The ideas for this book originated from a 2012 conference held at the University of Suffolk. What emerged from this conference was recognition that although our disciplinary backgrounds varied, there was significant value in establishing a shared platform for our ethnographic experiences, not least in the interests of mutual scholarship and reciprocal learning. Notably, and in spite of our disparate subject areas, it became clear that as ethnographers we were encountering similar challenges and epistemological anxieties. Moreover, there appeared to be mutual recognition in terms of the potential for advancing the ethnographic method in the future. In capturing the essence of this conference, this book is not intended as a ‘how to guide’, of which there are many, but rather a space to bring together and share the experiential aspects of ethnographic work. As such, this edited book presents these experiences from a wide range of disciplines including work and organisation studies, sociology, social policy , philosophy , management, health and human sciences, family studies, education, disability studies, and childhood studies.
This book seeks to devolve methodological themes and practices which are established in some subject areas but not in others. These include, for example, the rise of autoethnography and the role of storytelling . Additionally, the chapters contained within interrogate and reframe long-standing ethnographic discussions including those concerning reflexivity, while exploring evolving themes such as the experiential use of technologies . This book thus demonstrates the value and versatility of ethnography as a method in a diverse range of rarely combined disciplines . In further emphasising our transdisciplinary objectives, each chapter includes a brief biographical preamble in which the author reflects on the existing character and impact of ethnographic research within their native discipline.
Ethnography is widely considered to have emerged as part of anthropology and is considered both its trademark (e.g. Schwartzman, 1993) and textual product (e.g. Atkinson, 1990). However, in this book we acknowledge that the practice of ethnography long predates its formal canonisation in anthropology and reflect on this significance. This historical precedent notwithstanding, ethnography has traversed changing dynamics of how and why research is conducted across the social sciences and remains a pivotal method through which the rich context and complexity of the human condition is revealed. As such, ethnography remains as relevant to contemporary social science as it did to historical anthropology . In this book, we explore ethnography as a research tool in online endeavours, visual methods, autoethnography , performance theory, and collaborative techniques. However, from the diversity of perspectives presented, commonalities are revealed in respect of both the challenges of ethnographic encounters and the opportunities these bring. The recurring narratives of ethnography thus remain among the contemporary topics explored. Each writer rediscovers these themes and wrestles with their implications. These include positionality, the researcher –researched relationship, identity, liminality , subjectivity , presentation of self , and the role of storytelling . This historical ‘baggage’ of ethnography remains acutely relevant and topical to contemporary conversations. To this end we urge the reader to consider an alternate history of ethnography ; one that predates anthropology . Here the concept of a ‘proto-ethnographer’ is pertinent, both noted (e.g. Herodotus) and lay (since ethnographic research can be considered instinctive as well as schooled; this is because schooling invariably involves social construction and so can constrain as well as enable creativity). Second, the relationship between teaching and learning is to some degree characterised by contradiction and paradox ; see, for example, Ackoff and Greenberg (2008). We therefore suggest that ethnography can be usefully conceptualised as pre-formal and intuitive. Furthermore, given that ethnography seeks not to distil human behaviour into abstract or schematised models, the parameters and preferences for which vary from academic discipline to academic discipline , but to prioritise experiential data collection and analysis, ethnography is here conceptualised as a relevant research tool which transcends the normative and expected parameters of social science.
At this point, it is worth noting the difference between qualitative methods and ethnography . While numerous social scientific projects lay claim to using one or more qualitative methods (such as interviewing, photography, discourse analysis, etc.), far fewer are representative of ethnography per se. In its purest (anthropological) sense, ethnography is only achieved where the researcher immerses herself in a participatory observational context in the proposed environs for as long a period as possible. For Moeran (2009, p. 150), ‘ethnographic fieldwork should last between six months and one year’. The advantages of a full year’s research—or perhaps even several years’—are relatively obvious: it affords the researcher experience of both annual rituals and seasonal variations in environmental conditions and associated behaviour. Studies of this nature are less numerous, not because the method is inappropriate or ineffective; rather they require commitment and time which is off-putting for many academics who today work in an environment where there exists an emphasis on quantity with regard to publications (Schwartzman, 1993). It is hoped, therefore, that the ethnographies presented in this book go some way to redressing the balance.
We take the position that collections of ethnographic work are better presented as transdisciplinary bricolage than as discipline-specific series. As such this volume provides a space where the plurality of ethnographic approaches is illustrated through the varied ways that researchers apply its principles to diverse disciplinary contexts. This book therefore delineates (1) the continued relevance of ethnography in contemporary research, (2) the opportunities to apply ethnographic approaches across diverse spaces, and (3) open and honest accounts in which the perennial questions ethnographic research produces can be re-examined. The importance of the ‘ethical subject’ notwithstanding, we note that the pressure to conform to ‘sanitised’ methods is pervasive—even in ethnography —and this presents myriad challenges. Indeed, although ethics does not constitute an explicit theme for this book, many of the chapters reveal subtleties, complexities , and paradoxes associated with ‘ethical research’.
Transdisciplinarity
Under the guise of social anthropology, ethnography was ‘linked to the spread of colonial empire and its administrative, missionary and commercial needs’ (Evans-Pritchard, 1969, p. x). It fell out of favour in the wake of the decline of colonial rule across the globe and became a niche method and methodology, largely limited to anthropologists and a few quirky sociologists. However, it regained popularity in the UK and elsewhere in the 1960s and 1970s. As part of this resurgence, serious attempts were made to listen to the voices and view the worlds of those considered marginalised. These included the fields of poverty (Wilson & Aponte, 1985), sexuality (Sonenschein, 1968), crime and deviance (Hamm, Ferrell, Adler, & Adler, 1998), and latterly children (Montgomery, 2007). While retaining its niche status, its resurgence has in many ways seen it transformed beyond its original applications of anthropology and marginalised groups. Ethnographic approaches are now a relatively common site in disciplines as diverse as management , radiography, childhood studies, education, and disability studies. This suggests that ethnography is a flexible and reflexive methodological tool that can be effectively applied in many research contexts regardless of topic, participants, or indeed discipline . This book is a response to these developments whereby authors present ethnographic tales of their diverse research experiences and the application of such methodologies in their respective fields. The extent to which ethnography retains its original features and characteristics through such diverse applications is a debate that this book opens rather than closes. Many of the authors reflect explicitly on the place of ethnographic methodologies in their native discipline and the role they play in unsettling the extant knowledges of that subject area. This is particularly interesting when such disciplines are traditionally associated with the natur...