Extending Video Ethnographic Approaches

Abstract

Current ethnographic research is marked by an expanding variety of approaches that indicates not only the infusion of paradigmatic proliferation into the field but also the expansion of technologies mediating ethnographic exploration as well as the growth in research agendas of educational research. Current researchers therefore have much to draw upon but the diversity of approaches indicates and presents major challenges (Walford, 2002). In particular, the double crisis of representation and legitimation that has become apparent in qualitative research has problematized the very possibility of valid/trustworthy/authentic/useful research. Thus, before an ethnographer even steps one foot, gingerly, in the research site, she would have had to grapple with weighty issues, such as the transparency of language, that have considerable bearing on the formulation of research questions and on the construction of an initial frame for her study. More importantly, the agency of the researcher, as well as the agency of her research subjects – vis-à-vis the structural constraints of epistemic access to the nature of reality – has been cast into doubt, as has the capacity of the researcher and the research subjects to produce a meaningful, dare we say truthful, account of their ways of knowing.

Citation

Aralas, D. (2007), "Extending Video Ethnographic Approaches", Walford, G. (Ed.) Methodological Developments in Ethnography (Studies in Educational Ethnography, Vol. 12), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 169-184. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1529-210X(06)12010-0