narratives of three generations of urban middle-class - eTheses ...

theoretical and methodological stance from any claim of a ‘real representation of reality’.
I adopt a reflexive postmodern ethnography that is critical not only of the scientific but
also of the humanistic ethnography (Goffman, 1961) on the basis of ‘naive realism’, for
both assume there is a knowable world ‘out there’ that can be studied directly and
accurately, and the ‘correct’ representation of which is feasible in the ethnographic text
(Brewer, 2000; Denzin and Lincoln, 1998a).
Ethnographers themselves have challenged the claim that ethnography can produce
universal valid knowledge by accurately representing the nature of the social world. This
‘moment’ in the history of ethnography is referred to as the’ double crisis’ (Denzin and
Lincoln, 1998a: 21-22). Since all accounts of ethnography are constructions and there is
no privileging of one single account there is ‘the crisis of representation’.
Correspondingly since ethnographic descriptions are partial, selective, even
autobiographical and are tied to the particular ethnographer and also the contingencies
under which the data were collected, the traditional criteria for evaluation in ethnography
become problematic. What we face is another ‘crisis of legitimation’ as we deconstruct
terms like ‘validity’, ‘reliability’ and ‘generalizability’ (Brewer, 2000: 24-25; Denzin and
Lincoln, 1998a: 19-22, 411-416).
Post-modern ethnographers (Silverman, 1989; Brewer, 2000) have sought to rescue
ethnography from the excesses of post modernism by incorporating some of its
criticism. It seeks to tie up some postmodern theories with the continued commitment to
disciplined, rigorous and systematic ethnographic practice (Brewer, 2000). In tune with
this I do not radically subvert the ‘real’ in its effects and consequences on people’s lives
but embrace a version of ‘analytical realism’ rather than ‘naive realism’. Analytical
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