The Ethnographic Choice: Why Ethnographers Do Ethnography
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-1-2011
Keywords
reflexivity, ethnographic methods, accountability, calling, phenomenology, lived experience, subjectivity
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708611401335
Abstract
How do we reconcile the complex and subjective dimensions of ethnographic research as they pertain to ethnographers themselves? What is to be made of the compelling draw the ethnographic process tends to have on its researchers? This article uses hermeneutic phenomenology to examine how ethnographers’ lifeworlds make possible the doing of ethnographic research. I draw on moments from past research to argue for an inexorable link between lifeworlds and ethnography, which results in ethnographers being definitively, yet uniquely and contingently, “chosen” to live as ethnographers. This multilayered snapshot of ethnographic subjectivity seeks to embolden the reflective space necessary for promoting a fuller sense of accountability by ethnographers, a fuller understanding and awareness of the complexities inherent to ours and others’ ethnographic stories.
Was this content written or created while at USF?
No
Citation / Publisher Attribution
Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, v. 11, issue 2, p. 165-177
Scholar Commons Citation
Berry, Keith, "The Ethnographic Choice: Why Ethnographers Do Ethnography" (2011). Communication Faculty Publications. 614.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/spe_facpub/614
