Ethnography - Chapter 8

The orientation of the ethnographic researcher

An ethnographer learns the way other people see, hear, speak, think and act. He becomes a student of other people's culture.

How to carry out the semiotic approach

Anthropologists do not need to have empathy with their subjects. They need to understand the 'webs of significance', which people weave within the cultural context.

The Holistic approach

an anthropologist should go native and live just like to local people.

The Semiotic School:

an ethnographer has to search out and analyse symbolic forms (words, images, institutions, behaviours) with respect to one another and to the whole they compromise.

The distinguishing feature of ethnography is

fieldwork: the ethnographer immerses himself in the life of people he studies and seeks to place the phenomena studied in their social and cultural context.

One possible solution to the difficulty of writing up research

for ethnographic researcher to treat each paper as a part of the whole.

Ethnography is the only method that enables a researcher to spend long enough in the field such that

he or she can start to discern the unwritten rules of how things work or how they are supposed to work.

"Organizational culture includes

taken-for-granted assumptions ... and unwritten rules ... that are virtually impossible to discover if you are there for only a short time"

Web of significance

used in the semiotic approach Anthropologists do not need to have empathy with their subjects. They need to understand the XXX which people weave within the cultural context.

Would you agree that it is more likely that a qualitative researcher would do unrecorded interviews during an ethnography than during a case study?

yes, Ethnographers rely on observation first and foremost. They are more likely to have conversations with research participants on an informal basis.

Ethnographic research should be the research method of choice if

you are planning to study organizational culture.

Analytic memos suggestions

"periodic written notes whereby progress is assessed, emergent ideas identified, research strategy is sketched out, and so on." (Hammerly & Atkinson, 1983: 164)

How to carry out the critical ethnographic approach

- Critical ethnographers tend to 'open to scrutiny (review) otherwise hidden agendas, power centres and assumptions that repress and constrain. - Critical scholarship requires that common-sense assumptions are questioned.

How to carry out the Holistic approach

- Empathy and identification with the social grouping being observed are needed. - The anthropologist acts like a sponge, soaking up the language and culture of the people under study.

Spradley (1980) describes the value of ethnography as follows

- reveals what people think -shows us the cultural meanings -systematic approach in the social sciences -leads us into separate realities which other have learned and which they use to make sense out of their worlds. -offers us the chance to step outside our narrow cultural backgrounds, -offers a chance to set aside our socially inherited ethnocentrism,

How to evaluate ethnographic research studies

1. Is this a contribution to the field? The worth of an ethnographic study can be judged by the extent to which the author has told something new. o Main challenge is to convince the audience in particular of the worth of the researcher its research. 2. Does the author offer rich insights? Any paper claiming to be based on ethnographic research should offer rich insights into the subject matter. o One way of doing this is to consider whether or not the manuscript contradicts conventional wisdom. 3. Has a significant amount of material/data been collected? A sufficient amount of empirical material data must have been collected during the period of fieldwork and there should be some evidence of this in any article produced. 4. Is there sufficient information about the research method? It is vitally important that the reviewers are aware what the researcher did and how. 5. Considers alternative perspectives 6. Written in an engaging manner

Advantages of ethnography

1. The most 'in-depth' or 'intensive' research method possible due to the fact that the researcher is 'there' for an extended period of time. 2. Knowledge of what happens in the field can provide vital information to challenge our assumptions. Ethnography often leads the researcher to question what we 'take for granted'

Disadvantages of ethnography

1. takes a long time in comparison to other kinds of research 2. It does not have much breadth: an ethnographer usually studies just the one organization or the one culture. Thus it leads to in-depth knowledge only of particular contexts and situations. 3. It can be very difficult to write up the research for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, since it leads to the gathering of a significant mass of data, and all of it tends to be holistically related to a specific context.

What would stop a case study researcher from spending a significant amount of time at a research site?

A case study researcher mainly relies on interviews for data. Assuming that the researcher has already been given access to documents and is not interested in observation, if the researcher is able to conduct interviews on a daily basis and saturation is reached, there is no reason for the researcher to remain at the site.

Auto-ethnography

A combination of ethnography and auto-biography

XXX is the very thing that is studied: understanding actions and beliefs in their proper XXX provides the key to unravelling the unwritten rules and taken-for-granted assumptions in an organization.

Context relates to ethnography how

How to carry out the netnography approach

Data are gathered via participant observation and interaction with members of an online community.

Type of data collected by the ethnographer

Interviews and documents, supplemented by participant observation and fieldwork.

Data management

The above suggestions imply that: "At every step of the way the ethnographer should be summarizing, indexing, and classifying the data as appropriate."

If a case study researcher spent a significant amount of time at a research site would that make them an ethnographer?

This would depend on whether the interviews led the researcher to change his/her research question to one about organizational culture and as a result conduct a significant amount of fieldwork which would become the main data source.

What is saturation

When the researcher has carried out a great deal of research in the field and the same material continues to turn up or repeat.

Unrecorded interviews suggestions

Write up as soon as possible.

It is possible for an ethnographer to do grounded theory?

Yes, the boundary between ethnography and grounded theory can be blurred. Especially, if you are asking questions about culture when using another research method.

Netnography

description the study of culture and communities on the Internet. It involves the study of culture gathered through computer-mediated communications instead of fieldwork in the 'real' world.

The most important consideration when evaluating ethnographic research is

did the ethnographers to write an account that is convincing and plausible.

Critical ethnography

ethnographic research is an emergent process, in which there is a dialogue between the ethnographer and the people in the research setting.

Length of time that the ethnographic investigator is required to spend in the field

expected to spend at least one year doing fieldwork, living with the people and learning about their way of life In a business or organizational setting at least six months.

What is "thin description"?

is fact laden (e.g., a survey)

What is thick description

is meaning laden (e.g., an interpretation).

The key task of the ethnographer is to

observe and analyse this context so that meaning in context can be obtained.

The main purpose of ethnographic research in business settings is to

obtain a deep understanding of people and their culture.

§ Myers states that "an ethnographer learns from people" whereas "a case study researcher studies people". If the researcher is an interpretivist or a criticalist, would you say that by studying people you learn from them, and vice versa? If so, is Myers' distinction "real" for non-positivists?

§ An interpretivist is a research instrument and subject. Doing interviews can enable the researcher to experience a double hermeneutic that enables the researcher to learn through understanding meaning in context. Thus interviews allow a case study researcher to study and learn form people. Doing observation also enables a similar pattern of study and learning. § Therefore, I would conclude that Myers' distinction is not valid.

Field notes suggestions

§Write up on a regular basis. §"These notes can include observations, impressions, feelings, hunches, questions which emerge, and so forth." §Process regularly.