Vale. As editor of the journal FQS , yesterday I got first-hand the articles published during the month of August. Discuss two of them to be especially interesting for what concerns me these days. The theme of these articles has coincided precisely with a personal reflection that I was around and yesterday I shared with Kip . Some time ago I think some clarification about my comments on this blog in order to expand and define the basis of my reflections. Clarifications related to freedom in qualitative research, the impositions academicians and the need for consensus. My talk with Kip
began treating the post on Thursday of Edgar and commentary about doing thesis addressing the phenomenon YouTube or Google-Video and practices of the people in those spaces. Kip's comments on the subject provoked in me a contradictory effect in relation to the reflections that haunted me the last few days. In jargon, thermodynamics (I think that is the science that deals with it so), on the one hand, made my ideas come into resonance, and, on the other hand, decreased entropy in my head. This misconfiguration and subsequent convergence is also related to what they are assuming these days in Bournemouth . At first I thought writing about ethnography is interesting and this very day I will practice self-reflection, as indeed is being. But one factor not considered, in what may be a "rookie mistake." The factor that I did not realize when I got here was coming to a Center dedicated to qualitative research. That is, a place that is divergent thinking, well, who had invited me was a researcher who does not fit exactly into the mainstream of academia. I was delighted with what that meant, but I did not realize what it really meant. And the result has been a re-construction of the initial ideas that came here. Following
my conversation yesterday, when I raise with Kip what Edgar said in his blog, I was leaving, somehow, preconceived schemes. I was in my head that really could be a qualitative research on YouTube (the other hand, I also thought that it will be a few out there in the process). Based on an open, even started investigating the example of YouTube as an argument to raise different virtual ethnographies. And therein. Sure, "Kip said," that's what happens with the preset. What you see is people constantly raised their research results as a justification of the method. Articles in magazines are written for colleagues to please a certain current. Innovations meet subsistence needs and a proposed reaffirmation of the quality of research to colleagues. What would really be interesting to know the people who make "Dancing duovideoplaybacks" (Edgar dixit.) Is (transcribe and wide open questions) why they do, how it fits that need performance in the patterns of cultural values authors, what kind of reward sociocultural expect to get (directly or indirectly, consciously or not), what logic is behind such behavior, which anchors are other ways to make performance, the process production of a video and how to bridge the difficulties, why they choose not Google-YouTube and other video platforms, and so on. What Kip was saying was that no matter the method. The qualitative method is generative by definition open. Was important to know the cultural meanings of the actions of these people. Interest, from an anthropological point of view, access patterns of meaning that lie behind behaviors and to understand the world of these people. It can do qualitative research, but why then discuss the methods as closed?, Who, except for academic purists interested validate the generative process itself and novel in each case and by definition subject to change and variation? [By the way, although we were talking about a field of study on the Internet, the word rarely appeared ... it was replaced by other "classical" culture, negotiation, dialogue, construction, meanings, behaviors, values, society, etc.].
Of course, these issues have far exceeded my initial approach to a virtual ethnography "open" about it. And I was being forced to re-consider the meaning of this newspaper itself. Because, somehow, what I'm saying here is what is acceptable and what is not in the field of virtual ethnography.
Well, in those was when I get the index to publications in FQS August and start reading, you see where this article:
Michael Agar (USA): An Ethnography By Any Other Name ...
I'm saved at last see the light again. The intention of this article can be transferred to this journal, but adding "virtual" to the word "ethnography." This is laying the groundwork for talking about ethnography in relation to other research practices. Two things particularly interested me in this article. An orthodox and heterodox. The first -In line with what I have been writing these days is the idea of \u200b\u200bestablishing some points of consensus. Agar talks about the following:
"Suppose that ethnography was a computer program, perhaps a game. The program has various parameters that a player can be set with different values. (...) Here are a few [things relevant] that come to mind:
# Control: How much of obligation is ethnography? How many of the preferences of the ethnographer do for structuring methods? How does your personality leads him to 'take over' rather than 'let go' a bit?
# Approach: How ethnographer focuses on a particular topic or various problems that arise?
# Scale: To what extent is an ethnographer committed to the phenomenological level of experience? Or is he / she interested in the great global levels and / or small psychobiological levels?
# Events: What period of time and space is intended to cover the ethnographer? A particular event in a particular place, at one end, or all events and circumstances of all members of the group, on the other? Conditions associated
#: Events prolonged in time and distributed throughout the space. How long will pursue and are referenced in time and even when they are followed in their motion through space?
[...]
# Previous: The 'before' part of the traditional social research jargon to refer to the categories and propositions you carry prior to the study phase, categories and propositions from a theory that must something at the end. By 'preliminary', I think, I also understand all the stuffing you carry with you, including your autobiography, identity, personal history that shapes who you are.
# Inputs: (..) What you have promised or that you provide a return for the support they have received to do the job?
# Interests: here I echo the work of Jürgen Habermas 'Knowledge and human interests' (1971). What interests included the study? Who is paying for it and why? Who is doing this and why? Who is involved in it and why? What interests are being served at all these levels? "(Paras 35 and 40).
My fieldwork at this time intends to talk about virtual ethnography in the same way these parameters can be interpreted. And how these parameters can be interpreted so as not to be taken as prescriptions? Agar clarifies what follows:
"The eight parameters are not trivial. All of them are valid for discussion and debate. All of them, in fact, have been and are passionate topics in exchanges as I reviewed at the beginning [Article]. [You can] Consider the parameter 'event', and remember the common question among my hosts, educational researchers: an ethnography is an ethnography of a kind real? Of course it is. Are other types of 'ethnographies of education' possible? Of course they are "(para. 42). That is the meaning
open you can do the reflections in this blog. So far
orthodoxy. The unorthodox question, which leads me to question many principles, some of the following statement:
"Is it really ethnography qualitative research? Not necessarily, it is perhaps not even most of the time. What is clear is that the term [quality] hinders rather than helps answer the question of how can you tell if something is real ethnography "
(para. 18).
Well, I like qualitative research. I only interested in ethnography as a method. What moves me as a qualitative researcher are the questions raised earlier about the videos on youtube ... how to deal with ... how culturally significant answers. I think everything else is secondary. And if that is what is ethnography, if one method, structure and requirements, then ethnography is secondary.
The following article appearing January. same volume of FQS is a radical critique of the above:
Wolff-Michael Roth (Canada): But Does "Ethnography By Any Other Name" Really Promote Real Ethnography?
Directly linked to the text of Hagar, Roth in this article point by point contradicts your vision. Simply rejects the possibility of talking about real or not real ethnography. His argument rejects the approach of Agar on the ground that are using methods within the ethnography to explain what ethnography is, which is already taking advantage of a position. And that is precisely Roth based his criticism on the positions and scientific positions:
"My comment about the respected and respectable anthropologists brings me to another important point. To be respectable and respected, one needs to be within the boundaries of what distinguishes the real ethnography of what is outside and therefore does not belong to the club. This boundary is mobile, like any academic, disciplinary and national boundaries, wars are around them precisely where the boundaries should be moved, and those who appropriate the border completely leave side issue. Yo-although others may disagree, read the text [Hagar] as if it were one of those wars across borders. More generally, we can read the text of Agar in two ways: (a) as a text that presents some of the discussions that have been occurring about what constitutes real ethnography and (b) as another episode in a war about where borders are placed real ethnography and investigate ways that just cry out to be, but in reality they are ethnography "(para. 7).
In short, little more can be said. As a personal reflection, I think reaffirm the need to define methods, but it squeaks further possibility of placing barriers to the field of research. Moreover in the case of qualitative research, which covers approaches like chaos theory or catastrophe theory, both as an argument outlined by Roth.
is why I find it interesting to refer to what is not "just" virtual ethnography. Because it includes what is qualifying. That is, but not all. It is that and is also something else. And that something else, what you are saying is: hey! here is an open door, see what lies beyond. Let's look beyond the ethnography and also see what lies beyond in the field of qualitative research.
The idea when I started this diary was to determine what was not virtual ethnography, because my experience told me, especially after attending the Workshop of IN3 , Researching the digital world - that many researchers were appropriating the term for different purposes to its original meaning. And they do it with a certain intention. This tension reaches the point of distorting the meaning of ethnography and spread to other classic methodological grounds are, so to speak, less fashionable in the 'mainstream' academic. Methods such as participatory action research, case studies, participant observation, depth interviews, focus groups, if not directly, social intervention, giving them a sense used ethnographic basically consists in the presence of the researcher in the field for a while and the subsequent description of their experiences. From my point of view, all these methods are an advance in social research, can separate the object of study of what is measurable and closer to the realm of personal experiences and the meanings attributed to these experiences, what has been called break with positivism. I and many others employ researchers with its different variants. Addition I am a professor of social work and am related to methods such as those from the critical school of Chicago, who advocate the investigator's commitment to what he is doing. The commitment intervention untito store change and social betterment, progress and emancipation of marginalized groups. Ethnography also uses many of the cited research methods to build your corpus. What happens is that all of them, taken independently, are not an ethnography. Ethnography is not intended to transform the world and the empowerment of the groups. Nor is it intended to interview someone or a case study. If you do these things is to understand the processes that are behind the facts. Making use of qualitative research methods, is neither good nor bad in itself. The questionable use of ethnography in an indiscriminate way is to do as a subterfuge to legitimize the field of qualitative research, given the prestige that this method seems to enjoy today.
The Kip's comments contributed to this reflection is that in qualitative research must begin by the end, that is what I want to know and not how. Because how open and subject to change during the process. A participant observation and ethnography can be finished in an alleged ethnographic research may end up being a action for purposes of social transformation. That is precisely what makes it interesting and what distinguishes this paradigm of positivism, concerned to measure, validate, ensuring independence, representativeness get ... What matters is the what (what meanings, what culture, what behaviors and why, what to do to improve or to avoid, etc..). These are the questions that drive social researchers. The legitimacy of their practices are particularly interested in "the academy" and least qualitative social science. We
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