CRIM 2653 Lecture Notes - Participant Observation, Intersubjectivity
Document Summary
Ethnography: method for generating and analyzing qualitative data. Grounded in first hand experience and examination of some particular social or cultural phenomena. Collection and analysis of documents, visual materials, artifacts, photography, oral histories, Literally, these would be an accurate reflection of the lives, attitudes, practices, beliefs, and so forth of those under study. Characteristics: experience of the researcher is the authority, but the researcher is almost completely absent from the text, documentary style that focuses on detailed observations, painstaking quotation of the respondents, absence of reflexivity. Postmodern ethnography: realists do not and cannot capture authentic nature of the phenomena, social dynamic exists between the fieldworker and the respondents, process is dialogical and cocreative. Biography/life history: data is generated from interviews, and from forms of documentary research, such as personal documents (letters, journals, diaries, etc, assumes that social action is best understood from the perspectives of the people involved. Contextualize the subjective experience in broader social context.
