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Citation reference: Harvey, L., [1990] 2011, Critical Social Research, available at qualityresearchinternational.com/csr, last updated
8 January, 2024, originally published in London by Unwin Hyman, all rights revert to author.
A novel of twists and surpises
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1.4.1 Conventional approaches to ethnography
Ethnography, in one form or another, has been an important method throughout the short history of institutionalised sociology. Current forms of conventional practice are derived from the codification of the American experience since 1900 (Harvey, 1987), most of which had been brought together in three widely referenced readers published at the end of the 1960s, McCall and Simmons (1969), Filstead (1970) and Denzin (1970a). The accumulated and conventional wisdom of these collections was that participant observation, while not 'objective' in the sense used in discussing the reliability and validity of the social survey, was a set of methods directed towards an unbiased and accurate 'analytic description of a complex social organization' (McCall & Simmons, 1969, p. 3)
This approach sees ethnography as a method that used prevailing theoretical concepts and propositions to guide the analysis through a systematic collection, classification and reporting of 'facts' in order to generate new empirical generalisations based on these data. As such, this inductive approach sees analytic description as primarily an empirical application and modification of theory. Only secondarily is e'thnography able to test theory, and this is limited to a comparison of complex analytic descriptions of single cases as and when such cases are accumulated. Detailed empirical description to reveal social processes rather than causal generalisation is how the conventional approach projects ethnography.
However, for many ethnographers the strength of the approach is the insights it provides of social phenomena in their natural setting. For some, this is recast in phenomenological terms and ethnography has increasingly tended to be used as a procedure for gaining an understanding of social settings from the subjects' point of view. Immersion in a field of study allows the ethnographer to gain an understanding of the processes operating in the subject group, institution or community. Thus, the emphasis for most ethnography is usually on forms of social interaction and the meanings that lie behind these.
None the less, ethnography, whether seeking subject's meanings or settling for detailed analytic description has conventionally been characterised by microscopic studies and an explicit concern with validity and reliability. The exemplary method of ethnography, participant observation, has been particularly susceptible to criticism of its subjectivism and unverifiability. Participant observation, while receptive to subjects' conceptions and useful in constructing an understanding of a social setting must nonetheless strive for 'validity', according to conventional accounts. In order to obtain an accurate and reasonably complete and valid description it is necessary for researchers to employ participant observation techniques 'systematically, comprehensively and rigorously', that is, with 'adequate safeguards against the many potentially invalidating or contaminatory factors which threaten to diminish the interpretability of the resulting data'. (McCall & Simmons, 1969, p. 77). Contaminating factors are the 'reactive effects' of the observer's presence or activities on the phenomena being observed; the 'distorting effects of selective perception and interpretation on the observer's part'; as well as the inability of the observer to witness all aspects of a given phenomenon.
It is crucial, according to the accumulated wisdom (Miller, 1952; Schwartz & Schwartz, 1955; Vidich, 1955) for the participant observer to maintain a balanced perspective. The researcher should be 'hypersenstive' to the various manifestations of 'threats to interpretability' in order that steps may be taken to reduce 'contamination' through the 'modification of the observer's role vis à vis his [sic] subjects' (McCall & Simmons, 1969, p. 104), for example, avoiding becoming too closely identified with one faction in the organisation or group being studied. Alternatively, direct 'respondent interviewing of a suitably drawn sample' can be used to check out the impressions of direct observation thereby exposing 'systematic bias' in order that previous interpretation of the motives and meanings of the participants can be tempered or revised. The conventional approach to ethnography emphasises detachment, enabled by researchers' reflexive accounts of their role. This is crucial for an 'objective', systematic and valid analysis of a social setting.
The scientistic rigours of the conventional approach have been mediated, to some extent, in more recent developments of ethnography. The current tendency is to see ethnographic work as providing detailed information on what people do and insights into what they think they are doing and why they are doing it. Watching what people do is useful as it provides a certain amount of direct data. However, like any other data, this only has meaning if put in some kind of context. If the researcher adopts an outsider view the data makes sense only in relation to the researcher's frame of reference. This leads to the imposition of some external explanation onto the practices that operate within the group under study. In short, the researcher has a view of social actions that do not make the same sense to him or her as they do to the people in the social group. Ethnography, thus goes one stage further and attempts to illicit the sense of the group. The researcher is required to become acquainted with meanings the actions have for the members of the group. The researcher, in one way or another, is expected to access members own self-accounting. Ethnography tries to generate an understanding of the group from their point of view.
This process of accessing members' meanings may be by co-existing with the group, that is, participating in one way or another and gradually assimilating the perspective. Or it might be 'short-circuited' to some extent, by asking questions. Such questioning is not of the scheduled interview type. It is designed to allow respondents to develop their own frames of reference, not the interviewer's. The idea is to get respondents to talk about how they see their world, so any device, ranging from an impromptu, in-situ chat through to semi-structured interviews, may be a suitable vehicle. Unfortunately, the respondents will not simply reveal sets of group meanings. This is not because they are trying to hide them but because they are unaware of the abstract frames of reference or meaning of the social processes that operate in the group.
Reflexivity is nowadays regarded as central to ethnographic research. This involves two things. First, it requires that researchers reflect upon the research process in order to assess the effect of their presence and their research techniques on the nature and extent of the data collected. Crudely put, researchers must consider to what extent respondents were telling them what they wanted to hear; did the researcher(s) inhibit respondents; did the format of the data collection restrict the kind of data being collected, and so on? Second, ethnographic reflexivity requires that researchers critically reflect upon the theoretical structures they have drawn out of their ethnographic analysis. In effect, researchers are expected to think laterally by reconceptualising their evidence using other possible models. Ethnographers should not just fit details into a preformed schema but try to reform the schema to see if the details have different meanings.
None of this is easy, but it is particularly difficult where interviews are 'one-offs'. The more contact one has the more likely one is to be able to dig deeper. However, a great deal of contact can also lead one to start taking the group perspective for granted and to lose track of the nature of group meanings. It is, therefore, important to record material of all types scrupulously, in as much detail, either at the time or as soon after, as is reasonably possible. Material received from subjects should be augmented by an ongoing journal of the researcher's own involvement, actions, and reflections upon the research situation and research process. Constant review of recorded material of all sorts helps reflexivity, theory development and understanding. Most ethnographers, especially those who place reflexivity at the heart of the ethnographic concern, would probably concur broadly with this conventional approach.
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1.4.2 Approaches and techniques of critical ethnography
The critical approach to ethnographic analysis is somewhat different. Critical ethnography is a particular approach to ethnography that attempts to link the detailed analysis of ethnography to wider social structures and systems of power relationships in order to get beneath the surface of oppressive structural relationships.
There are, broadly speaking, three ways in which this is done. The first is to consider the subject group in a wider context. This is the weakest form of critical ethnography and may not strictly be critical if, for example, the contextualisation merely takes the form of analysing functional relationships between the subject group and the wider social milieu. The second is to focus on the wider structural relations and examine the ways in which the social processes that are evident in the subject group are mediated by structural relations. The third is to incorporate ethnography directly into a dialectical analysis. In this approach, the understanding developed from the ethnographic study is integrally related to the deconstruction of the social structures. Ethnographic techniques are thus used to elaborate an understanding that goes beyond surface appearance and thereby specifies the nature of the essential relationship of the structure under analysis. In the first two approaches to critical ethnography there is a tendency to explore a group and then situate it. In the third, the tendency is to begin with the structural relationships and then undertake an ethnographic enquiry in order to facilitate structural analysis, as Willis does in Learning to Labour (see section 3.6).
All the approaches to critical ethnography make use of the usual ethnographic data collection processes such as in-depth interviewing, semi-structured and unstructured interviewing, participant and non-participant observation and tend to adopt reflexive ethnographic practices. What is important for critical ethnography, however, is that the probing of the subjects' meanings is not the end of the story. The group operates in a socio-historically specific milieu and are not independent of structural factors. Their meanings may appear to be group-centred but are mediated by structural concerns.
Digging deeper to illicit frames of reference also has political implications. Conventionally, the researcher-respondent relationship is hierarchically structured with the researcher directing the exchange and extracting information. The retention of control by the interviewer/researcher and the compliance of the respondent/subject is intended, conventionally, to ensure minimum contamination by the researcher, thus maintaining the validity of the research situation. This view is contrary to the aims of critical social research for several reasons. First, it subverts the critical process, presupposing the primacy of the researcher's frame of reference (even if it is subsequently shifted through reflexive accounts). Second, it presupposes a one-way flow of information that leaves the respondent in exactly the same position having shared knowledge and ignores the self-reflective process that the imparting of information involves. Third, the direct corollary of the self-reflection is the inevitable engagement in dialogue where information is required or perspectives need to be discussed. The involvement of the researcher in this real dialogue involves her/him in the critical process. Fourth, the critical ethnographic interview (in whatever its form) is not neutral but directs attention at oppressive social structures and informs both researcher and respondent. Thus digging down to reveal the respondent's frame of reference is not meant to be an oppressive hierarchical process but a liberating dialogical one. In that sense it is linked directly to the totalistic analysis.
The role of the critical ethnographer is to keep alert to the structural factors whilst probing meanings. To explore, where possible, the contradictions between action and words; to see to what extent group processes are externally mediated; to investigate how the subjects see group norms and practices constrained by external social factors; to see how prevailing ideologies are addressed; to analyse the extent to which subversive or resistant practices transcend prevailing ideological forms; and so on.
A major problem for ethnographers is the sorting, coding and organising of ethnographic material as ethnographic research invariably leads to the collection of an enormous amount of detailed accounts, quotes and examples. The production of a finished ethnographic report requires the generation of a framework (or 'angle') and a selection from the empirical data for illustrative purposes. The choice of material is guided by the theoretical framework that has emerged in the course of the study. For critical social research, the framework will be informed by the observed relationship of the group (being studied) to the oppressive structure.
The process of assimilating and reflecting on the data and the research process is the most difficult but also the most crucial part of the critical ethnographic process. There are no simple techniques for doing this as it is the shuttling between detailed material and the wider social milieu that is at the heart of the dialectically generated critique. The researcher has to get to know the data and to see it from a variety of different perspectives. Critical ethnography requires the location of interesting social microcosms in wider structural forms. It also requires that the understanding of these structural forms is mediated by the closely observed detail of social practices and the meanings they encompass.
One way this might be achieved is through multiple reading of data. In the first instance the data is read 'vertically' (usually chronologically) until the researcher is familiar with it. It should then be copied and segmented into different themes, with items carefully sourced and cross-referenced (this may require multiple copies of some parts). Some ethnographers refer to this as pile building because they literally cut up their material and arrange it, according to themes, in piles (on the floor) (Bogdan & Taylor, 1975; Weis, 1985). This can be done electronically using a range of software packages. The process of segmenting into themes is guided by recurrent ideas that occur in the data but also by the sets of structural relations that appear to bear on the field of study.
The identification of pertinent structural relations is not generated by the detailed inductive ethnographic work alone. It requires that, in parallel to it, the researcher undertake a broad exploration of the prevailing social, political and economic structure in which the detailed study is located. This may, and often does, involve an historical examination of structural changes to show how these have impinged upon the subjects of the ethnographic study.
Almost invariably the first segmentation will be but a rough approximation to the themes that ultimately guide the critical analysis. After the first segmentation the data is read horizontally, by theme, to assess the internal cohesiveness of the identified themes and the interrelationship between themes. The critical ethnographer thus seeks to reveal both contradictions and 'ideological mediations'. Contradictions occur in the disjunctions between people's words and actions and inconsistencies in expressed opinions or activities. Ideological mediations are reflected in the way stereotypes, myths, or dominant conceptualisations guide or legitimate respondent's actions and meanings.
The anomalies and ideological mediations thus revealed provide a way of re-examining the data and the dialectical relationships between social structure and detailed observation that are emerging from the analysis. Themes are re-construed, the data reorganised into new piles and re-read horizontally until the researcher has identified the underlying relationships that inform the observed social phenomena. This process of data segmentation and horizontal reading can be done during the fieldwork as well as after its completion but, almost always, requires that ethnographers withdraw from the field temporarily in order to examine the data and locate it in a wider structure.
Critical ethnography, thus differs from conventional ethnography because it locates specific practices in a wider social structure in an attempt to dig beneath surface appearances. It addresses myths or contradictions as expressions of oppressive social structures. It is indifferent to 'value freedom' as does not consider it necessary for the researcher to be a neutral observer. Critical ethnography, however, is reflexive in its constant confrontation of taken-for-granteds.
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