SOAN 2120 Chapter Notes - Chapter 6: Ethnomethodology, Tacit Knowledge, Social Constructionism

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Sociology and Anthropology
• Course: SOAN 2120
• Professor: David Walters

Document Summary

Field research is also called ethnography or participant observation research. It is a qualitative style in which a researcher directly observes and participates in small- scale social settings in the present time and in the researcher"s home culture. Field research is appropriate when the research question involves learning about, understanding, or describing a group of interacting people. These research questions involve questions about how people act in the social world or how a social world compares to others. Field research can be used when other methods, such as surveys, experiments, are not practical. Those being studied in field research are termed members. Ethnography and ethnomethodology are two modern extensions of field research, which build on the social constructionist perspective. Ethnography means describing a culture and understanding another way of life from the native point of view. Assumes people make inferences and goes beyond what is explicitly seen or said, to what is implied.