I found On Ethnography (heath & Street 2008) extremely salient. The key points bring forward the essence of an ethnographer's goals and responsibilities. The highlights that were valuable included: Constant Comparative Perspective which requires vigilance to co-occurrence (what happens as something else happens), describing what occurs rather than what doesn’t occur (avoids value judgment) and the importance of an etic perspective
Also, understanding that ethnographic research is a recursive process. Questions scaffold original hunches and build an intellectual framework involves revisiting Theory and concepts from literature and data from observations. Furthermore, Decision Rules were so grounded and couch the guidelines so well:
o Who or what is the phenomenon of central focus
o Who am I with respect to these individuals
o What will the time and space of data collecting be
o What makes me curious about what is happening
o What will I consistently be able to tell others about who I am and what I will be doing here?
o How will I protect the identity and interests of those whose lives I will examine?
Already, these guiding questions have helped me to better form the idea and purpose of my ethnographic research.
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Yes, you are right Rachel that these guiding questions help ethnographers to prepare a good proposal for thier work. Ethnographers need to think ahead about the central focus of his/her prject, the research site, and choice of people. Moreover, ethnographers have to plan how they will collect data, and they should make other rules to help them in analyzing and presenting research results.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, chapter 2 and 3 are very good chapters because they provide us with initial steps to start our ethnographic research.
Good luck Rachel with your ethnographic research.