Ethnographic Research - Matthew J. Brown

More documents

Recommendations

Info

ETHNOGRAPHIC DATA \ 247fl. J. Hall & Noguchi, 1993; M. Miller, 1995). A typicalcase is one instance of communicative behavior or practicethat "is similar in relevant characteristics to othercases of the same type" (c. J. Mitchell, 1983, p. 189).Philipsen (1977, 1982) has advocated that researchersscan a number of cases for familiar concepts that can beanalyzed and to hypothesize links between those casesand particular theories. The data for comparing casescan be gained from participant observations, interviews,archival documents, artifacts, or some combination ofthese data sources. Let's consider one published examplein detail.Braithwaite's (l997a) ethnography of interactionmanagement rules in naturally occurring conversationsat a blood plasma donation center well illustrates thevalue of a single case study. Braithwaite (l997a) donatedplasma 16 times over a 2-month period to observe con- .versations between other donors and the technicians whoworked at the center. He discovered that conversationalrules that are normal in other settings were consistentlyviolated at the plasma donor center. His analysis showedhow task requirements in that setting took precedenceover the usual rules for interaction management. ButBraithwaite (l997a) also showed how the normal rulesfor conversation management applied in this setting,even though they were routinely violated whenever "successfullyaccomplishing a task takes precedence over a'normal' conversation" (p. 70). Braithwaite (l997a) gaveseveral examples from other settings in which participantsprioritize task requirements over following normalconversational rules, such as parents conversing togetherwhile watching their children play in a park or professorstrying to get to their next class while engaging in ahallway conversation with a student. Consistent with theinterpretive paradigm's view of truth as subjective andcomprised of multiple realities, in congruencies amongcases will likely be seen as illustrative, rather than problematic,by the interpretive researcher. But while we arethinking about contradictions, let's look at some of theethical issues you will need to consider in your ethnographicdata collection and analysis.Some Ethical IssuesRecall from chapter 2, "Ethics and Research," the fourrights of research participants: to freely choose their participationin research, to privacy, to be treated with honesty,and to be kept free from harm. It is your obligation asa researcher to protect these rights for your participants,and doing so in the field, over a long time, is much morecomplicated than doing so in a one-shot experiment,interview, or .questionnaire (Tinney, 2008). In this section,we stress some of the particular ethical choices youmust make in doing ethnographic research. If you wantto look at a professional code of ethics that was developedwith ethnographic research in mind, you mightcheck out the American Anthropological Association'scode of ethics, or the American Folklore Association'scodes of ethics, on those organizations' respective Websites (Madison, 2005).As you conduct your initial participant observationsin the field setting, think about how you might be openand transparent with participants in that setting aboutyour ethnographic project (Madison, 2005). For example,at what point, if ever, would you share your motivationfor selecting that setting and those informants? Ifyour study was funded, would you let participants know?Would you use some of your funding to benefit participants,such as paying participants for interviews or buyingfood for homeless informants (Dollar & Zimmers,1998)? How will your interactions with the participants,or your departure from those relationships once you fin·ish data collection, affect them (Tinney, 2008)?As you write up your ethnographic study, and in thecase of performance ethnography, prepare public performancesbased on field data collection, think about howyou will avoid harming the people with whom you haveworked as well as the places and materials you studied(Madison, 2005, Miller et al., 1998). What impact willyour research report, or your performances, have ontheir safety, dignity, or privacy? Will you offer them anyassistance, or reciprocal use of your time, in exchange fortheir assistance in your data collection? It is not uncommonfor communication researchers to offer trainingworkshops, or simply volunteer in the community oftheir ethnographic projects, to benefit the participantsand as a way of compensating participants for their contributionsto the ethnographic research.Some ethnographic data collection is now occurringover the Internet (e.g., Bakardjieva & Smith, 2001;Cezec-Kecmanovic, Treleaven, & Moodie, 2000; LaRose &Whitten, 2000), and ethnographic data collection solelyfrom Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) databrings with it particular ethical issues, whether the datacome from a chat room, e-mail messages, or a listservgroup. CMC interactions are more readily observed ina covert fashion, and there are still vast "unsettled distinctionsbetween 'public' and 'private' behavior across a
248! CHAPTER 13 ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCHrange of cyberspace contexts" (Lindlof & Schatzer, 1998,p. 186). The processes of gaining participants' informedconsent, disclosing research procedures and making agreementswith participants, negotiating access, and so on areall impacted by differences between virtual and embodiedcommunities. Finally, because the data for suchresearch projects already exists in digital form, the storageand later use of those data must be approached withparticular attention to maintaining participant privacyand assuring freedom from harm.In fact, deciding when to pursue institutional reviewboard (IRB) approval for your ethnographic project is anethical matter. You must get IRB approval before you interviewparticipants, but you may want to do some initial participantobservations in a setting before you know whomto interview, let alone what questions you might ask. If youare observing legally competent adults, in a setting that isobservable by anybody, you can conduct your initial observationsbefore pursuing IRB approval of your project.Finally, reform claims pose particular ethical dilemmasfor the ethnographic researcher (Markham, 1996).Namely, your presence affects the lives of your researchparticipants, for better or worse. "Just as there are manypolitical ideals which can claim the allegiance of personsof good will, so ethnography leads you to the carefulstudy and appreciation of many discourses, including, onoccasions, discourses of power" (Philipsen, 1992, p. 329).With these sobering thoughts in mind, we turn to thewarrants for ethnographic research.Ethnographic WarrantsIn this section, we reiterate some of the ideas that wefirst presented in chapter 6, "Warrants for ResearchArguments"-ideas about the standards for what countsas good interpretive and critical research. You alreadyknow that interpretive researchers illuminate multiplerealities by valuing subjectivity and rich description intheir data collection sources and strategies, data analyticmoves, and conclusions. In this chapter, we show youhow to demonstrate that you are a credible ethnographicresearcher, that your interpretations of the field data youcollect are plausible, and that the insights you gain in aparticular setting or situation are transferable (i.e., thatthey are heuristic, or thought provoking to those interestedin culture and communication, not that they aregeneralizable in the discovery paradigm sense).If your ethnographic project includes claims of evaluationand reform, then you also will need to draw on thecritical paradigm values and standards to warrant yourproject. To make a coherent argument about the need forideological change, your critical ethnographic research(most likely an auto ethnography or performance ethnography)should include elements from the interpretiveand critical paradigm warrants that we outlined in chapter6. In the sections following, we bring into play thevalues of voice and liberation and the standards of coherenceand researcher positionality, as those are relevant tocritical ethnographic research.Let's start by considering how the interpretative valuesof subjectivity and rich description are enacted inethnographic research.Valuing Subjectivity and Rich DescriptionSubjectivity refers to your ability to know using your ownmind, your thoughts, feelings, and reasoning processes.Your perceptions of the social situation you study, and yourability to represent participants' perceptions of communicationin that situation, are as important in ethnographicresearch as is any objective reality that exists independentof your perceptions or the participants' perceptions.Interpretive researchers stand for the value of subjectiveknowledge. In doing ethnographic research, youwill act on this value by privileging participant views andfield settings for data collection. If you are doing autoethnography,you will privilege self-knowledge (your ownexperiences and feelings) in data collection and analysis,but you will still need to be rigorous and reflexive aboutyour own standpoint (Pelias, 2003). The kinds of ethnographicdata you collect, the time you spend immersedin the group or culture, and the detail level of your interviewsand field notes will allow you to richly describe thatsituation, its participants, their actions, and relationships.Ultimately, you will be presenting your subjective understandingof those participants' meanings.We mentioned earlier in this chapter that triangulationis customary in ethnographic research because triangulatingdata sources, settings, collection and analyticstrategies, or researcher perspectives can enrich yourdescriptions of communication and help you fleshout multiple plausible interpretations. Collaborativeethnography, the use of more than one researcherto provide multiple viewpoints on a setting, or onsimilar settings, can actually help you warrant your
Page 1: CHAPTER 13 /Ethnographic ResearchIn
Page 4: ETHNOGRAPHIC CLAIMS \ 235Ethnograph
Page 8: ETHNOGRAPHIC DATAEXHIBIT 13.4 Evalu
Page 11 and 12: 242 I CHAPTER 13 ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEA
Page 13 and 14: 244 / CHAPTER 13 ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEA
Page 15: ~ CHAPTER 13 ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCHe
Page 19 and 20: ~ CHAPTER 13 ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCHt
Page 24: "TRY IT!" ACTIVITIES \ 255Discussio

Ethnographic Research - Matthew J. Brown

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?