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Article
Publication date: 2 July 2020

Azher Hameed Qamar

In last few decades, the native anthropology has been highlighted for its potential to immediately grasping cultural familiarity, contextual sensitivity, and rapport building…

Abstract

Purpose

In last few decades, the native anthropology has been highlighted for its potential to immediately grasping cultural familiarity, contextual sensitivity, and rapport building. Nevertheless, detachment from the native context is also seen as a challenge for the native researcher. This paper aims to provide invaluable information about the fieldwork experience of the author as a native researcher in rural Punjab Pakistan. The author presents and reflects the fieldwork challenges faced and the strategies used to overcome the challenges. The primary objective of this paper is to discuss the methodological strategies to face the challenges of doing at-home ethnography.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in native context.

Findings

Dealing with contextual complexity and sensitivity with the author’s native learning, the author used native knowledge as a useful resource to investigate insider’s perspective on infant care belief practices. Furthermore, the author addressed the challenges related to building rapport, gaining friendly access to the families and children, and setting aside presumptions. The author discusses the strategies opted, such as selecting a research assistant, gaining access to the field, planning fieldwork and bracketing native presumptions.

Practical implications

This paper provides important insight of at-home ethnography and technical understanding to conduct fieldwork in native contexts.

Originality/value

Based on my ethnographic fieldwork, this article contributes in contemporary debates on the challenges in doing at-home ethnography.

Article
Publication date: 10 October 2016

Rita Järventie-Thesleff, Minna Logemann, Rebecca Piekkari and Janne Tienari

The purpose of this paper is to shed new light on carrying out “at-homeethnography by building and extending the notion of roles as boundary objects, and to elucidate how…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to shed new light on carrying out “at-homeethnography by building and extending the notion of roles as boundary objects, and to elucidate how evolving roles mediate professional identity work of the ethnographer.

Design/methodology/approach

In order to theorize about how professional identities and identity work play out inat-homeethnography, the study builds on the notion of roles as boundary objects constructed in interaction between knowledge domains. The study is based on two ethnographic research projects carried out by high-level career switchers – corporate executives who conducted research in their own organizations and eventually left to work in academia.

Findings

The paper contends that the interaction between the corporate world and academia gives rise to specific yet intertwined roles; and that the meanings attached to these roles and role transitions shape the way ethnographers work on their professional identities.

Research limitations/implications

These findings have implications for organizational ethnography where the researcher’s identity work should receive more attention in relation to fieldwork, headwork, and textwork.

Originality/value

The study builds on and extends the notion of roles as boundary objects and as triggers of identity work in the context of “at-home” ethnographic research work, and sheds light on the way researchers continuously contest and renegotiate meanings for both domains, and move from one role to another while doing so.

Details

Journal of Organizational Ethnography, vol. 5 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2046-6749

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 11 June 2018

Letizia Caronia

The purpose of this paper is to consider “at home ethnography” and “abroad ethnography” not as labels standing for different kinds of fieldwork “out there” but rather as the poles…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to consider “at home ethnography” and “abroad ethnography” not as labels standing for different kinds of fieldwork “out there” but rather as the poles of a continuum identifying the ethnographer’s situated, relative and ever changing epistemic status.

Design/methodology/approach

Building on data from a recent fieldwork in an intensive care unit, the author identifies the different epistemic circumstances that originate from the entanglement of the multiple territories of knowledge at stake in any ethnography of complex organizations.

Findings

The analysis shows how the participants’ relative access to knowledge and rights to claim it vary according to the circumstances and the unfolding of the interaction. The discussion advances that the ethnographer oscillates between “being abroad” and “being at home” as if he was constantly moving between the two classical positions of ethnographic work: making the familiar strange as it is typical of ethnographies focusing on the “very ‘ordinariness’ of normality” (Ybema et al., 2009, p. 2), and making the strange familiar as it is typical of anthropologists studying exotic communities.

Originality/value

The paper contributes to the still ongoing debate on “at home” organizational ethnography, by addressing the limits of the “insider doctrine” (Merton, 1972) that still pervades contemporary ethnography and proposes cognitive oscillation as the challenging mindset of any ethnographer-in-the-field.

Details

Journal of Organizational Ethnography, vol. 7 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2046-6749

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 3 April 2018

Markus Gottwald, Frank Sowa and Ronald Staples

The purpose of this paper is to present a specific case of at-home ethnography, or insider research: The German Public Employment Service (BA) commissioned its own research…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to present a specific case of at-home ethnography, or insider research: The German Public Employment Service (BA) commissioned its own research institute (Institute for Employment Research (Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung)) to evaluate the daily implementation of its core management instruments (target management and controlling). The aim of the paper is to explain the challenges faced by the ethnographers and to reflect on them methodologically.

Design/methodology/approach

At-home ethnography/insider research.

Findings

In the paper, it is argued to what extent conducting at-home ethnography, or insider research, is like “Walking the Line” – to paraphrase Johnny Cash. When examining a management instrument that is highly contested on the micropolitical level, the researchers have to navigate their way through different interests with regard to advice and support, and become micropoliticians in their own interest at the same time in order to maintain scientific autonomy. The ethnographers are deeply enmeshed in the micropolitical dynamics of their field, which gives rise to the question of how they can distance themselves in this situation. To this effect, they develop the argument that distancing is not so much about seeing what is familiar in a new light, as is mostly suggested in the literature, than about alienating a familiar research environment in order to avoid a bureaucratically contingent othering. It is shown what constitutes a bureaucratically contingent othering and how it should be met by an othering of the bureaucracy. Conclusions are drawn from this with regard to the advice and support required for the bureaucracy and concerning the methods debate surrounding insider research in general.

Originality/value

The paper contributes to the method debate with regard to at-home ethnography, or insider research, and particularly addresses organisational researchers and practitioners facing similar challenges when conducting ethnographic research in their own organisation.

Details

Journal of Organizational Ethnography, vol. 7 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2046-6749

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 10 May 2018

Adriana Angela Suarez Delucchi

The purpose of this paper is to problematise the idea of “at-home ethnography” and to expand knowledge about insider/outsider distinctions by using insights from institutional…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to problematise the idea of “at-home ethnography” and to expand knowledge about insider/outsider distinctions by using insights from institutional ethnography (IE). It also examines the strengths and challenges of “returning” researchers recognising their unique position in overcoming these binaries.

Design/methodology/approach

IE is the method the researcher used to explore community-based water management in rural Chile. The researcher is interested in learning from rural drinking water organisations to understand the way in which their knowledge is organised. The data presented derived from field notes of participant observation and the researcher’s diary.

Findings

The notion of “at-home ethnography” fell short when reflecting on the researcher’s positions and experiences in the field. This is especially true when researchers return to their countries to carry out fieldwork. The negotiation of boundaries, codes and feelings requires the researcher to appreciate the complex relationships surrounding ethnographic work, in order to explore how community-based water management is done in the local setting, without forgetting where the setting is embedded.

Originality/value

Unique insights are offered into the advantages and tensions of conducting fieldwork “at home” when the researcher has lived “abroad” for an extended time. A critique and contribution to “at-home ethnography” is offered from an IE perspective.

Details

Journal of Organizational Ethnography, vol. 7 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2046-6749

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 16 February 2021

Virginia Rosales

The use of organizational ethnography has grown significantly during the past decades. While language is an important component of ethnographic research, the challenges associated…

Abstract

Purpose

The use of organizational ethnography has grown significantly during the past decades. While language is an important component of ethnographic research, the challenges associated with language barriers are rarely discussed in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to open up a discussion on language barriers in organizational ethnography.

Design/methodology/approach

The author draws on her experience as a PhD student doing an organizational ethnography of an emergency department in a country where she initially did not speak the local language.

Findings

The paper examines the author's research process, from access negotiation to presentation of findings, illustrating the language barriers encountered doing an ethnography in parallel to learning the local language in Sweden.

Research limitations/implications

This paper calls for awareness of the influence of the ethnographer's language skills and shows the importance of discussing this in relation to how we teach and learn ethnography, research practice and diversity in academia.

Originality/value

The paper makes three contributions to organizational ethnography. First, it contributes to the insider/outsider debate by nuancing the ethnographer's experience. Second, it answers calls for transparency by presenting a personal ethnographic account. Third, it contributes to developing the methodology by offering tips to deal with language barriers in doing ethnography abroad.

Details

Journal of Organizational Ethnography, vol. 10 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2046-6749

Keywords

Abstract

Details

Journal of Organizational Ethnography, vol. 7 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2046-6749

Article
Publication date: 10 May 2018

Boukje Cnossen

The purpose of this paper is to nuance the idea of natural access proposed by Mats Alvesson in his description of at-home ethnography, and to offer a performative view of…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to nuance the idea of natural access proposed by Mats Alvesson in his description of at-home ethnography, and to offer a performative view of Alvesson’s suggestion that, in at-home ethnography, the ethnographer must work with “the processual nature of the researcher’s self.”

Design/methodology/approach

The author offers a reflection on the several years of ethnographic research the author conducted, of which some parts were done in a living community of which the author was part. Being literally at home, as well as being very familiar in the other research settings the author describes, allows for a critical reflection on what “at-homeness” means.

Findings

Using Butler’s notion of performativity, the author argues that “the processual nature of the researcher’s self” Alvesson speaks of, can best be understood as multiple selves, of which some emerge during the research process. The author furthermore problematizes Alvesson’s use of the term “natural access,” by arguing that this kind of access is neither easy, nor devoid of power relations.

Originality/value

This paper uses an experience of conducting research in the home, as well as an experience conducting research in a setting where the researcher arguably blent in well, to question what the “at-homein at-home ethnography means, and how the researcher can deal with it.

Details

Journal of Organizational Ethnography, vol. 7 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2046-6749

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 18 May 2018

Anna Kirkebæk Johansson Gosovic

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to developing the understanding and practice of fieldwork in familiar settings by expanding the literature on fieldworker identities.

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to developing the understanding and practice of fieldwork in familiar settings by expanding the literature on fieldworker identities.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a multinational biopharmaceutical corporation, and drawing on anthropological theory of social identities, the paper demonstrates the multiple and fluid identities that we as organizational ethnographers purposefully take on, accidentally acquire, unintentionally are ascribed with and experience during ethnographic fieldwork in familiar settings.

Findings

Building on these insights, and by expanding the literature on researcher identities, the paper develops a critique of the spatial and temporal notions often attached to fieldwork in familiar settings by demonstrating how outsider identities are ascribed even “at home” and how insider identities can be experienced when away. It further reflects on the ways in which these identities shape the data generation and interpretation process.

Originality/value

This paper argues that to properly grasp the multiple identity processes involved in a fieldwork, we must escape the spatial and temporal conceptualization of being either an insider or an outsider. Instead, the paper argues for a relational and situational perspective on being an insider and an outsider in the field and proposes to conceptualize “insider” and “outsider” as ascribed, changing and sometimes volatile social identities.

Details

Journal of Organizational Ethnography, vol. 7 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2046-6749

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 16 May 2018

Tobias Malm

The purpose of this paper is to explore and discuss some of the possibilities and risks that one can encounter in the process of doing ethnographic organization research with an…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore and discuss some of the possibilities and risks that one can encounter in the process of doing ethnographic organization research with an at-home approach.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper draws on self-reflexive analyses of a four-year research process, where the author – a rock musician – investigated how rock bands within the author’s social networks organize their activities. The materials used for analysis were notes and diaries, as well as reflections on memories.

Findings

The findings illustrate aspects of the researcher’s “breaking out” process, which involved the researcher’s initial impulse to leave his practitioner-self, a subsequent lack of interest and eventually a return to what felt genuinely intriguing for him to study. The paper argues that one important aspect of the at-home researcher’s breaking out process may involve an active recognition of his/her practitioner-self as a resource – not least to avoid losing interest or getting lost in abstractions.

Originality/value

This paper conceptualizes and builds further upon previous discussions on at-home research, adding insights into the “breaking out” process and the curious paradox of the proposed necessity for the researcher to leave and utilize his/her at-home experience and familiarity.

Details

Journal of Organizational Ethnography, vol. 7 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2046-6749

Keywords

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