Session Content
Preliminary Reading
PARK, Julie, J. (2011). ‘“I needed to get out of my Korean bubble”: An ethnographic account of Korean American collegians juggling diversity in a religious context’. Anthropology and Education Quarterly. 42(3). 193-212. [Review Article].
GEERTZ, C. (1977). The Interpretation of Cultures. New York. Basic Books. Especially cc. 1 and 6.
DOWLING, P.C. & BROWN, A.J. (2010). Doing Research/Reading Research: re-interrogating education. London. Routledge. c. 6.Further Reading
BENEDICT, R. (2006 [1946]). The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: patterns of Japanese culture. New York. Mariner Books.
CRESWELL, J. (2012). Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: choosing among five approaches. Third Edition. Thousand Oaks. Sage. Sections on ethnography and Appendix E.
DOUGLAS, M. (2002 [1966]). Purity and Danger: an analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. London. Routledge.
MARTIN, V.B & GYNNILD, A. (Eds). (2011). Grounded Theory: the philosophy, method, and work of Barney Glaser. Boca Raton. Brown Walker Press. Chapters by Helen Scott (c. 5), Cheri Hernandez (c. 7), and Astrid Gynnild’s interview with Barney Glaser (c. 15).
RAHEJA, G.G. (1988). The Poison in the Gift: Ritual, prestation, and the dominant caste in a North Indian village. Chicago. University of Chicago Press.
WHYTE, W.F. (1993 [1969]). Street Corner Society: social structure of an Italian slum. Third Edition. Chicago. University of Chicago Press.
Ethnography entails the attempt to access the meanings constituted in particular cultures that may comprise whole societies or, more commonly, smaller cultural groups. The approach derives from anthropology and is now widely used (and misused) in social and in educational research. There are many different takes on ethnography, Clifford Geertz (1977), for example, describes the ethnographic interpretation as in many respects similar to literary studies; the practitioners of both seek to produce interpretations of meaning without insisting that they have the final word on it. There are no set data collection strategies associated with ethnography, but Geertz, again, advocates the collection of very rich data, covering situations from all sides, as it were to produce what he calls ‘thick description’, an expression that he borrows from the philosopher Gilbert Ryle (1968), a layered description that generates meaning upon meaning upon meaning. A reading of Ryle’s original lecture gives a good sense of the problem.
Two boys fairly swiftly contract the eyelids of their right eyes. In the first boy this is only an involuntary twitch; but the other is winking conspiratorially to an accomplice. At the lowest or the thinnest level of description the two contractions of the eyelids may be exactly alike. From a cinematograph-film of the two faces there might be no telling which contraction, if either, was a wink, or which, if either, were a mere twitch. Yet there remains the immense but unphotographable difference between a twitch and a wink. For to wink is to try to signal to someone in particular, without the cognisance of others, a definite message according to an already understood code. It has very complex success-versus-failure conditions. The wink is a failure if its intended recipient does not see it; or sees it but does not know or forgets the code; or misconstrues it; or disobeys or disbelieves it; or if any one else spots it. A mere twitch, on the other hand, is neither a failure nor a success; it has no intended recipient; it is not meant to be unwitnessed by anybody; it carries no message. It may be a symptom but it is not a signal. The winker could not not know that he was winking; but the victim of the twitch might be quite unaware of his twitch. The winker can tell what he was trying to do; the twitcher will deny that he was trying to do anything. (Ryle, 1968; no page numbers)
… and so on.
Because of this requirement for ‘thick description’, researchers adopting an ethnographic approach will often use both formal and informal interviews, participant and non-participant observation and documentary evidence, but they may also use other data collection strategies as well, even employing quantitative methods where this is deemed to be appropriate; the aim is to uncover and interpret meaning.
The research reported in Park’s article attempts to discover why there is such a powerful tendency for students of a particular ethnic group in an American college to favour their own company in the face of their own strong religious convictions that privilege diversification. The researcher is herself a member of this ethnic group, but needs to get very close to these students over an extended period in order to produce a viable interpretation. It is also notable that the researcher builds on previous research addressing the same kind of issue.
Again, the issues of sampling and data collection strategies are important in reviewing this research but again the researcher is attempting to uncover how meanings are made in the group that she is studying and not seeking to generalise to a wider population. It is interesting, perhaps, to set the narratives produced here alongside those discussed in the Douglas and Carless study discussed previously.
Interviewing Workshop
You should bring to the session a brief report on the interviewing activity the briefing for which was covered in the previous session. We shall discuss general issues relating to the use of interviews in research, including different kinds of interview and practical issues such as audio and video recording, transcription, and so forth.
Key Methodological Terms
case study
clinical interview
coding
ethnography
fieldwork
focus group
group interview
informal interview
participant observation
semi-structured interview
thick description
transcript
vignette