QualRes Article Review & Summary

Title
Author(s)
Source
(full citation)
Reviewed by
Date
Presented

Summary

Ethnography and Ethnographic Representation

Barbara Tedlock
In NK Denzin and YS Lincoln (eds), Strategies of Qualitative Inquiry,
2nd ed., Sage, 2003, 165-213.
Nik Dholakia
Sep. 25, 2014

Summarize the key content. Extract the main themes of this piece in
terms of content, methods, theories, etc. Enumerate or present in the
form of bullets. Make it easy to understand and comprehend.

Ethnography (E) lies midway between autobiography (a highly interior account) and
cultural analysis (detached, exterior account).

E is a product AND a process. E is a Method, a Theoretical Orientation, and a

Philosophical Paradigm.

E is (sort of) continuation of fieldwork on paper, and in an academic office

People doing E work have to make moral choices

Ethnographers often cross geographic boundaries, also cross semantic boundaries (to
understand other cultures, settings)

Application domains of E have increased enormously (incl. of course Biz fields)

Early ethnography (British, mid-19th c.) relied on asking detailed questions of/about
natives

This approach got dropped in favor of in-depth fieldwork and writing detailed
accounts

[American] Malinowski formalized the fieldwork methods

Idea [was, still is] to be a marginal native, seek rapport not friendship maintain a
balance between intimacy and distance

Going native, going troppo (tropical) was not acceptable it destroyed the
objective scientific nature of E. Some, of course, pretended to go native but were
double agents they came back to their office and completely abandoned native
ways (some never revisited the field site). Others went native to a great degree
(dress, religion, language, body shape, even mindset, etc.) but still were able to write
good detached accounts.
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After WW-2, the idea of E as apprentice came about observe and learn

E could now be Up (study those of more elite status), Down (those of lower status),
or Cross (similar status)

Rest of the paper is on E genres. These have taken many varied forms: encyclopedia
or catalog-like, life histories and various types of biographies, many literary fictionlike forms, and the more recent critical/postcolonial/feminist forms.

From 1920s, life histories became a popular E style. Approach was synecdoche
(trope): the individual whose life (his)story was portrayed stood for the whole
tribe/class.

Memoirs then became popular personal, subjective lens of the authorethnographer. Sometimes, since these were too personal, scholars wrote under
pseudonyms, and only revealed their identity later in life (when they became
established and famous),

Narrative E: Blended life history (of person observed) and memoir (self reflection).
Focus was on interactions of Self/Other: psychodynamically rich but blurred
boundary (self vs Other being studied).

Major shift started happening as there was realization of the implicit Eurocentric
presumed white superiority of most existing E accounts. E critical theory methods
emerged. No longer attempting to be detached/objective. Explicitly reflexive and
political in style.

Many literary genres also flourished: Tedlock gives many examples here. E novel:
culturally rich and accurate, but fictional account. SciFi style E. Also E novellas,
plays, poetry.

Travelogues (more descriptive) and diaries (more reflexive) styles also came into
existence, including even photomontage style.

After his death, Malinowskis diary was published. He was regarded as the father of
the participant observation method, but the posthumous diary showed that he was
prejudiced and imperialistic in his orientation towards those he studied.

Some E scholars tried undercover, covert methods: pretending to be and getting

admitted as psychiatric patient, to study a psychiatric facility. These methods have
been discredited, mostly, for being unethical.

There is some discussion on From Participant Observation to Observation of

Participation the newer style tried to present both objective and subjective
accounts, either in the same narrative, or 2 side-by-side books. Not an easy and not
always very successful style.

Emergence of autoethnography (auto-E) and feminist E. As scholars who were

women and from non-Western background emerged, they could provide insider
perspectives. Martin Yang went back to his own childhood Chinese village and
studied it. There are problems, though: Did the villagers see Yang is insider (one of
them) or (now, with his western education) as a partial outsider?
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Men vs. Women scholars styles are very different. Men strive for coherent,
authoritative narrative style. Early women E scholars were pseudomale in their
styles. Now, women have their own style fragmentary, disjoined, multivocal,
explicit about role (work/life) conflicts.

Some examples of husband-wife ethnographic teams, and the gender roles in such
teams, are provided.

New feminist styles are now becoming a lot more accepted and these E accounts
looks very different from male E accounts.

Critique

Indicate what you liked or did not like about this piece, and why. Also
discuss what the author(s) could have done to improve this piece.
Enumerate or present in the form of bullets.

Well written but densely packed the chapter could easily be a whole (short) book.

Tedlock has a strong intro to the paper, good details on E styles and genres, but is not
able to provide good closure or conclusion perhaps this is my male bias, and she is
just writing in a feminist style?

Extensions
and
Applications

Indicate what further or related work can be done in this area. Enumerate
or present in the form of bullets. Think of applications in business,
consumer, organizational, communications, and other fields. Think about
further publishing opportunities in this area of research.

More review work on urban types of ethnographies could be done.

The genre approach she used could be employed to review E approaches in Biz
fields.

In Biz fields, the older (19th c., early 20th c.) styles-genres are not relevant since E
methods entered only in the last 20-40 years. So, what has been the trajectory of E
genres/styles in applied fields such as ours? What are the future prospects?

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