Public Ethnography; Ethnography as Public Sociology

Since ethnography is arguably the kind of sociology of most appeal to the lay public, public ethnography, particularly participant observation research, should be a major form of public sociology. Public ethnography differs from academic ethnography when its sites and subjects are relevant to what the lay public wants and needs to know, and when it is written in non technical English. This article spells out the requirements, conditions and processes involved in making relevant ethnography acceptable to the lay public and thus turning it into public ethnography.     

Ethnography as Translation

Sociologists and anthropologists often struggle over how to accurately convey ethnographic data from the field setting to a final report. This paper examines ethnography as a form of translation in order to clarify what occurs between the acquisition of data and the formulation of a thesis about the data. The paper argues that the ethnographers mind should be seen as a transitional space which in the act of translating field data into an analytic report (1) poses unique challenges to ethnographys claims for providing an accurate account of field situations while (2) simultaneously offering paths to insight which quantitative and survey research can not.     

Whither Ethnography?

What's Wrong With Ethnography? , by Martyn Hammersley. The End(s) of Ethnography , by Patricia Ticineto Clough.     

Ethnography as Precarious Work

Reflecting on a carnal ethnography of the fashion modeling market, I consider the analytic gains from observant participation and experimentation with the sociologist's body as a participant in a culture industry. The ambiguities and uncertainties of fashion modeling, as a highly competitive freelance labor form, parallel the risky position of insider ethnographer, in this case as a graduate student “studying up” among guarded cultural elites. These positions opened an analytic lens into sociological concepts of labor exploitation, value, and social hierarchy. However, in occupying an insider role within a stratified field, observant participants face risks in trying to move beyond their own experiences in order to interview informants. My changing position in the field, from subjugated worker to interviewer, highlights how power and inequality operate in the fashion world. First‐person narrative illuminates these analytic payoffs of insider ethnography.     

Stimulated Recall Interviews in Ethnography

This article describes the use of stimulated recall interviews as a technique for investigating how people approach interactions in a number of different situations. In general, the technique I describe involves interviewing individuals by playing them audio or audiovisual recordings of their own behavior in social situations and discussing different aspects of those recorded interactions. Doing so can help us to understand what signals interactants understand as important, what signals they try to convey to others, and how they choose from various options to act upon the information they receive in interactions. Using the example of jazz jam sessions, I ask why it is that interactions can sometimes go smoothly and uneventfully, or sometimes break down completely. The stimulated recall interviews provide a valuable tool in helping the ethnographer to answer these kinds of questions.     

反思“始终局外人”：伯明翰学派青年文化研究民族志方法论探析

伯明翰学派当代文化研究中心在20世纪70年代对第二次世界大战后英国工人阶级青年文化进行了大量研究,关于其方法论中的民族志,一直存在争议。通过批判文献阅读和比较分析,从伯明翰学派青年文化研究的代表文本来看,其研究工作以文本分析为基础,而非严格的参与观察。这种始终局外人的民族志书写方式,就思想史而言,可以归因于早期英国文化研究的政治立场、新马克思主义对理论的辩证态度、英国本土文化主义与欧陆结构主义思潮的矛盾。然而,在批判性青年研究的框架下,如何结合经验性的描述和理论性的分析,仍是研究当代青年问题面对的难题,在这个问题上,伯明翰学派出身的民族志学者威利斯的文化分析方法,可供借鉴。     

(Auto)Ethnography and cycling

This article discusses the formation, salience and reformation of everyday bodily routines and resources in relation to cycling; it also examines how we can study them ethnographically in different places. I discuss forms of embodied, sensuous and mobile ethnography that can illuminate how routines, habits and affective capacities of cycling are cultivated and performed. The article argues that autoethnography is particularly apt at illuminating the embodied qualities of movement, and it sits within established ethnographies of ‘excising’ and ‘mobile bodies’. In the second part of the article, I draw upon ongoing autoethnographies of cycling in a familiar place (my hometown, Copenhagen) and by learning to cycle ‘out-of-place’ (in London) and ‘in-a-new–way’ (when commuting long distance on a racer bike). The study challenges static notions of the body by analysing how cyclists’ (and researchers’) affective capacities develop as they practice cycling.     

Digital Ethnography in Third Sector Research

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Ethnographies involve the exploration of social phenomena in the field, typically for an extended period of time....     

Institutional Ethnography and Experience as Data

Experience, as concept, is contested among feminists as to its epistemological status, thus its usefulness in knowledge claims. Institutional ethnography (Smith 1987) is a feminist methodology that nonetheless relies fundamentally on people's experience. Not as Truth, nor the object of inquiry, but as thepoint d'appui for sociological inquiry. This article offers a demonstration of institutional enthnography using observational and interview data that show experience as methodologically central to a trustworthy analysis. A moment in the work lives of nursing assistants in a long-term care setting is captured by a participant observer. The analysis produces two lines of argument. One is methodological; it is argued that nursing assistants' experiences are an entry into the social relations of the setting that, when mapped and disclosed, make those experiences understandable in terms of the ruling arrangements permeating both the organization and their own experiences. The other argument is substantive; the inquiry uncovers how a quality improvement' strategy in a long term care hospital in Canada is reorganizing caregivers' values and practices toward a market orientation in which care appears to be compromised. Use of experience as data in this approach holds the analysis accountable to everyday/everynight actualities in a lived world.     

Towards a Theoretical Ethnography of Migration

Ethnographers' long-standing interest in migration has taken on new significance as researchers grapple with globalization on the ground. Building on the transnationalism literature, I explore how recent appeals to use local archival work and revisits to achieve historical depth can be applied fruitfully to ethnographies of migration. I argue for multi-sited fieldwork in countries of migrants' origin and destination and the removal of national blinders so that both domestic and international migrations are brought into the same frame for comparison. Finally, I amend the extended case method by arguing for the engagement of case studies with theoretical research programs in ways that attend to the representativeness of the case. The utility of these strategies is demonstrated with examples from the migration literature and five years of ethnographic fieldwork among Mexican migrants.

An Ethnography of Emerging Latino Music Scenes

We report on an ethnographic study of three emerging scenes in which Latino music is produced, performed, experienced, and celebrated in Houston, Texas: rock en Espanol, gay Latino dance music, and professional soccer supporters' music. Music is an important feature of Latino culture, since it informs migration, citizenship, spirituality, and other aspects of the contemporary Latino experience. Three interactionist concepts inform this study. The concept of scene directs our attention to the comprehensive social worlds driven by Latino music. The concept of idioculture directs our attention to the ways audience members experience Latino music within everyday life small groups. The concept of place directs our attention to how Latino music creates new locations to anchor the self in reference to country of origin, present music communities, or possible symbolic locations such as America or La Raza. We conclude with suggestions for a revised interactionist concept of music scene.     

Ethnography, Cultural Change and Local Power

The author argues that despite the declaration for the end of ethnography by some North American scholars, ethnography is precisely what is needed for a more nuanced and complex understanding of cultural change. Using snippets of ethnographic observation from the Mexican state of Michoacan, the argument is made that neither "modernization" nor "globalization" are imposed from above, but are woven together with local processes to create institutions and practices which synthesize both the "traditional" and the "modern" in previously unimagined ways. Local people and processes are thus conceived of as dynamic partners in cultural change rather than passive subjects. Ethnography, then, is a fruitful means for uncovering how and the extent to which this is so.     

Ethnography: Tales of the Nonprofit Field

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Ethnography is a rich research tradition originating from sociocultural anthropology that aims to vividly represent...     

Ethnography and the digital fields of social media

Qualitative researchers struggle to study the transient fields of social network sites like Twitter through conventional ethnographic approaches. This paper suggests that, in order to step further, we should distinguish between the relatively stable ‘contextual’ fields of bounded online communities and the fluid, ‘meta-fields’ resulting from the aggregation of scattered communicative contents based on their metadata. Both these two intertwined layers of the digital environment interplay with users’ online social practices – which are embedded within offline everyday life and vice versa. While Internet ethnography largely dealt with contextual digital fields, recent developments in the realm of online research allow the ethnographic exploration of digital meta-fields and their publics. This shift recalls Marcus’ appeal for a multi-sited ethnography but, in fact, goes further beyond, towards a truly ‘un-sited’ ethnography. I highlight and discuss the main methodological implications of meta- and contextual fieldworks by presenting an exploratory study of European exchange students’ Facebook identities.