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Article
Publication date: 26 December 2023

Sally Sambrook, Charlotte Hillier and Clair Doloriert

This paper revolves around the central question: is it possible to do “proper ethnography” without complete participant observation? The authors draw upon a student's experiences…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper revolves around the central question: is it possible to do “proper ethnography” without complete participant observation? The authors draw upon a student's experiences of negotiating National Health Service (NHS) ethical approval requirements and access into the student's research field, a British NHS hospital and having to adapt data collection methods for the student's doctoral research. The authors examine some of the positional (insider/outsider, native gone academic), methodological (long-term/interrupted, overt/covert) and contextual challenges that threatened the student's ethnographic study.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper draws on reflexive vignettes written during the student's doctorate, capturing significant moments and issues within the student's research.

Findings

The authors highlight the temporal, practical, ethical and emotional challenges faced in attempting an ethnography of nursing culture within a highly regulated research environment. Having revealed the student's experience of researching this specific culture and finding ways to overcome these challenges, the authors conclude that the contemporary ethnographer needs to be increasingly flexible, opportunistic and somewhat covert.

Research limitations/implications

The authors argue that it is possible to do “proper” and “good” ethnography without complete participant observation – it is not the method, the observation, that is the essence of ethnography, but whether the researcher achieves real understanding through thick descriptions of the culture that explain “what is really going on here”.

Practical implications

The authors hope to assist doctoral students engage in “good” ethnographic research within (potentially) risk-averse host organisations, such as the NHS, whilst being located in neo-liberal performative academic organisations (Foster, 2017; McCann et al., 2020). The authors wish to contribute to the journal to ensure good ethnography is accessible and achievable to (particularly) doctoral researchers who have to navigate complex challenges exacerbated by pressures in both the host and home cultures. The authors wish to see doctoral researchers survive and thrive in producing good organisational ethnographies to ensure such research is published (Watson 2012), cognisant of the pressures and targets to publish in top-ranked journals (Jones et al. 2020).

Originality/value

Having identified key challenges, the authors demonstrate how these can be addressed to ensure ethnography remains accessible to and achievable for, doctoral researchers, particularly in healthcare organisations. The authors conclude that understanding can be attained in what they propose as a hybrid form of “propportune” ethnography that blends the aim of the essence of “proper” anthropological approaches with the “opportunism” of contemporary data collection solutions.

Details

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

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 17 December 2016

Lionel C. Howard and Arshad I. Ali

In this chapter, we propose a blended methodological approach (critical) educational ethnography, to address problems of education. The chapter includes a brief overview of…

Abstract

In this chapter, we propose a blended methodological approach (critical) educational ethnography, to address problems of education. The chapter includes a brief overview of critical and educational ethnography, which inform the methodology, followed by a discussion of the essential elements and pedagogical objectives that undergird and operationalize the methodology. The essential elements include articulating a critical context, defining and understanding culture, establishing relationships and embeddedness, and multiple ways of knowing. Rather than articulate a curriculum and content for teaching (critical) educational ethnography, pedagogical objectives are provided to support the development of novice researchers (i.e., doctoral students, researchers-in-training).

Details

New Directions in Educational Ethnography
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78441-623-2

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 22 October 2019

Thomas Corcoran, Jennifer Abrams and Jonathan Wynn

As a method in sociology, urban ethnography is rather straightforward: it conducts participant observation in cities. In essence, urban ethnographers study place, and yet how…

Abstract

As a method in sociology, urban ethnography is rather straightforward: it conducts participant observation in cities. In essence, urban ethnographers study place, and yet how place is portrayed is too often absent from ethnographic descriptions. Indeed, place is always present in the lives of people, but it becomes difficult to understand how place works in an ethnographic context. To reflect upon this puzzle, the following text offers a language for how we may make better sense of place as urban ethnographers and the role of place as a central actor in urban life. By revisiting classic and current ethnographies, we consider how place is constructed as an object of analysis, reflective of social phenomenon occurring within a city. Further, in identifying six tensions (in/out, order/disorder, public/private, past/present, gemeinschaft/gesellschaft, and discrete/diffuse), we demonstrate how descriptions of place are either present or absent in these ethnographies. To understand these tensions as they depict place, we maintain, it is to better understand how place is represented within ethnographies claiming to be urban. In conclusion, we present future directions for urban place-based ethnography that may offer more robust interpretations of place and the people who inhabit it.

Details

Urban Ethnography
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78769-033-2

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 2 July 2012

Fiona Moore

Purpose – To consider why, although it does maintain a distinct presence, ethnography still remains very much on the fringes of international business (IB…

Abstract

Purpose – To consider why, although it does maintain a distinct presence, ethnography still remains very much on the fringes of international business (IB) studies.

Methodology/Approach – This chapter involves a literature review comparing ethnography in IB studies with its position in the related disciplines of industrial relations and Japanese studies, in both of which the ethnography of business is much more prominent, and both of which have close relationships with mainstream anthropology.

Findings – The author argues that a crucial factor in achieving greater prominence for ethnography in IB studies is in fact to encourage more studies of international organisations in mainstream anthropology.

Research limitations/Implications – The review of literature is necessarily brief and should be expanded to include more disciplines to test its conclusions; however, developments in the anthropology of China and India may add further data.

Practical implications – There are a number of ways in which the three disciplines can learn from, and contribute to, each other through the medium of ethnography, which are discussed.

Originality/Value – The value of the chapter is in considering ways in which IB studies and industrial relations can learn from each other and can make more effective use of ethnography, and how mainstream anthropology can benefit from incorporating perspectives from business-focused disciplines.

Details

West Meets East: Building Theoretical Bridges
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78190-028-4

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 1 April 2003

Andrea Fontana and Troy A McGinnis

Ethnography has changed since the influence of postmodernism reached the social sciences – it has turned a reflexive eye upon itself and has been critical of traditional…

Abstract

Ethnography has changed since the influence of postmodernism reached the social sciences – it has turned a reflexive eye upon itself and has been critical of traditional ethnographic work. This essay examines the concerns of postmodern informed ethnography. Then, it turns to other modes of ethnographic work, which are important intellectual precursors of postmodern ethnography-phenomenology, existential sociology, ethnomethodology. Next, new postmodern concerns, such as women and ethnography, electronic ethnography, and new narrative modes, are presented. This article points out both concerns and flaws in these approaches. Finally, the article concludes by analyzing the current and future situation of various ethnographic strands in sociology.

Details

Studies in Symbolic Interaction
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-76231-009-8

Book part
Publication date: 9 October 2012

Michael Atkinson

Purpose – This chapter explores a traditional mode of ethnography referred to as ‘realist ethnography’ as it relates to sport and physical culture (SPC…

Abstract

Purpose – This chapter explores a traditional mode of ethnography referred to as ‘realist ethnography’ as it relates to sport and physical culture (SPC) research.

Design/methodology/approach – The chapter discusses different approaches to ethnography, but principally addresses a realist ethnography I conducted on Ashtanga yoga in Canada.

Findings – I discuss how data evolved from the realist ethnographic method, and outline the manner in which ethnographic research is as a ‘way of life’. The chapter concludes that the realist ethnographic method is not untenable, as some authors suggest, but rather a viable and exciting mode of knowledge production in the SPC field.

Originality/value – The chapter is original work. It makes a case for the retention of realist ethnographies in our methodological lexicon, and illustrates the empirical process of writing culture. It also endeavours to engage students and scholars alike regarding the value of ethnographic methods more broadly.

Details

Qualitative Research on Sport and Physical Culture
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78052-297-5

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 21 August 2017

Michael Dooney and Eunyoung Kim

Due to its relatively embryonic status as a research methodology, virtual ethnography has not yet become a prominent methodology in higher education research. Considering the…

Abstract

Due to its relatively embryonic status as a research methodology, virtual ethnography has not yet become a prominent methodology in higher education research. Considering the overwhelming popularity of social media among college students and its increasing use in the higher education community as marketing and communication tools, this methodology warrants further exploration in the higher education field. As modern technology and the prevalence of the internet have transformed daily life, virtual ethnography has recently emerged as a new frontier in qualitative research. With the aim of introducing virtual ethnography as a methodological lens, this chapter discusses logistical and ethical issues associated with it in the context of a research project that examined the interactions between a group of newly admitted students at a private university within a university-operated Facebook group. The chapter begins with the definition of virtual ethnography, and briefly reviews its emergence and use in the existing literature. Then it discusses the implementation of the methodology, with a focus on methodological difficulties in the higher education research setting. Finally, it offers the lessons learned from the research project and provides suggestions for future use of the methodology in the higher education research field.

Details

Theory and Method in Higher Education Research
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78743-222-2

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 21 December 2010

Kevin Love

To begin, therefore by establishing certain parameters to both delimit and evoke the discussion, one might first note before side-stepping the well-recognised ethical issues that…

Abstract

To begin, therefore by establishing certain parameters to both delimit and evoke the discussion, one might first note before side-stepping the well-recognised ethical issues that announce themselves within these early ethnological texts (see for instance Hsu, 1979). The ‘pith-helmet’ terminology and exoticised intentionality, borne with such unselfconscious assurance, can in fact serve to effect complacency on the part of the contemporary ethnographer – were they to believe that one could completely escape such tendencies. In fact, Western thought has always displayed just these acquisitive geometries in its surveying, arraying and apprehending of the world.1 Obviously, therefore, this is not to criticise in a naive or petulant manner a fundamental comportment of the Western intellectual tradition, which clearly structures this and every enquiry couched within its terrain. Nor is it to suggest that certain keywords (‘colonialism’ for example) might somehow name this tendency without repeating its form, or that earnest mantras concerning ‘emancipation’ or ‘respect for alterity’ immediately authorise its continuation. For one to deal responsibly with the ensuing philosophical and ethical motifs would require a measured and careful analysis beyond the remit of the present discussion. Nonetheless, the basic geometry of this disposition is assumed for ethnography in the analysis that follows. Ethnography, that is to say, is actively oriented towards an object, here referred to variously as ‘lived experience’ or ethnos, and is always to some measure engaged in the apprehension and transmission of that object.

Details

New Frontiers in Ethnography
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84950-943-5

Book part
Publication date: 22 October 2019

Victoria Reyes

The Chicago School of Sociology heralded a new age: that of the rise and establishment of sociology as an academic discipline in the US. It also spurred on an intellectual…

Abstract

The Chicago School of Sociology heralded a new age: that of the rise and establishment of sociology as an academic discipline in the US. It also spurred on an intellectual tradition in ethnography that focuses on a wide array of methodological tools and empirical data with a focus on the specificity of place that continues to live on in contemporary urban sociology. Yet, its traditions have also been extensively criticized. Burawoy (2000) is one preeminent scholar, who has denounced the Chicago School as being parochial, ahistorical, and decontextualized from the national and international processes that shape cities. Instead, he calls for a move toward “global ethnography,” one that focuses on “global processes, connections, and imaginations” (Burawoy et al., 2000). Increasingly, US urban sociologists study research sites that are located outside the US and pay attention to how global actors and/or transnational connections influence US dynamics. Given this trend, what, if any lessons can global and urban sociologists take away from the Chicago School? In this chapter, I highlight three such lessons: (1) the global is central to city life; (2) rooting our work in the specificities of place helps extend and build theory; and (3) the School still provides useful conceptual and methodological tools to study the global. In doing so, I argue that scholars should recognize the plurality of approaches to global ethnography and how each approach can further our understanding of how the global shapes social life.

Details

Urban Ethnography
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78769-033-2

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 1 August 2017

Birgit Bosio, Katharina Rainer and Marc Stickdorn

Many companies struggle with the assessment of customer experience. This chapter aims to demonstrate how mobile ethnography tackles this issue by assessing data in a holistical…

Abstract

Purpose

Many companies struggle with the assessment of customer experience. This chapter aims to demonstrate how mobile ethnography tackles this issue by assessing data in a holistical way, in-situ, and in real-time.

Methodology/approach

The chapter describes the implementation of a mobile ethnography project in a tourist destination, including participant recruitment, data collection, data analysis, and the derivation of insights.

Findings

The mobile ethnography project allowed to gain deep insights into the customers’ journeys.

Research limitations/implications

Future research will need to further investigate questions of participant recruitment, the effectiveness of incentives as well as the performance of the data collection process. Furthermore the findings of this case need to be replicated in the context of other industries, as well as in other cultural contexts.

Practical implications

Mobile ethnography allows companies to gain more information on customer experience in real-time, thus with reduced cognitive and emotional bias. Therefore, the method can help to improve the touristic service offering and, consequently, customer experience.

Originality/value

As companies are searching for new approaches to research and manage customer experience, this chapter is of high value for both academia and practice.

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