Class 8

What ethnography can do for you

Integrating Ethnography in Research Design

Ethnographic tools include:

• Participant observation

• Visual ethnography

• Digital ethnography

• Biographical storytelling

• Participatory mapping

• Ethnographic walking

Rule: There must be a logical connection between the research question and the ethnographic method.

Ethnography is ideal for:

• Everyday manifestations of power.

• LIVED experiences of political/social processes.

• Symbolic & ritualistic power.

• Identity formation processes.

Ex of ethnographic questions

• How do students mobilize politically?

• How is temporary life in migration remembered across generations?

• How do diaspora groups construct political identity?

• Everyday resistance to austerity in daycare.

Linking RQ to Methods EX

• Focus groups

• PO at meeting spaces

• Participatory mapping

• Ethnographic walking

• Digital data collection

• Interviews

• Intergenerational memories of migration

  • Visual ethnography

  • Auto-ethnography

  • Collective storytelling

  • Exhibitions as method

Ethnographic data in academic writing

• First-person writing

• Thick description

• Anecdotes, quotes

• Local language

• Reflexivity

• Complexity

Never include all data in one paper.
Use quotes as evidence supporting analysis.

Vignette

-              A detailed, vivid, thick description of a scene/observation/experience that you present as a window/introduction from which you start to explain a analytical theme or build an argument

-              It sets the scene for the reader to enter the context of the political reality you will analyse

-              It will offer the reader an insight into the rich empirical material on which your arguments are build

Referencing empirical data

• Apply a consequent system to reference to your empirical data

• Paraphrases

• Direct quotes

Analyzing ethnographic notes

1. Organize data (chronology, transcription).

2. Thematic coding (inductive, grounded).

3. Connect themes to theory.

4. Apply key concepts to deepen analysis.