What is Ethnography Martyn Hammersley The Open University

1
What is Ethnography? Martyn HammersleyThe
Open University

• NCRM Research Methods Festival 2008

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A Contested Concept

• Definition uncertain and disputed.
• History from anthropology through sociology to
  the rest of social science.

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Methodology or Method?

• One, both, or neither?
• In an only partly mythical past, ethnography
  referred to a distinctive mentality embedded in
  the use of a particular set of methods.
• Today, there is more diversity in both principle
  and practice.
• The meaning of any methodological label is
  defined partly by its relations with associated
  terms, in contexts of use.

4
The Ethnographic Mentality A Tortured Soul

• Key components
• Understanding (But is it possible?)
• Process (But also structure?)
• Discovery (But also construction?)

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Sources of data

• Participant observation and its variants.
• Interviews (Can there be ethnographic studies
  that are entirely interview-based?)
• Documents and artifacts (Official statistics,
  material culture, and virtual ethnography.)
• Structured data? (Ethnosemantics,
  questionnaires.)
• Ethnographic work as mixing methods?

6
Processing data

• Fieldnotes versus electronic recording.
• Audio- versus video-recording.
• Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis
  (CAQDAS) friend or foe?

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Forms of analysis

• Theme analysis
• Thick description
• Comparative method
• Discourse and narrative analysis

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Some divisive issues

• What is the role of theory?
• The problem of focus discourse versus
  action/practice?
• What is context? Macro versus micro, actual
  versus virtual.
• The problem of representation writing, the
  visual, multi-modality.
• Theoretical versus applied? Value-neutral or
  critical?