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Chapter Two Part Two – Methodology - Page 62
As will be discussed at greater length in Chapter Three, Stewart (1998) is among many
commentators who note that the only watershed in methodological development in
ethnography has been the continuous rise of ethnography through participant
observation. Having said this, the transformations that the discipline as a whole has
gone through are remarkable, with challenges to notions of truth, objectivity and
subjectivity (Clifford & Marcus, 1986; Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007; Marcus &
Fischer, 1986) in deciding what ethnography through participant observation means and
how it is to be represented.
One or two significant examples of ethnography which reflect some of the tensions I
have alluded to will be considered here.
Fine and Martin (1995, p. 90) note that if one takes ethnography as the description of a
scene, setting, group or organization, then like Molière’s Monsieur Jourdain (who was
amazed at being able to speak prose), we all write ethnography without awareness.
However, Fine and Martin note that few ethnographic texts are privileged. They analyse
Goffman’s (1961) work as one of these, in particular the power of his use of humour.
Goffman, who identified primarily as a sociologist, wrote the highly influential work,
‘Asylums’, based on participant observation at St Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington,
DC (1961), then the largest state hospital in the USA. As an example of his theorizing,
Goffman develops the notion of an individual’s primary and secondary adjustment to an
institution, primary adjustment being the overt way that an individual gives and gets in
an appropriate spirit what has been systematically planned for, whether this entails
much or little of himself. Goffman notes that an organisation could also be said to have
a primary adjustment to an individual. This definition of primary adjustment enables the
consideration of secondary adjustment, any habitual arrangement whereby a member of