Doing Ethnography. Amanda Coffey
for the ethnographic process itself.
Ethnography has also been influenced by, and in turn has influenced, the theoretical work of ethnomethodology (Pollner and Emerson, 2001). Ethnomethodologists are particularly concerned with the understanding of social life at the micro-level and through uncovering meaning in the close and detailed study of interaction. Ethnographic approaches are also used in order to pay close attention to social life at this micro-level. Both ethnomethodology and ethnography are situated within the interpretive social sciences, and are concerned with understanding the life worlds of social actors in the context of their setting. While the two perspectives have had different followers and have not always been aligned, they have nonetheless ‘grown older together … where once clearer boundaries have become blurred’ (Pollner and Emerson, 2001, p. 118). Ethnomethodology, like ethnography, has had a wide disciplinary appeal, including from within sociology and discursive psychology, and has been particularly concerned with the ways in which reality and social order are constructed and maintained through interaction. Ethnomethodologists have a particular interest in language – including spoken words and conversations, but also sounds, gestures and body language. There is an interest in the sequencing of language, alongside spatial and temporal contexts; and thus in how social actors work together to construct and maintain social order, and at times to change that order in nuanced and subtle ways. So, from an ethnographic perspective, there is a resonance and shift from a preoccupation with culture or society itself towards the techniques through which interactional realities are maintained; how people use and identify social cues, what is said and left unsaid, how reciprocal relations are shaped and reinforced, and what methods people use used to persuade each other of society and the shared sense of order. Ethnomethodologists have used and developed ethnographical approaches in order to collect what might be identified as naturally occurring interactional data, such as conversations and other language encounters (Silverman, 2011). The analysis of these encounters has helped to uncover techniques through which social actors develop and perform shared understandings, persuading each other of the society of which they are parts. There has been considerable debate about ongoing similarities and differences between ethnomethodology and ethnography (Atkinson, 1988), within a context of recognition that dialogue between the two is ethnographically valuable, expanding the appreciation of ‘the depth, limits and complexity of its own practices and those of the persons or groups comprising its substantive focus’ (Pollner and Emerson, 2001, p. 131).
Feminist ethnography
Like qualitative research more generally, ethnography has also been shaped by, and has helped to define feminist scholarship and research practice. The dialogue between feminism and ethnography can be situated within feminist critiques of social science and social research more generally. There have been nuanced understandings of the ways in which the ideologies of gender have structured the social relations of research, alongside considerable philosophical debate about the gendered nature of knowledge (Harding, 1987; Ramazanoglu and Holland, 2002). Feminist theorists have critiqued some of the established assumptions that have underpinned social scientific inquiry, calling into question underlying perceived dichotomies – such as objectivity/subjectivity and rationality/emotionality – as well as repositioning and restating knowledge as grounded, local, partial and temporally situated. Such insights have led to a feminist research agenda and to a recasting of feminist social research – where the conditions of knowledge production are critically acknowledged and accounted for, where issues of power are recognized in the research process and in relation to research production, and where epistemology and ontology are central (Letherby, 2003). As Stanley has eloquently described, ‘feminism is not merely a perspective, a way of seeing; nor even this plus an epistemology, a way of knowing; it is also an ontology, a way of being in the world’ (1990, p. 14).
It is now widely accepted that feminist research methods can incorporate a wide variety of approaches, both quantitative and qualitative; as Letherby (2003) notes, feminists can count as well as quote. It is certainly not the case that some methods are more inherently feminist than others, and feminist scholars have used a variety of approaches to empirical work and knowledge creation. Within that general context, feminist researchers have used and developed ethnographic approaches to reveal women’s standpoints (Farrell, 1992; Langellier and Hall, 1989) and have debated the representation of feminist ethnography in and through the production of texts (Behar and Gordon, 1995; Clough, 1992). Feminist anthropologists, for example, have engaged in an epistemological and methodological project towards establishing a distinctive feminist ethnography (see Jennaway, 1990; Schrock, 2013; Walter, 1995). Abu-Lughod (1990) posed the question as to whether there can be a feminist ethnography, and if so what that might look like. This included a focus on the ways in which feminist ethnography might enable exploration of the relationship between feminism and reflexivity, troubling the distinction between objectivity and subjectivity, and considering the power in and of writing. Abu-Lughod spoke of an ‘unsettling of the boundaries that have been central to its identity as a discipline of the self-studying other’ (1990, p. 26). Jennaway similarly argued that postmodern discourses in ethnography borrowed from and emerged out of feminist preoccupations and articulations, including a move towards egalitarian relations of textual production, more dialogic and collaborative approaches and a ‘move away from systems of representation which objectify and silence the ethnographic other’ (1990, p. 171). Reflecting on the methodological imperatives of feminist ethnography in contemporary times, Schrock (2013) identifies the importance of representation (both its benefits and detriments) and ethical responsibility towards the communities where researchers work and study.
Postmodernism
The postmodern turn in social science provides a methodological backdrop for contemporary ethnography, influencing the methodology and practice in a number of ways (Fontana and McGinnis, 2003). In simple terms, postmodernism represented a rejection of an objective reality and science, in favour of a more complex, nuanced, multi-layered understanding of the social world. Postmodernism, which can be taken as a movement influenced by and influencing a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches – including feminism but also postcolonialism, critical theory, critical race theory and queer theory among others – recognizes and celebrates a diversity of perspectives. Postmodern approaches to understanding and theorizing value the importance of the understanding of context for making sense of behaviours and meanings. Moreover, postmodern approaches raise important questions about power and authority in social research and the production of knowledge. There comes with postmodernism a critical questioning of hegemony and an inherent belief in providing opportunities to ‘give voice’. There is also the recognition that social worlds are multiple, layered and polyvocal, and that there are many voices to be heard; also that social worlds are dialogic, constructed by social actors who bring with them different histories, biographies and experiences. Hence there is a fundamental articulation of social worlds as socially constructed and represented, where the self gets positioned and repositioned within and through social and cultural contexts. Thus, in relation to postmodern ethnography, there is a focus on exploring and recognizing the contexts through which social worlds are constructed and lives lived, as well as on providing more nuanced vehicles for documenting social worlds and taking into account the multiple voices that are present and must be heard. Postmodern approaches to ethnography have placed a particular emphasis on the products of ethnography and on finding alternative ways of representing and reporting social data, in order to better give voice to, and to work with rather than on, social actors in research settings. In so doing, postmodern ethnographers have also posed questions about power and authority in our research encounters, as well as about the authoritative text of the scholarly ethnographic monograph.
Principles and practices
There are a diversity of perspectives and theoretical positions from which ethnography has been derived and developed. Despite this, and while recognizing that ethnography can incorporate a variety of methods for data collection, analysis and representation, there are a number of principles and practices which most ethnographers would endorse. Such principles and practices are partly to do with the ways in which ethnographic researchers go about conceptualizing problems, but also focus on the underlying theoretical