Hine states, ethnographic enquiry is a ” naturalisitc project of documenting a reality external to the researcher…..” but he goes on to say….”that this process ” has been brought into question.” because of a “pre existing cultural object” interfering ,I presume, with collection and interpretation of data. How can we eliminate this subjectivity?
Do we need a cyber researcher to investigate a cyber world?? I wonder how we could create a cyber researcher??
A kind of ‘ethnobot’ Lesley? : )
Seriously though, the subjective analytic response of the researcher is surely the source of the richness of this method, not an indicator of its lack of validity?
Comment by sian — November 2, 2009 @ 10:12 am
Yes, my thoughts exactly I was hoping you might detect the note of cynicism and irony in my short post.
Oh and good word! am gonna use that one.
I feel that Hine and some of the other writers create their own rules and definitions by which to analyze concepts and terms creating a self fulfilling prophecy really. For example, Hine talks about ethnographic study as being a ” naturalistic project of documenting……. which is a reality external to the researcher” OK this sounds fairly logical, although am not really sure what he means by external to the researcher but because surely everything we do is an external act unless we only participate in the act of thinking about something.
It seems to be this external activity which is causing the crisis of representation that is causing concern amongst theorists. BUt if we examine the argument so far, yes it seems to be a valid one as the conclusion follows from the premises, however it’s not the validity of the argument but rather it’s truth and sensibleness( not really a word I know) So, it seems to me the question really is; is it a true conclusion.
My answer has to be no, I don’t feel that by stating that external practices are fuelled by subjectivity and concluding from this that it is this subjectivity which is causing a crisis within scholarly study means that it is necessarily true.
Furthermore as result of this crisis it is thought that there should be an abandonment of ethnography altogether but rather we should explore the possibility of an “ethnogarhy of ethnography”(Van Maaen 1995)and explore the “..possibilities for creative and strategic application of methods….” Now, if that’s not subjectivity at its best I don’t know what is! Back to where we started??
From this argument it seems that our intentions should be to objectify a practice which is predominantly subjective by redefining and re fashioning a methodology which will not take account of elements of society and culture it is meant to uncover. Why don’t we just give it(ethnographic study) another name – this would be simpler. We could on the other hand engage an ethnobot
)
Comment by lesley — November 2, 2009 @ 6:32 pm