, 1988- strong sense of the particular realities • Lincoln and Guba (1985, 1989)- Transferability • Others- plausibility or versimilitude • Entering the other world • Sensing the believability of that world • Yet others- Credibility-how long, accnt of decision making, adequate attention to reflexivity issues, and so on. Why hypo • Data gathering and analysis simultaneously

  8. Stages? • Explore • Document the prespectives • Telling the story-let the voices be heard of marginalised members • Later- Bottoms-up approach- Micro-macro • Critical Ethnographers

  9. Human Instrument • Entering the field • Negotiating and gaining access • Key Informants • But not much on emotional ups and downs • How to draw boundaries • Today- the world of ethnographies is ‘ blurred genres’ Geertz

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