Thanks to one of my students i just read one of the best and most practical papers on doing ethnography by Emerson (1995), Chapter 1 in this book..click it to read the Chapter...consider this another prompt to reconsider always reverting to the default position of interviews when designing your research method.
Ethnography, of course, is a method that allows us not just to hear from participants after the event in interviews, but to actually immerse ourselves in their lives more actively, getting up close and personal in their social and communicative worlds. In ethnography, we are participant observers, jotting down notes on what we see, the minutiae of interactions, things that interest us, striving to empathically understand a world that is not our own...
The best things about this chapter?
1. A simple explanation of ethnographic concepts without too much gobbledigook
2. Plenty of examples of how you actually write field notes
3. Good practical tips of jotting down points and writing them into proper notes later
I visited a great group of researchers today, members of the Qualitative Health Research Collaboration at Sydney University and much of our discussion centered around issues related to the role of theory when using grounded theory methods and how this method differs from discourse analysis.
Some of the main issues we discussed were:
1. Theory is still important in Grounded Theory, but it comes after coding, rather than before. We try and situate the emergent theory back into those present in the literature and can pursue cricial or sociological forms of analysis at this point
2. That we must differentiate between classic and constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz). For Charmaz the results of research of this kind are not objective but co-constructed
3. That while grounded theory is fundamentally inductive it can help to try theories on for size deductively, especially when we are getting stuck trying to find higher order concepts
4. That grounded theory might be less useful when you are exploring sociological phenomenon or those where your participants are marginalised
It might also be useful to understand the roots of grounded theory in the philosophy of symblic interactionism
A foundational principle within symbolic interactionism has been that human beings are distinguished from other animals by their use of symbols (Blumer, 1962; Mead, 1934/67). In fact, symbols have been understood as the very basis of social interaction, mediating between stimulus and response. Symbols are abstract representations of social objects that enable people to communicate both verbally and nonverbally and understand each other’s intentions and actions. Because social action and interaction are symbolic in nature, people interpret the objects in their environment and the behaviors of others around them and, rather than reacting directly, respond on the basis of their interpreted meaning of those objects and actions (Blumer, 1962; Charon, 1992; Meltzer, 1972).
This reading lends itself well to constructivism, given the theory developed serves as a symbol of the interaction and meaning making between researcher and participants.
