A few years back those youths would have struck me as another variant group that likely had engrossing experiences to relate. Likewise, it may be important to pay some attention to special occasions, such as seasonal festivals and carnivals, ceremonies and rituals, rites of passage, and social markers of status passage. One of the teachers in the school that Beynon (1983: 47) studied summed this up, commenting: When you first arrived we thought Heres another bloke getting a degree on our backs! We resented the idea that we were just fodder for research. And it is suggested by some commentators that, typically, researchers investigate those who are less powerful than themselves, and for this reason are able to establish a research bargain that advantages them and disadvantages those they study. Even where the researcher is available to monitor the initial encounters between a teacher and pupils, the teacher is, not unreasonably, reluctant to be observed at this stage. Transcription Transcription is a time-consuming business, and this must be allowed for in planning research. A question which sharply defines a particular area for discussion is far more likely to result in omission of some vital data which you, the interviewer, have not even thought of. If deployed without due reflection, metaphors may prove, like the apprentice sorcerers accomplices, helpers that get out of hand, running away with and finally overwhelming their hapless originator. He concludes by pointing out that such public settings may be as constraining for a researcher as any organizational setting. It is not good enough to skim a transcript or set of fieldnotes and to have a broad sense of what its all about, cherrypicking bits of data for quotation. Why is one label used rather than another? In this paper I draw on the findings of an ethnographic study of fertility nursing in a British fertility unit to explore the relevance and importance of ethnography for illuminating the role of. In this way attention is diverted towards the investigation of the socially organized practices whereby rates, categories, and statistics are produced by those whose job it is to generate and interpret such phenomena. Qualitative Research in Action, London: Sage. requesting that, for the purpose of this study, I be viewed as a human rights investigative reporter with the same rights as my colleagues in the Berkeley School of Journalism. The master-trope of the metaphor is complemented by that of synecdoche. By M. Hammersley & P. Atkinson. and Herman-Kinney, N.J. (eds) (2003) Handbook of Symbolic Interactionism, Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira. . Oboler, R.S. Hargreaves provides an example with his development of the notion of contrastive rhetoric. The original influences of anthropology have been challenged and supplemented, and there has been major change within that discipline as well. (Hoffman 1980: 46) During one interview, however, Hoffmans informant discovered that he knew members of her family. The underlined terms in the above sentence begin to suggest what is explicitly or implicitly omitted from Daviss theoretical formulation. Corsaro, W.A. It was clear that the rule was for outsiders like me. In this sense Znaniecki (1934) was almost certainly correct in the claims he made for it. Pearce, S. I have not had the experience of observing in elementary and high school classrooms myself, but I have in college classrooms and it takes a tremendous effort of will and imagination to stop seeing only the things that are conventionally there to be seen. Obviously I passed the test since both couples did make themselves known and both were interviewed. Of course, such admissions do not necessarily indicate that full access has finally been granted. It is [generally] part of the life adjustment of these people to run from the commitment that a support network implies. Ethnography and the archaeology of the present also converge in the analysis of computing and information technology (Finn 2001; English-Lueck 2002). The general principle remains: the most important lessons to be learned about ethnographic analysis derive from the necessity of thinking not only about ones data, but also with and through the data, in order to produce fruitful ideas. Furthermore, there is a sense in which any process of understanding reduces the strange to the familiar, and we should not assume that this necessarily involves distortion. Gubrium and D. Silverman (eds) Qualitative Research Practice, London: Sage. Ellis, C. and Bochner, A. In contrast, Barbera-Stein herself assumed that interactional data on families in the home would be highly sacred, and did not initially request access to such information. The authors clearly intended to convey a general stance toward the development of fruitful ideas, concepts and theories that were generated through a close exploration of data. Of course, in order to do this we may need to diversify the sorts of data on which we draw, so there is no suggestion that how we collect data, or what data we collect, is of no importance. Social Research Ethics: An Examination of the Merits of Covert Participation Observation, London: Macmillan. (Cannon 1992: 180) Leaving the field With all research there comes a time when the fieldwork needs to be terminated (Delamont 2004a). (Ryan 2006: 1556) Sometimes, initial contacts may completely transform research plans. Strong, P.M. (2001) The Ceremonial Order of the Clinic: Parents, Doctors and Medical Bureaucracies, Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. web pages In these cases I was able to take notes and to lead the exchange. Unpublished personal diaries, or works of fiction, are sometimes available. Davis, F. (1961a) Comment on Initial interactions of newcomers in Alcoholics Anonymous, Social Problems, 8: 3645. Permission was eventually granted. Many of the respondents knew of Platt and her work, even if they did not know her personally. I considered that he was trying to test me with more and more sexually explicit conversation to gauge my reaction and I was determined to see it through to the end. Moreover, naturalists regard social phenomena as quite distinct in character from physical phenomena. (1988) Meta-Ethnography: Synthesizing Qualitative Studies, Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Kate: Nobody will marry you, said Miss Judge. For the next year or so, and intermittently thereafter, my base of operations was the corner carry-out across the street from my starting point. and Hardesty, D.L. Such accounts can be used, with appropriate caution, for comparative purposes. (1984b) The Research Process in Educational Settings, Lewes, UK: Falmer. . Hodkinson, P. (2004) Research as a form of work: expertise, community, and methodological objectivity, British Educational Research Journal, 30, 1: 926. Yes, thats where the poker games are. (1980) Initial encounters in the classroom and the process of establishment, in P. Woods (ed.) (1969) Cognitive Anthropology, New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. He took us to task for writing an article in the British Sociological Associations magazine Network, because this made our research worthless since we had published before completing the research . One is because a person is vulnerable to arrest by the police, or to being cheated or robbed by other street people. A more pressing reason for this was the desirability of generating concepts that would provide principles for, and systematic comparison between, the different research projects in Britain. Ethnography in digital spaces Digital technology has expanded our very notion of what constitutes a field. out? Adler, P.A. What are the contingencies of such careers? The relationship between the part and the whole needs to be a valid one, of course. The notion of the ideal type is a very familiar one in sociology, and historically it is associated with Max Weber. Hammersley, M. (2003b) Guide to Natural Histories of Research. 17 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 In short, what is an artifact if treated naively reflects a fact of life if taken seriously (Schuman 1982: 24). Not only does its achievement depend upon theoretical understanding, often disguised as native wit, but also the discovery of obstacles to access, and perhaps of effective means of overcoming them, itself provides insights into the social organization of the setting or the orientations of the people being researched. Understand these remarks. However, this is not as simple a contrast as it might seem, given that any understanding must draw on the resources available to the interpreter: they cannot be derived solely from what is being interpreted.6 It should also be noted that emphasis on the role that meaning plays in social action has sometimes 6 This is one of the important points emphasized by Gadamers philosophical hermeneutics: see Warnke (1987) and Dostal (2002). involved in what I have decided can only be a deconstruction of an identity. A more flexible approach is possible through the development and use of websites. They report that they subjected their data to theoretical perspectives derived from Redfield, Weber, Tnnies, Veblen, Merton, Lynd, Warner, Mills, Sapir, and Tumin. But it differs from this, most importantly, in making clear that the testing of theoretical ideas is neither the starting point nor always the end point in the process of scientific inquiry: it follows on from the generation of theoretical ideas, a task whose importance is seriously underplayed by most accounts of the hypothetico-deductive method, and it usually indicates the need for further development and refinement of the theory, rather than giving it the imprimatur of truth.15 15 Some accounts of the hypothetico-deductive method recognize this; see, for example, Hempel (1966). (Miller 1952: 98) Having established friendly relations, Miller found the possibilities of data collection limited. In an exploratory orientation, the research team started the fieldwork phase with general interests of this sort: How is the day-to-day work of the unit organized? In the preface to this second edition of Ethnography (rst published in 1983), the authors re-state their intention to 'steer a course between abstract, methodological treatise and a practical ''cookbook'' '. But, at the beginning of the new school year, the young people demanded that the fieldwork should continue, and she reversed her decision on ethical grounds, feeling that not to do so showed disrespect for them and smacked of exploitation. It is also viewed as an important ethnic boundary marker . Beynon also lists as a way in his own local connections: being regarded as a local was an important step forward, especially when it became known that I lived within comfortable walking distance of Victoria Road. There was an increasing awareness of research methods as an area of special interest, as well as being the core of practising social scientists craft skills. Thus, Strong (2001) studied 1000 cases of paediatric consultation in three hospitals, two in Britain and one in the United States. The more introductory treatments of the approach, and some secondary treatment of it, however, presented the idea of grounded theorizing as if it were driven exclusively by a somewhat mechanistic desire to code data, as if the desire were to reduce social complexity through a form of content analysis. Gregory, R. (1970) The Intelligent Eye, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. For instance, Latour and Woolgar (1979), in their classic study of a biomedical laboratory, document the centrality of written outputs. Studies in Qualitative Methodology, vol. As we saw in Chapter 7, while there is no software which will do the coding for us, there are various programs that facilitate the process of analysis by allowing rapid retrieval of data relevant to particular categories and combinations of categories. There are, nevertheless, some materials that are always confidential to the researcher and permanently lost from view. The information people receive through their networks may be false. Here, decisions about whom to interview will have to be developed over time, and the interviewing will normally take a relatively unstructured form, questions being formulated during the course of interviews in response to what informants say; though more structured or directive questioning may be used towards the end of the fieldwork. This usually involves moving into already established classroom situations where teachers and pupils have considerably greater experience of their interactional encounters than does the observer. As we noted in Chapter 5, as important as the accuracy or objectivity of an account is what it reveals about the tellers interests, perspectives, presuppositions, and discursive strategies. There are, for example, numerous categories of persons in contemporary society who publish versions of their own life story: More than ever before in history, men of affairs, including politicians, military leaders, and business executives, are intent upon recording their experiences, personal as well as public, for posterity. Berlak, A.C., Berlak, H., Bagenstos, N.T. This has led to important debates about naturalism, its validity and implications (Speer 2002). Equally, we can display the patterning of action and interaction, its predictable routines, and the unpredictable surprises or crises. Now this is unexceptional in and of itself, and it would be hard to quarrel with as one productive way of managing data. In linking the general approach to postmodernism (broadly defined) she also shows that it is itself adaptable to new theoretical insights. Wolfinger, N. H. (2002) On writing fieldnotes: collection strategies and background expectancies, Qualitative Research, 2, 1: 8595 Woods, P. (1979) The Divided School, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Woods, P. (1981) Understanding through talk, in C. Adelman (ed.) To illustrate this, he examined Daviss (1961b) research on the management of strained interaction by the visibly handicapped: Daviss theory is about (1) strained (2) sociable interaction (3) in face-to-face contact between (4) two persons, one of whom has a (5) visible handicap and the other of whom is (6) normal (no visible handicap). There is a situated aesthetic that informs many of these displays, and the mantelpiece arrangement is often a focus of the living room. Someone concerned with how the sequencing of contributions to everyday conversation is organized is likely to adopt a very different approach compared with someone interested in, say, the strength of the ties among an elite group within a national society and how this affects their exercise of power. In the first place, a decision needs to be made about whether full transcription is necessary. Prior to this, Boon (1983) had suggested that the standard contents of anthropological monographs function to subsume the variety of human societies under the rubric of a single analytic paradigm. As we have just indicated, what we treat as data are necessarily synecdochal. (1981) Beachside Comprehensive, London: Cambridge University Press. Qualitative researchers have developed specialist literatures devoted to quite specific techniques photographic and other visual methods (Pink 2006), narrative-analytic methods (Riessman 1993), interviewing of many sorts (Gubrium and Holstein 2002), the qualitative analysis of documentary sources (Prior 2003), and the exploration of virtual social realities (Hine 2000). Mantelpiece objects can also embody the personal ties and mutual obligations of gift relationships. 778, 84 Corsino 70 counterculture 1745 covert research 538, 77, 89; audience considerations 1778; complete participation 824; ethical issues 210, 211, 222; field roles 85; impression management 66, 69; Machiavellianism 220; note-taking 1423; personal characteristics of researcher 73 craft workers 189 creative imagination 162 Cressey, D. 186 crime: categorization of crimes 130; organized 556 critic model 60, 82 Crow, G. 227 cultural assumptions 232 cultural relativism 1011 cultural studies 2, 1367 culture shock 81 Currer, C. 23, 85, 110 cyber-ethnography 138 Dalton, M. 82 Dartington Hall School 21415 data analysis 1567, 15890; comparative method 1858; concept generation 1626; concepts and indicators 1745; culture of fragmentation 155; emphasis on action 16871; grounded theorizing 1668; personnel 1801; respondent validation 1813; social context 1769; time 17980; triangulation 1835; types of theory 1889; typologies 1724 data collection 34, 14057, 160, 163; analytic notes 1501; audio-recording 127n4, 140, 141, 1478, 150; complete participation 84; documents 126, 127, 1401; field roles 86, 96; fieldnotes 1417; grounded theorizing 159; hypermedia environment 2067, 208; journals 1512; negotiation of access 612; oral accounts 102; positivism 6, 8; sampling of persons 38; selection of settings 289, 30; temporal variation 37; transcription 14950; triangulation 1834; video-recording 140, 141, 1489, 150 data organization 1526 data ownership 213 Index 269 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 Davies, R.M. Writing ethnography 203 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 reflections on precisely that point. (Den Hollander 1967: 13) Even where people in a setting are familiar with social research, there may be a serious mismatch between their expectations of the researcher and his or her intentions. In this context, the use of digital technology transcends its use merely as a way of collecting, archiving and displaying data. (2004) Grounded theory, in C. Seale, G. Gobo, J.F. (Cassell 1988: 94) 48 Access Hoffman (1980) also provides insight into the way in which personal networks can be used, while drawing attention once more to the relationship between problems of access and the quality of the data subsequently collected. Lincoln (eds) Handbook of Qualitative Research, 2nd edn, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. On the other hand, it is impossible to conduct fieldwork round the clock, and some degree of time sampling must usually be attempted. Thoroughly updated, this accessible introduction to the methods of ethnographic fieldwork reconsiders the status of ethnography and places it quite explicitly in a general methodological context. The coding of the data in terms of categories provides an important infrastructure for later searching and retrieval. Frosh et al. Thus, Sevigny (1981), studying art classes in a college, collected data by surreptitiously taking on the role of student, and by acting as tutor, as well as adopting a variety of researcher roles. Such proposed remedies do not always avoid the problem, however; and they are controversial in themselves. The frustrated person, who may be a rebel or malcontent, especially the one who is consciously aware of his blocked drives and impulses. Here there is a rejection of any proposal that human actions or social forms are simply inexplicable, or mysterious, in character. Others, however, see particular analytic approaches as providing us with important knowledge about the world, even though no approach can tell us everything there is to know, and even though what knowledge any study offers is always fallible. Becker, H.S. Denzin, N.K. F. Carry out covert research. Healy, K. (2001) Participatory action research and social work: a critical appraisal, International Social Work, 44, 1: 93105. The danger that attends the role of complete observer is that of failing to understand the orientations of participants. It ought to involve an iterative process in which ideas are used to make sense of data, and data are used to change our ideas. Riemer, J.W. By casting the interviewee in the role of expert consultant, we gave him the opportunity to indulge in a favourite indoor sport generalizing about Frenchmen. 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