Reading Ethnographic Research [antikvár]

PREFACEThere is now a considerable literature dealing with ethnographic or qualitative methodology, including many texts for students. However, this literature concentrates very largely on how to do ethnographic research. Very little attention has been given to how we should read and assess the studies it produces. Yet this is a crucial task, and by no means straightforward.We tend to treat reading as a skill that is learned when we are children, as if it were something that had a well-defined end. But, in an important sense, we are always (or should always be) still learning how to read. A little reflection reveals that reading implies understanding, and that the process of understanding texts is a complex matter that is closely bound up with the nature of the ideas that writers seek to communicate, and with our own background knowledge and experience. Most obviously, there are texts whose vocabulary we may not comprehend, for example those that rely on esoteric mathematical symbols or that are written in unfamiliar natural languages. But even when we understand the grammar and vocabulary employed, we may not always understand the message intended. A mundane example of such lack of understanding happened to me when visiting friends. The son of the house (who was cooking the evening meal) said: 'Tell my mother she looks like a vegetable'. I understood the meaning of the words, but I could not understand the purpose (and therefore the meaning) of the message. It only made sense when I discovered later that his mother had told him that if he cooked her any more vegetarian meals she would look like a vegetable! Understanding is not given merely by knowledge of the meanings of the words used, then, it also depends on the context in which communication occurs and the motivation for the message built into that context. Similarly, in seeking to understand a written text, we must ask: what issues are being addressed, in response to what earlier contributions, and why (Tully 1988) Furthermore, the context of a communication is almost endlessly extendable. Understanding it may involve taking account of the wider society in which it occurs and even of the history of that society. And, usually we areII . 1. I