Submitted by wakeupsilver on February 12, 2009 - 5:17pm.
CRESWELL
does a group have to be involved in a power struggle to study ethnographically? (i wouldn't think so but that's the sense i
get sort of)
omg ethnography seems like such an adventure. i would really like to try it, or perhaps i already have more informally.
i can only hope to "go native" that would be awesome! (page 72)
this account of ethnography was boring to read, not charged, but i appreciate the mention of critical ethnography i guess
(all pages)
MAANEN
ethnography: it's a written portrait of a culture. (page 1)
immersion... i really value this in my normal adventures of life. immersing myself in another culture. i wonder how it
related to tool-making (if at all)? (page 2)
"this may not be the way the field work is reported, but it is the way it is done." i know there's some practical reason to
not always report things the way they're done, but i am a bit enraged by this being the norm. arg! (page 2)
"ethnography is the result of field work but it is the written report that must represent the field work" (page 4)
Nice read. I trust this author to tell me what I need to know
LECOMPTE
Can ethnography ever be right (strictly speaking) if you introduce your own tools into the culture (after getting to know the culture)? (page 29)
i like how ethnography emphasizes discovery. it's not a hypothesis with a verificatoin stage. it's an exploration with a bunch of question marks. (page 33)
i like having lots of examples (page 31-32) but the examples are a little boring and not enticing to me
SAGE
can you transfer the "researcher as an embodied research instrument to the social spaces of the internet"? Maybe, in as much as the internet is a social space that the researcher can be an instrument, which I think can happen just doesn't seem as rich rich rich. (page 257)
Submitted by micah on February 12, 2009 - 12:01am.
As Stephanie also mentioned I found it very contradictory between LeCompte and Creswell in how they define the workings of ethnography. LeCompte speaks of immersing oneself in culture and making close friendships while Creswell cations of "going native" and compromising the study. Also the online ethnographic issues bring up the question of how the researcher relates to the community, where is the line between active member of the community/culture and objective researcher?
I also found a comment by Van Maanen that "there is no direct correspondence between the world as experienced and the world as conveyed in a text..." To me this is saying that you should not expect a one-to-one relationship between what happen and what was observed/reported. Though it is the job of the ethnographer to make the relationship between event/observation/report as close to one-to-one as possible.
Submitted by sajid on February 11, 2009 - 12:21pm.
LeCompte:
Aren't we playing fast and loose with the definition of "culture"? How holistic does one have to be in capturing culture (or conversely, how focused could one be)?
Is ethnography in the particular sense of this reading a tool for discovering what instruments or sensors are needed in a situation? How rigorous is that analysis?
Submitted by sajid on February 11, 2009 - 12:04pm.
Van Maanen:
Taking from the initial quote, can ethnography ever be authoritative? Or merely citable and attributable?
Who's watching the watchers?
Aren't all the problems that the author points out as issues facing ethnographers (that somehow social scientists don't get) issues that face every researcher or writer?
Submitted by sajid on February 11, 2009 - 11:22am.
Creswell:
How do your immerse without participating? How do you participate without having an effect?
How is critical ethnography different from journalism or activism? (Should it be?) Is critical ethnography critical in observation, or exposition?
To me it seems as much of culture is tacit as explicit. How has someone who has not gone native fully portraiture the culture? Or is it a matter of "turning off" the cultural imprint after the fact via analytic techniques?
Submitted by Stephanie on February 10, 2009 - 7:22pm.
Christine Hine article:
She mentions ethnographers renaming the sites they visited and studied online to maintain confidentiality of participants, but mightn't this reduce value? And just how easy/hard is it to actually hide the site's identity within an article devoted to its inner workings?
Submitted by Stephanie on February 10, 2009 - 7:21pm.
A few of the pieces refer to the disaster of ethnographers "going native" yet it seems as if ethnographers are
supposed to get involved in the groups they study. What is enough distance? What is too much (or isn't there--in the case of realist ethnographers).
Submitted by lightnin on February 12, 2009 - 1:36pm.
The more I read about ethnography and qualitative research, the more I am reminded of techniques and pitfalls of family therapy. An in-home family therapist visits the client's home and spends the first few weeks or months of therapy "joining" - essentially becoming acculturated to the family and their construction of reality. The problem or conflict that results in the family seeking help is always ambiguous - so 'joining' with them is initially at least an exercise in ethnography (the writing part ends up in the progress notes). The therapist is attempting to find themes in the interactions of family members that are relevant to the symptoms. Interventions are based on an understanding of how these themes interact to bring about pathology.
There is always a risk of 'going native' in this case as well - it's called "induction." The therapist is engaging empathically with the family, attempting to understand on a deep level their construction of meaning and relationships. Induction occurs when the therapist can no longer get outside of the client's meaning in order to be critical of it, which is necessary to the process of forming an intervention and encouraging change. In a sense they have become too empathic - losing sight of their own role and stance in favor of the client's constrictive reality. Sometimes this happens because their own issues and patterns have been triggered in such a way that they lose some of their self awareness. It's the clinical supervisor's responsibility to notice this and bring it into the therapist's attention so that they can regain a more useful perspective.
So I guess when I imagine "going native" in traditional ethnography, it seems like a similar loss of self and critical perspective necessary to use as a contrast against the culture under study.
CRESWELL
does a group have to be involved in a power struggle to study ethnographically? (i wouldn't think so but that's the sense i
get sort of)
omg ethnography seems like such an adventure. i would really like to try it, or perhaps i already have more informally.
i can only hope to "go native" that would be awesome! (page 72)
this account of ethnography was boring to read, not charged, but i appreciate the mention of critical ethnography i guess
(all pages)
MAANEN
ethnography: it's a written portrait of a culture. (page 1)
immersion... i really value this in my normal adventures of life. immersing myself in another culture. i wonder how it
related to tool-making (if at all)? (page 2)
"this may not be the way the field work is reported, but it is the way it is done." i know there's some practical reason to
not always report things the way they're done, but i am a bit enraged by this being the norm. arg! (page 2)
"ethnography is the result of field work but it is the written report that must represent the field work" (page 4)
Nice read. I trust this author to tell me what I need to know
LECOMPTE
Can ethnography ever be right (strictly speaking) if you introduce your own tools into the culture (after getting to know the culture)? (page 29)
i like how ethnography emphasizes discovery. it's not a hypothesis with a verificatoin stage. it's an exploration with a bunch of question marks. (page 33)
i like having lots of examples (page 31-32) but the examples are a little boring and not enticing to me
SAGE
can you transfer the "researcher as an embodied research instrument to the social spaces of the internet"? Maybe, in as much as the internet is a social space that the researcher can be an instrument, which I think can happen just doesn't seem as rich rich rich. (page 257)
As Stephanie also mentioned I found it very contradictory between LeCompte and Creswell in how they define the workings of ethnography. LeCompte speaks of immersing oneself in culture and making close friendships while Creswell cations of "going native" and compromising the study. Also the online ethnographic issues bring up the question of how the researcher relates to the community, where is the line between active member of the community/culture and objective researcher?
I also found a comment by Van Maanen that "there is no direct correspondence between the world as experienced and the world as conveyed in a text..." To me this is saying that you should not expect a one-to-one relationship between what happen and what was observed/reported. Though it is the job of the ethnographer to make the relationship between event/observation/report as close to one-to-one as possible.
LeCompte:
Van Maanen:
Creswell:
Christine Hine article:
She mentions ethnographers renaming the sites they visited and studied online to maintain confidentiality of participants, but mightn't this reduce value? And just how easy/hard is it to actually hide the site's identity within an article devoted to its inner workings?
A few of the pieces refer to the disaster of ethnographers "going native" yet it seems as if ethnographers are
supposed to get involved in the groups they study. What is enough distance? What is too much (or isn't there--in the case of realist ethnographers).
The more I read about ethnography and qualitative research, the more I am reminded of techniques and pitfalls of family therapy. An in-home family therapist visits the client's home and spends the first few weeks or months of therapy "joining" - essentially becoming acculturated to the family and their construction of reality. The problem or conflict that results in the family seeking help is always ambiguous - so 'joining' with them is initially at least an exercise in ethnography (the writing part ends up in the progress notes). The therapist is attempting to find themes in the interactions of family members that are relevant to the symptoms. Interventions are based on an understanding of how these themes interact to bring about pathology.
There is always a risk of 'going native' in this case as well - it's called "induction." The therapist is engaging empathically with the family, attempting to understand on a deep level their construction of meaning and relationships. Induction occurs when the therapist can no longer get outside of the client's meaning in order to be critical of it, which is necessary to the process of forming an intervention and encouraging change. In a sense they have become too empathic - losing sight of their own role and stance in favor of the client's constrictive reality. Sometimes this happens because their own issues and patterns have been triggered in such a way that they lose some of their self awareness. It's the clinical supervisor's responsibility to notice this and bring it into the therapist's attention so that they can regain a more useful perspective.
So I guess when I imagine "going native" in traditional ethnography, it seems like a similar loss of self and critical perspective necessary to use as a contrast against the culture under study.