Resources for Ethnographic Methodology
Gobo, G., (2008). Doing ethnography. Sage Publications Ltd. 376 pp.
Doing Ethnography systematically describes the various phases of an ethnographic inquiry, provides numerous examples, and offers suggestions and advice for the novice ethnographer.
Ethnography seeks to understand, describe, and explain the symbolic world lying beneath the social action of groups, organizations, and communities. This book clearly sets out the coordinates and foundations of this increasingly popular methodology. Giampietro Gobo discusses all the major issues, including the research design, access to the field, data collection, organization and analysis, and communication of the results.
Regular exercises, list of key terms and points, and self-evaluation checklists make this an invaluable resource for all students covering ethnographic methodologies on research methods courses.
Link: https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/doing-ethnography/book228437
Ellis, Brian and Birch, Joanna. (2006) Revisiting the role of values and attitudes in geographic education : the use of ethnographic methodology and materials. Geography, Volume 91 (Part 3). pp. 262-271. ISSN 0016-7487
Abstract:
This article is a contribution to the current debate about the nature and content of geography teaching It challenges the notion that the study of attitudes and values in geographical education imposes values upon the learners. it shows bow ethnograpbic methodology developed from the existing geographical concept of the behavioural environment, which emphasised the importance of studying attitudes and values. it demonstrates a more nuanced approach to e understanding of people-environment relations using an ethnograpbic case study of management issues in a wetland environment at Lake Kerkini in Greece. By using direct evidence from the people involved, ethnographic studies allow students to access information about and consider the significance of attitudes and values in different cultural environments.
Link: http://www.geography.org.uk/Journals/Journals.asp?articleID=288
Katz, J., (2004). On the Rhetoric and Politics of Ethnographic Methodology. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 595 (1), 280-308.
Abstract:
In a variety of ways, all ethnographies are politically cast and policy relevant. Each of three recurrent political rhetorics is related to a unique set of fieldwork practices. Ethnographies that report holistically on journeys to “the other side” build policy/political significance by contesting popular stereotypes. Theoretical ethnographies draw on political imagination to fill in for a lack of variation in participant observation data and to model an area of social life without attempting to rule out alternative explanations. Comparative analytic studies build political relevance by revealing social forces that are hidden by local cultures. Each of these three genres of ethnographic methodology faces unique challenges in relating fieldwork data to politically significant explanations. By shaping the ethnographer’s relations to subjects and readers, each methodology also structures a distinctive class identity for the researchers—as worker, as aristocrat, or as bourgeois professional.
Link: http://ann.sagepub.com/content/595/1/280.abstract
Dietz, G., (2013). A doubly reflexive ethnographic methodology for the study of religious diversity in education. British Journal of Religious Education,35(1), 20-35.
Abstract:
The fruitful and intensive political, academic, and pedagogical debate on religious education in contexts of diversity seems, to suffer from an ostensible imbalance. On one hand, models, proposals, and programmes destined to face the ‘challenges’ and ‘problems’ generated by religious diversity in the classroom proliferate. On the other, in many countries and school systems there is a scarcity of empirical studies about intercultural and interreligious processes and relations as they occur in the school and extra-school educational spheres. This striking gap between the normative-prescriptive and the descriptive-empirical area is a feature of educational systems, which we are trying to close with comparative projects such as the REDCo project (Religion in Education: A Contribution to Dialogue or a Factor of Conflict Transforming Societies of European Countries, a European FP6 STRP project). In order for the distinctively anthropological attitude not to be limited to a criticism of the often essentialising and reifying conceptual and ideological uses of the concepts of ‘religion’, ‘culture’ and/or ‘identity’ in this domain, I hold that ethnography can contribute to overcoming this gap by empirically analysing the interwoven and often dialectic relationship between the discourses of the pedagogical-intellectual sphere and daily educational praxis. In the following pages, summarising experience gained particularly in the Spanish REDCo project contribution, I analyse, from a methodological point of view, ethnography’s possible contribution to the study of interreligious relations in school contexts. In order to do this, I present and discuss the elements required to develop a conceptual-methodological model that can integrate ‘syntactic’, ‘semantic’, and ‘pragmatic’ dimensions that will articulate this dialectic relationship between ethnic discourses and cultural practices.
Link: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01416200.2011.614752
Popoviciu, L., Haywood, C., Mac an Ghaill, M., (2006). The promise of post-structuralist methodology: ethnographic representation of education and masculinity. Ethnography & Education, 1(3), 393-412.
Abstract:
The past decade has witnessed a remarkable explosion of knowledges across the academy, media and political discourse, generating a wide range of representations of men and masculinity. In this paper, we interrogate the failure for an accompanying understanding of the epistemological and methodological implications of the research process in this area of inquiry. More specifically, the paper is located within a particular arena: the schooling of masculinities. The first section critically explores how the ethnographic study, The making of men used identity politics as a methodological theme. The second section continues to draw upon this study by highlighting the emerging methodological tensions between identity politics and a politics of cultural difference. Finally, the third section builds upon this reflexive account, drawing upon our more recent work; it further explores the promise of post-structuralist methodology in relation to emerging paradigms for masculinity research.
Link: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17457820600836871
Crowhurst, M., (2016). Using a Critically Aesthetic Auto-Ethnographic Reflective Methodology to Reflect on a Queerly Identifying Preservice Teacher's Wish to Change Her Allocated Professional Placement Site. Teaching and Learning, 29(1), 16-29.
Abstract
I have taught within preservice teacher education programs for almost ten years at various universities in Victoria. Recently, a queerly identifying preservice teacher indicated that she did not want to undertake professional placement at a religious school because she felt it would be too stressful on account of her queerness. Preservice teachers are generally given no choice about where they do placement. In this paper, I will focus on this critical incident and use a method of analysis inspired by auto-ethnography, Freirean thematic techniques, and Greene’s writings on aesthetics to ground a reflective practitioner methodology.
Link: http://journal.und.edu/tljournal/article/view/874