Lecture 8 ARM Flashcards
Interpreting and Writing Ethnography (15 cards)
Ethnographic vignette
An episode, or a series of events, an ethnographic story of a series of actions that conveys a larger point
Highly constructed by the ethnographer
Reiterating a certain argument over an over again
Zooming in and out of details
Structured
Climax to the story
Key words
Lund’s 2014 matrix
Check notes! - Observations-Patterns - concepts - theories
Memo
Narrative you write immediately after each observation
Writing ethnography = CREATING ethnography
- You are constructing and crafting a story from your data - think about what story you want to tell! But, in the end, you want it to appear natural, real - establishes credibility - i was really there. traces from naturalism. Creates authroity
Unraveling and rewealing
“The social world does not present itself as a series of separate analytic themes, designed to answer our questions. We have to disentangle its multiple strands in order to make analytic sense of them, before we reintegrate them into an ethnographic account” H and A, p. 200
Write your gut story
Based on your observations - what do you really think is going on here?
Knowing and not-knowing your data
Knowing your data - you have an idea of what is going on
Not knowing your data - coming in with fresh eyes - trying out theories and concepts etc
Move between poles all the time
Stay flexible
The process is like someone who is simultaneously creating and solving a puzzle or like a carpenter alternately changing the shape of a door and then the shape of the door frame to obtain a better fit
Not all data are equal
What are the really important data, according to you?
Focus your attention on where your data is thick, strong or dense
Look at your data on its own terms!
Organizing your story
- Analytical theme throuhg choices of textual organisation
- Emic vs etic categories
- Chronologies and trajectories
- Ideal type vs actual type
Writing as a construction
H and A-“writing is closely related to analysis. when we write our ethnography, we are reconstructing social phenomena through the ways we choose to write about them. there are many versions of them that could be constructed.”p 198
Textual reflexivity
“That ethnographers reconstruct social phenomena through their textual strategies” - p. 199
Redwoods metaphor
Stories often grow in groves of trees, with some stunted by the shadows of others- stories tend to point beyond what we can immediately see.
What to include and not
1.Writing as decision making
2. Killing your darlings
Needed for
- word count
- conciseness and clarity
- making an argument
Building on a scene
1-Different ways of telling a story - style, perspective, media
2 - events vs context - what is all the info a reader needs for understanding your argument?
3. foregrounding and background - exaggerate certain elements, whilst let others fade away
