Ethnographies

This is a hard one to blog. I find myself reading to try to understand what ethnographic research is; usually I have thoughts flowing and that’s what I blog. No thoughts were flowing. I kept re-reading to make sense of the denseness of the wording and sheer time it took to undertake an ethnographic study. I’m not understanding if there is actually a difference between this and a case study…??? Page 45 (LA) distinguishes the two in their subtitle, but the reading does not make a distinction. Is it that the ethnography only examines whole environments and case studies whole environments as well as whole groups and individuals?

Page 46 (LA)…this was something I was wondering about…what do you do when you collect too much information? How do you know when to say when in terms of stopping the observations for a case study? And considering the pitfalls, mostly with human perception and judgment, how do we know a case study is even accurate? Are they reliable sources to refer to as a citation? How do we know if we are looking at a biased case study that was written with for observer’s agenda and is an accurate account of what was observed? The fact that the advantages are barely half a page and the disadvantages cover two-and-a-half pages I guess answers that question. The authors actually make a point of discouraging researchers from doing a case study with that it uses more journal space.

I was wondering about replication…in other words, if I was researching a specific topic and found case studies to use as references, how many would I have to read in order to determine how reliable the outcome was?

KS does a better job of giving the facts and allowing the reader to determine both sides—positive and negative. They talk about (156) what a good ethnography looks like, gaining access, and the amount of work involved, but they steer pretty clear of trying to sway the reader. They talk about (167) making sure to pick up on what appears to be mundane, day-to-day grind detail, but this is the very detail that may provide details to the relationships and patterns the researcher is trying to find. This is actually a great read with a step-by-step breakdown that LA did not provide.