What is ethnography? Can Main points 1. The term ethnography now - PDF document

19/04/2018 What is ethnography? Can Main points 1. The term ‘ethnography’ now has a range of it survive? Should it? meanings, reflecting sharply divergent What is ethnography? Can orientations. it survive? Should it? 2. Today, there are some serious threats to the it? practice of ethnographic work, on almost all definitions. Martyn Hammersley 3. Given this, we need to forge greater agreement about the meaning of the term. The Open University UK 4. If we take ‘ethnography’ to refer to a whole methodological approach this agreement will be impossible, but it may be feasible if we treat Oxford Ethnography Conference, September 2016 it as a methodological strategy. Commonly identified features of autoethnography, duoethngraphy, citizen ethnography, ethnography cognitive ethnography, critical ethnography, digital ethnography, educational ethnography, • relatively long term data collection process, ethnomethodological ethnography, feminist ethnography, • takes place in naturally occurring settings, functionalist ethnography, global ethnography, hypermedia ethnography, insider ethnography, • relies on participant observation, or personal institutional ethnography, interactionist ethnography, engagement more generally, interpretive ethnography, linguistic ethnography, • employs a range of types of data, longitudinal ethnography, Marxist ethnography, micro- • aimed at documenting what actually happens, ethnography, multi-sited ethnography, narrative ethnography, performance ethnography, postmodern • emphasises the significance of the meanings ethnography, public ethnography, race ethnography, people give to phenomena, including rapid ethnography, rural ethnography, slow ethnography, themselves, in the course of their activities. team ethnography, urban ethnography, virtual ethnography, visual ethnography. Corporate ethnography 1

19/04/2018 ‘Ethnography has become a term so overused, Threats both in anthropology and in contingent disciplines, that it has lost much of its meaning.’ 1. Quantitative revival: Big data, RCTs, ‘I am concerned to narrow ethnography down so mixed methods as norm. that to those who ask us, in good faith, what it 2. Demands for accountability, means, we can respond with precision and engagement, ‘impact’, ‘efficient’ data conviction. Only by doing so, I contend, can we collection and analysis, etc. protect it from the inflation that is otherwise 3. Working conditions in universities: threatening to devalue its currency to the extent temporary contracts, busyness, etc. of rendering the entire enterprise worthless.’ 4. Problems in gaining access to sites. (Tim Ingold ‘That’s enough about ethnography!’, 5. Forms of ethical regulation that are Journal of Ethnographic Theory , 4, 1, 2014; incompatible with ethnography. quotes from Abstract and p384) Assumptions built into PO Areas of conflict 1. Concerned with explicating the meanings 1. Direct observation by a researcher is better people give to social phenomena (‘voice’) than relying solely on people’s own accounts, versus documenting their behaviour? and/or 2. Micro-focused versus holistic? 2. Observation in naturally occurring settings will 3. Appreciative or critical? be less reactive and more informative than 4. Discovering facts versus constructing observation in situations that are strongly fictions? structured by the researcher, and/or 5. Necessarily involving participant observation 3. The accounts of participants collected in the or relying on some other method? course of participant observation are more likely to be valid, and correctly interpreted, 6. Entirely qualitative in character or allowing than accounts elicited in formal interviews. the use of quantitative data? To what typology does Questions about these assumptions ‘ethnography’ belong? 1. Is a researcher more likely to be able to document accurately what is happening Ethnography is listed among many typologies than other participants in the events of research approaches (see pp12-13 of the concerned? paper), but these typologies are diverse in character, generally speaking they are not 2. Is there a single true account of any set of systematically constructed on the basis of events, or are there multiple constructed underlying dimensions, and they mix ‘thin’ realities? and ‘thick’ features in distinguishing 3. Is the distinction between natural and ethnography from other approaches. artificial, reactive and non-reactive, situations valid? And what does ‘natural’ A better typology is required: I have outlined mean? what shape this could take in the paper. 2

19/04/2018 conducted ethnography. A strategy rather than a paradigm Ethnography/not ethnography Good/bad ethnography The typology I have provided assumes that ethnography is a distinctive research Ethnography Not ethnography strategy among several that, while differing in ontological and epistemological assumptions, can be Well-conducted treated as having advantages and √ √ disadvantages relative to particular types of research question. Poorly conducted This is not a view that will be accepted by √ √ all ethnographers. My views Other areas of dispute Neither evaluation of the phenomena being Even if an instrumental attitude towards studied nor directing inquiry towards practical ontological and epistemological issues is or political goals is compatible with academic adopted, by treating ethnography as one social research of any kind. research strategy amongst others, issues This is not to deny that we produce knowledge remain that cannot be treated in this within value-relevance frameworks, and that instrumental fashion: we can produce conditional evaluations and • Whether ethnography can adopt an recommendations on this basis. evaluative or ‘critical’ stance, and Nor is it to deny that we can legitimately do • Whether it can be directed towards practical research, or select particular topics for goals, rather than being solely concerned investigation, in the hope that our work will with the production of knowledge. serve some practical or political goal. Conclusions 1. Given the diverse and conflicting conceptions of ethnography that are now prevalent, and the threats currently faced, some attempt must be made to reach broad agreement about what the term ‘ethnography’ means. 2. Since the divisions are deep, a thin rather than a thick definition is probably the only option, treating it as a strategy not a paradigm. 3. However, this is contentious and does not resolve all the fundamental differences among ethnographers today. If these cannot be resolved does ethnography deserve to survive? 3