Ethnographic Research - Science topic

Marjun Abear A notable study using ethnographic research design in teaching and learning is Paul Willis' "Learning to Labor" (1977). Willis observed working-class boys in a British school to explore how their social interactions and cultural attitudes shaped their educational experiences and future job prospects. This ethnography highlights how education can reinforce class inequalities, providing deep insights into the relationship between culture, learning, and social reproduction.

Well, Try Triangulation Methods, use multiple sources such as interviews, observations, and data documents and other forms of data to verify and confirm details. Using different research methods such as interviews, participant observation, and document analysis to gather information from different perspectives. Then Crosscheck, compare information from different people who may have experienced or observed the same event Consistent details across multiple accounts make oral traditions more reliable. Go with Comparative Analysis, examining oral history in relation to other historical records, official documents, or outside sources that can provide context or confirm details.

Etnografia, é olhar, ouvir, observar e anotar em detalhes. Se me exigem um método teórico, cito meu capítulo no Gate: "Método de pesquisa qualitativa na obra antropológica de Cãmara Cascudo"

grounded theory is an approach that is used in qualitative research such as ethnographies, and related studies. It enables expansion of ideas, using a suitable paradigm.

Ethnographic research are mostly qualitative data based from the open environment like village or geographical area where the non-sampled respondents are available.

If you have only qualitative data interpretation must be included in the Chapter: Results and Discussion.

If you have both Quantitative and Qualitative data for your research that you have to triangulate in order to ascertain the validity and reliability of the research.

The qualitative data will help to triangulate with the Quantitative data to measure the credibility of the research.

If you have only Qualitative data that you have to interpret based on your study objectives and to fulfill the hypothesis as well.

There will not be any confusion but those who are conducting the research in the Qualitative data will be an expert in the narrative part of the research.

Most of the western countries are highly rely on the Qualitative research study than Quantitative research study because of the machine manipulation according to the desired results.

You have to be strong enough while you are conducting the research on Qualitative aspects.

Over the past 20 plus years, there has been a shift toward interviewing rather than participant observation for qualitative research in general as well as for grounded theory studies. But it is important to realize that Glaser & Strauss developed grounded theory through participant observation.

Once you think about it, this makes a lot sense for several of the things that you do in GT, such as generating coding after each observation session, along with writing memos as your observations progress. Most of the examples you see currently apply open or initial coding to interviews, but this is just as reasonable for working with field notes.

Based on my own experience, I would recommend separating the writing of purely descriptive field notes from the more interpretive coding of them. Your word processor should give you several creative options for doing this. For example, with Microsoft Word you could enter the codes as "Comments" using its Mark-Up and Review feature.

I don’t think you will get an ethics committee to grant permission retrospectively. I would just use your notes to help direct the research. My colleague Timothy Milewa and I used participant observation in researching decision-making in the NICE committees. We obtained consent prior to fieldwork Google Timothy Milewa Christine Barry. Full text available online.

Yes, I include CITI training in an ethnographic methods course and have found it works well. I have done it with and without inviting a representative from Research Compliance (IRB office) to speak to the class. In both cases all students successfully completed the online training and received the certificate for the course titled Group 2: social and behavioral investigators and key personnel.

The Ethnography research is purely qualitative data to be collected from the non-sampled respondents.

The methodological changes are particularly useful for researchers can collect the qualitative data from the Focus Group Discussion and Key Informants Interview method.

Most of the Anthropology, Sociology and Agriculture researchers have followed thses FGD and KII approach.

The checklists are the data collection tools for qualitative data collection.

The respondents are aged, experienced and community respected ones are usually disclose the real facts about the study.

It is very important to note that the quantitative data will be usually triangulated with qualitative data to ascertain the validity of the research.

The quantitative data will measure the numerical values to compare the research results rather qualitative data will help to measure the subjective (of ideas, feeling, satisfaction etc) existing in the mind. Not produced by things outside the mind, not objective.

The questions are unstructured design according to the nature of the research study.

These qualitative research are

1.Flexible, Case Studies, Observation, FGD for data gathering and analysis.

Easy to handle the data collection process with community.

2.Non-probability sampling to take or dig some specific ideas and on sight without considering inferences of the sample.

3.Unstructured observational design, 4.Not preplanned

5.Not fixed

Every procedure can have subject to change during the progressing of research.

Hi dear Drasti.

Good question.

Ethnography is based on the premise that the Internet, in addition to being a research tool, can itself be a place for interviews. In such cases, the Internet can be studied as an environment or culture in which human beings create certain forms of communication, or sometimes specific identities. In both cases, ethnographic methods can be introduced to Internet research and the methods of communication and presentation on the Internet can be studied. To gain an understanding of participants' perceptions of themselves and the meaning they give to their online partnerships, they need to spend time with them watching what they do online and listening to what they have to say about what they do online.

Virtual ethnography is a technical environment instead of a natural one. Technology should not be taken for granted because its impact and use is strongly influenced by its representations and the beliefs that both users and non-users have about it.

Most rural areas in Namibia are covered by the mobile telephone service. In this case mobile phone can be used to collect data through interviews or surveys. The areas without network coverage, interviews can be done through churches or their constituency council offices.

Dear Angela (and colleagues),

I am enjoying this discussion and was also glad to have the chance to look a bit at your work (titles and abstracts) to get a feel for the kinds of paradoxes and frameworks that you are addressing. Allow me to add some comments here that might attract some interdisciplinary discussion and also help to focus some joint research questions. After that, probably we can continue this as a separate discussion between us.

My thought in looking at your work (paradoxes in management decisions in the area of sustainable development) is that your research question on paradoxes is set within the framework of managerial decision-making and planning, with paradoxes in values where you assume actors are starting with a free choice. Probably you are working with the types of concerns identified by Kenneth Arrow, the Nobel Prize winner in Economics who noted the paradox in planning given interactions between long and short-term economic valuations and decisions. That also seems a bit like the problem of measurement in physics, of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle (and Schroedinger's cat).

The paradoxes in social science for prediction that I mentioned (outcomes that short-circuit the assumptions in the models of behavior, like "rational choice" from "economics" and "political science") works from the other direction, observing the behaviors and trying to find the right model that has predictive value of the outcomes. This is important when the existing models that have a supposed "logic" do not fit because there is actually another logic at work (that would also offend religious and ideological assumptions in our society and in institutions, like those of "rational actors" and "progress" so that we are blinded to recognizing them).

Ultimately, both approaches can come together in larger models that combine prediction (assuming determinism) with policy (assuming free choice) in trying to find how much of each are at work. While I see the focus of some of your work, the focus of your outreach is still unclear as to which of these levels you are inviting colleagues to discuss, as well as on other concerns.

Your outreach could better define the specific questions and disciplines and problem areas you are focusing on now since it looks like you are attracting everything and appears that these basic frameworks are being lost in a goal of attracting people rather than focusing on real problems and solutions. For instance, anyone looking at the list of sources in your bibliography, above, will note that it is based on just "subject" areas and categorical words ("studying paradox", "towards a theory", "ethnography") without stating any actual problem you are trying to solve, why it is important to solve it at all, whether you have any solutions and if so how they work and for whom. These are the basic obligations of scientific and applied disciplines. Otherwise you are just in the realm of philosophy and theology.

I know from you work on line that you, personally, are focusing on "sustainability" (a real public problem) and helping decisionmakers to overcome paradoxes in their values. We share that concern as you can see from some of my work (for example on the problem of the "prisoners' dilemma" of national decision-makers trying to do sustainable development planning but being forced to "grow" and buy weapons instead, in order to protect their resources, which creates a paradox of unsustainability and global collapse). I also look at it from the other angle of the deterministic framework logics that undermine free choice (like the logic of cultural suicide).

As to "ethnography", the word today has simply been redefined. We live at a time of Orwellian "Newspeak" where academic disciplines and public discourse uses words meaning their opposites in order to promote (and hide) underlying agendas. In the current era of neo-liberalism and neo-colonialism, in which "identities" are promoted but the actual cultures and environments that traditionally defined identity (the globe's 6,000 languages and the eco-systems where they developed) are being destroyed as part of an effort to urbanize, industrialize, homogenize and "integrate" everyone uniformly into global corporate culture, the only remaining "identities" are those visible or chosen in a single mass society. In avoiding having to deal with the reality of destruction of cultures/languages/environments and ethnicity, co-opted academics have worked to redefine "ethnography" to mean its opposite, by redefining "ethnic" in terms of everything from corporate and organizational identity to hobbies and choices (e.g., "vegetarianism" or "fast food" or "sexuality" or "cults" that are not ethnicities or cultures). Anthropologists have also been part of the elimination of their subject of study (through cultural genocide) so to find work, they need to claim that they still have a "methodology" that they can sell to others. You have been misled in your use of the word "ethnography" and have been drawn into an ideological redefinition that has ethical implications that probably you would want to avoid. The neutral word you want to use, to avoid the implication of "ethnicities" is "participatory observation" or "organizational study".

We all need to go back to basics in social sciences today to overcome the ideologies and blurring that is undermining disciplines, scholarships and applications. Rather than "citing" "authorities" (which is what religions do), we need to just start with what is observable, measurable, and commonly verifiable, starting with the simple building blocks like I suggest above with "participatory observation" and "organizational study", in place of words that have distorted meanings and categories that do not have explicitly clear content.

If you do want to introduce anthropological/ethnographic concepts, then you can define your research into paradoxes by looking at the differences between the cultures in which the differences are made to see what "cultural strategies" the actors use that fit into the larger strategies for achieving sustainability in their environments. While cultural differences are disappearing globally, you can still find many if you are trained to look for them (and to see the holistic, deeper structures).

Best,

David

Following

Yes. Nothing prevents the ethnographic researcher to raise some questions and answer those from an “emic” perspective. The important point here is to maintain objectivity. S/he may try to cover up some unpleasant facts relating to her/his community. This is part of the ethnocentric tendency of the researcher. S/he may not report those out of fear of social boycott. If the researcher is bold enough, s/he may face a top situation when her/his research findings (unpleasant ones) are known to the community members. I am one of such victims. So, the researcher must deal the situation carefully. S/he should try to maintain objectivity all through her/his research. All unintended consequences are to be carefully examined by the researcher doing ethnographic research on her/his community.

Hi Hannah - how you and Preston doing during this horrible time? There‘s lots out there, so it will depend upon what your interests are. As a start, i’d recommend Joe Tobin, Sally Lubeck, Rebecca New/Robert LeVine (more focused on child development), Beth Swadener, and others in the Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education: http://www.receinternational.org Be we’ll! Mark

Revered Professor Paul M.W.Hackett,

I am happy to have known that you are writing a Book on Ethnography. I am teaching Ethnography Field Research for Rural Development more than a decade in the Department of Rural Development and Agricultural Extension, College of Agriculture, Wolaita Sodo University, Ethiopia, East Africa. I will be grateful to you Prof if I will have an opportunity to help you. I would like to know information from you Prof. I went along with my M.Sc. students to have Ethnography Field Survey on Australia funded Carbon Project near to my WSU university.

Regards

M.Senapathy

Glaser and Strauss' original work developing Grounded Theory was all based on ethnographic research, so that would a reasonable option. As a starting place, I would recommend Glaser and Strauss' (1967) along with their first substantive book, Awareness of Dying, which includes a brief methodological appendix.

Of the many subsequent books on GT, I would recommend the second edition of Strauss & Corbin (1998). I think the first edition was a bit narrow in its view of analysis, and the subsequent editions were written by Corbin after Strauss' death.

Are you thinking of a theoretical model or a model for performing the data collection?

Ethnographic materials are actively used in the fashion industry, especially in clothing design. This is a strong trend and it is associated with the problem of erosion of national identity in many regions of the world. I attach the presentation of my report at a conference in the Ethnographic Museum of Sofia (Bulgaria)

as Anthea's response suggests, the most crucial "innovations" may rest in actually applying what other anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists pioneered 50-90 years ago: participant observation, Participatory Action Research, working in teams, writing 3-4-5 reports, each from a different person's perspective, combining modes (auditory, visual, etc.)

Samitha - Yes, it is possible to incorporate narrative analysis to analyse data obtained from an ethnographic research. There is increasing recognition of the importance and usefulness of narrative analysis as an element of doing ethnography. Narrative is now seen as one of the fundamental ways in which humans organize their understanding of the world. Narrative inquiry is the process of gathering information for the purpose of research through storytelling. The researcher then writes a narrative of the experience. Ethnography provides a detailed exploration of group activity and may include literature about and/or by the group. It is an approach which employs multiple methodologies to arrive at a theoretically comprehensive understanding of a group or culture.

I am glad you find the chapters interesting!

George

Yes, ethnography is a systematic, comprehensive and topic oriented approach using observation and participation or particularly participant observation. I think the concept of ethnography as "thick description" as coined by Clifford Geertz is relevant here. Ethnographers can also study their own societies or communities, which might be more challenging than studying other foreign societies.

Marilyn Strathern "Cutting the Network" (article) and Partial Relations (book).

It depends. of course, what is meant by a framework and how restricting it is. What is your research design? What is your orienting problem/issue of interest? How are you going to adapt your approach based on what you know of the society/community you will study? If you are interested in the ways that your subjects make sense of their world and render it intelligible, how are you framing your inquiry to access the necessary knoweldge.facts/narratives to facilitate your account? If you are taking, however tentatively, a theoretical position, how will your framewortk enable you to interrogate that position, particularly "from the native's point of view"? If you are doing grounded theory (if so, why?) then how will you ensure that you engage a sufficient number of types and varieties of sources (people, but not exclusively) to create a rich "ground"? These issues would create an interpretive framework, for me, though not necessarily an analytical framework (which would need a little more abduction).

Hi,

Actually, there are opposing views in ethnography on this issue. Broadly speaking, If you prefered extended case method, you would start with a theory and go into the field, then go back to the theory to elaborate it. However, if you would prefer gorunded theory, you would enter the field without a specific theory and you would end up with a theory. For extended case method, I suggest you to look at Buroway and for grounded theory , as the previous answer mentioned, Glaser and Strauss.

I wish you all the best.

Might I add the using facebook will result in a biased sample, as facebook users are a very paricular group and 1) very different than other groups /non-facebook users and the rest of the population and 2) not representtive of all young Morocconas.

Also, there is a heavy amount of research, over many years, on code-switiching among English/Spanish biligual speakers in US. Language loss may depend a lot on other factors, such as extent of bilingualism/how well individulas know the languages involved, what is the first language, what is the language they hear and use at home, school or work, with friends, family, etc.

Perhaps code switching is "popular" on facebook; perhaps it leasd to such langalge loss for facebook users. Existing research that I refer to shows no such loss of either language among those who use code swithcing. One finding that i do remember (it's been some time) is that code swithcers are very comfortable within their daul cultures.

Who's is the gate keeper who will give you permission and will notify the parents? Plus I know you will need permission from parents a s children are under 18 as they need to be informed and give permission too.

Hope this helps.

Dear John,

Another recommendation:

Rosenthal, G. (2003) The Healing Effects of Storytelling:

On the Conditions of Curative Storytelling in the Context of Research and Counseling. Qualitative Inquiry, Vol 9, Issue 6, pp. 915 - 933. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1077800403254888

Best,

Ignacio

Hello Prof,

What an interesting question; these papers might be of interest:

Hookway, N. (2008). Entering the blogosphere': some strategies for using blogs in social research. Qualitative research, 8(1), 91-113.

Wilson, E., Kenny, A., & Dickson-Swift, V. (2015). Using blogs as a qualitative health research tool: a scoping review. International journal of qualitative methods, 14(5), 1609406915618049.

Kurtz, L. C., Trainer, S., Beresford, M., Wutich, A., & Brewis, A. (2017). Blogs as Elusive Ethnographic Texts: Methodological and Ethical Challenges in Qualitative Online Research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 16(1), 1609406917705796.

I haven't seen the full text of this:

Li, D., & Walejko, G. (2008). Splogs and abandoned blogs: The perils of sampling bloggers and their blogs. Information, Community and Society, 11(2), 279-296.

Very best wishes,

Mary

Dear Adrian:

I strongly recommend you the following books:

Mack, N. et al. (2005). Qualitative research methods: A data collector’s field guide. Research Triangle Park, North Carolina: Family Health International.

Ulin, P.; Robinson, E. & Tolley, E. (2006). Qualitative methods in public health: A field guide for applied research. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Good luck!!!

I think that is a good breakthrough for your research topic. I guarantee you will get the data in line with expectations, especially that the data can be accounted for validity and reliability through various triangulation strategies such as multi methods (how to get information and crosscheck). There is nothing wrong with your mind, just more quantitative choices in the academic world so sometimes we feel different when using a qualitative approach. Keep holding on to the qualitative methodology reference, that something does not exist until the end of the new research we know it exists or not. Thankyou

The Institute of Texan Cultures archives were moved to UTSA CARL. Those archive  files left at ITC were only the clipping files. The Witte Climate Controlled archives has original sketch drawings and prints from that time period. Texas Historical Commission pulled all Archaeology and Anthropology to the state archives from UTSA, TSU due to NAGPRA.

Tony Walker on Ethnography.com has written quite a bit on the ethnography of California prisons, and the racial dimension of conflict within the CA prison system...he can be contacted on academia.edu, and you can check out his posts on ethnography.com on his prison ethnography. Hope this is useful to you.

hi there is a publication on expulsion of African Asian during the regime of Idi Amin. you can check NewAfrican a pan african magazine I cant remember   the date it was written but am sure have read something on this issue there.

I'm not an archaeologist and so I can't offer much help with literature. However, I've been thinking along these same lines recently regarding Maasai homesteads, and I'm interested in collaborating (mostly likely through a motivated grad student) to put google earth imagery together with existing data (including lat and long) of homesteads.  Attached is a google earth imagine of one of about 200 Maasai homesteads that participated in our recent study of livestock management and antibiotic use.  Similar to what Jean Brown described in this thread, this image shows (1) the number of married women as the number of huts, (2) the number of married men indicated by the number of gates entering the homestead (nkang) -- each married man has his own entrance to the homestead, (3) cattle enclosure indicated by the corral in the center of the homestead (in this case about 47 meters diameter); and (4) sheep and goat enclosure as the smaller corral within the larger (about 19 meters diameter).  In an ideal model, each married man gets his own gate, his first wife builds her house to the right side of the gate, his second on the left, third on the right and so forth. You can even see the small horseshoe shaped enclosure to the right of the two main gates where men sit and discuss business. In this image there are two such men's areas indicating that two men (probably brothers) have relatively equal status in that they each have their own area to conduct business. Human population could be inferred through mean age-specific fertility for Maasai women and a count of houses. Cattle and small-stock herds can be inferred with a simple regression equation with diameter of corral regressed on known number of animals. There probably are other useful information in this image relevant for ethnoarchaeology and for estimating regional population densities of livestock. In general, I wonder how much the footprint of a house grows with number of children. I bet not that much. In the end, though, I don't think very much of a pastoralist homestead would make it into the archaeological record, so this approach might have limited use. I think it is possible that historical household archaeologists might have some relevant data: Groover, Mark D 2008 The Archaeology of North American Farmsteads. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. Thank you for raising this interesting question, and if you don't mind, please keep us posted.

The stigma is a robust theme to an ethnografic study. I recommend you to read Discipline and Punish of M. Faucault in order to reinforce your theorethical framework as well as the works of Basil Bernstein. A movie named SING STREET treats this theme with a great dignity. Good luck.

It is possible by using cluster analysis or applying some sort of cluster algorithm,

Below is a link to a chapter that would help you to understand how to proceed in your endeavour.

Robert Kull spent a year alone in the Patagonian wilderness and he was the subject of study on his own PhD. This is the article he published in Canadian Geographic:

Maybe you should contact Matthias Weinreich, author of We Are Here to Stay” – Pashtun Migrants in the Northern Areas of Pakistan’ (Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 2010). I've written a couple of book reviews on his work (see my Academia profile for the publications).  Perhaps he knows colleagues who've done kindred ethnographic migration research on and in India.

The time frame depends on a number of considerations, many of which have already been mentioned. The major concerns are what the ethnographic objectives are.  If only one, specific question needs to be answered, then the amount of time may be as little as a few days, but more complex "questionnaires" may require several weeks, even months.  The amount of time also depends on how familiar with the setting (Community) the ethnographer is.  Long-term, in-depth familiarity can reduce the time substantially.  I would consider also as a major variable, how experienced the ethnographer is.  An ethnographer very experienced can accomplish objectives much quicker than someone with fewer skills and experience.  

Gianmarco,

there are a variety of hypotheses on the use of such discs based on form and morphology. The easiest ones are those round to ovoid ones with centrally drilled holes which were used as spindle whorls, but there are also others with offset and/or multiple holes which seemingly wouldn't have worked on a weaving loom. Those disks are believed to have been bull roarers or similar implements.

Some of the early colonial Pueblo sites here in the US Southwest that I've been working on have produced an astounding variety of undrilled shaped discs, from roundish to ovoid to rectangular to triangular. The standard interpretation for those sherds is that they were used as gaming pieces, an interpretation which may well be accurate for most of them (e.g. Gaming in the Rio del Norte: Defining the Typology and Usage of Modified -Potsherds at Pot Creek Pueblo (LA 260, TA 1), @ http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1016&context=socanth_honproj). See also this short summary of Native American games: http://moa.wfu.edu/files/2012/04/Fun-and-Games-Teachers-Guide.pdf

More recently, however, especially the rounded variety in Greek/Roman contexts (pessoi) has been subject to more detailed forensic analysis, and it has turned out that they may have been the equivalent of toilet paper - see Philippe Charlier et al., Toilet hygiene in the classical era, British Medical Journal, 2012. This is a very interesting article, to say the least. I seem to remember a similar analysis was done on some prehistoric Puebloan ceramic discs, with similar results, but I need to search where I read that.

Hope this helps a bit .

Reza,

I did have a fill in the gaps approach yes and validations refreshed over time.I have some references supporting this and was wondering if there were more possibilities to add.

Hello Paul. I just joined research topic. Just conducted a research on netnography on tourism industry in my country. I designed with a colleage a model and wrote 3 articles.

One of them already publish and 2 in revison. I am interested hope we can get something now in 2016. 

Best

W. Camilo Sanchez Torres

While observation is central to ethnographic methods Mauss's work is a meta-analysis of ethnographic studies, carried out by other isolated authors studying particular cultural practices.  Ivo is right on this.  You might consider reading, although it's dated now, James P. Spradley on the Ethnographic Interview.  A critical distinction has been drawn by Bourdieu (see Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992) on how you define the field, which raises the related question of 'where' is the field.  If what you want to study is not place specific, it limits what can be observed in the setting.  Indeed the field might be located in a multiplicity of settings that would have to be observed from a variety of standpoints over extended periods.

The non-participant observer researcher is usually a 'stranger' - they do not normally belong to the scene. They have no recognisable normal role/ part to play, are purely observers and do not participate in the scene or events. They are likely to stand out or be obvious. Their presence may affect how those they are observing 'feel' about being observed and this could alter the way they behave and distort the data. Their task is to establish a non-threatening presence and blend in as unobtrusively as possible so their presence is accepted and largely ignored. In contrast, the participant observer researcher has a natural legitimate presence in the area. They participate in activities and are engaged in the setting. In the case of a nurse or other health professional, they are recognised as having a role in the area and belong to the scene. They may already have a relationship with those they are observing and can build on this. Their interactions and presence are part of the normal routine and they are accepted by the 'locals'. To this extent the participant observer becomes or is naturally embedded in the scene and their presence attracts little, if any, attention by those being observed. The value of participant observation is that the presence of the researcher is not expected to cause the people being observed to change their behavior and that the researcher can interact to probe and clarify understanding. Though traditionally associated with ethnography and cultural immersion, this form of observation can raise ethical questions if seen to be 'covert' research. Normally, the participant researcher does not conceal the research and in being open can come and go from the scene without distorting the data being collected. 

Hi, I just submitted my dissertation, though not in health care. I used focused ethnography to do educational research. The methodology lends itself very well to educational research.

Check out the link below, a study conducted by some colleagues of mine in which I was also involved. The first author is on Research Gate and may be of assistance.

Hello

Are these of any greater relevance; there is greater focus on moderators?

Dirksen, V., Huizing, A., & Smit, B. (2010). ‘Piling on layers of understanding’: The use of connective ethnography for the study of (online) work practices. new media & society.

Cool, J. (2012). The mutual co-construction of online and onground in cyborganic: Making an ethnography of networked social media speak to challenges of the posthuman. Human no more: Digital subjectivities, unhuman subjects, and the end of anthropology, 11-32.

Murthy, D. (2013). Ethnographic Research 2.0: The potentialities of emergent digital technologies for qualitative organizational research. Journal of Organizational Ethnography, 2(1), 23-36.

McLean, R., & Wainwright, D. W. (2009). Social networks, football fans, fantasy and reality: How corporate and media interests are invading our lifeworld. Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, 7(1), 54-71.

Again, best wishes

Mary

Hi Andrés,

to your first question:

Phillippe Crombé, Tree-fall features on final Palaeolithic and Mesolithic sites situated on sandy soils: how to deal with it. Helinium 33 (1), 1993, 50-66.

To your second question: Roger Langohr (1993, 38) regards deforestation as main reason for the increasingly frequent occurrence of windthrows in present-day forests:

"(l) the forest stands are now relatively small and so more sensitive to the impact of wind,...".

Roger Langohr, Types of tree windthrow, their impact on the environment and their importance for the understanding of archaeological data. Helinium 33 (1), 1993, 36-49.

Best wishes,

Stefan

Sander Gilman has written a lot on Jewish Sel-Hatred, but I"m sure you know that.

best wishes

Thank you Eric Frenkil, for appreciating and recommending my work! 

Chetanath Gautam-my article is available on this website. Hope it helps. A quick search shows that several scholars have published on international doctoral students' experiences, and there are self-reports from students as well, but it would be helpful if you could clarify what you are specifically looking for. 

Hola Jose,  if  you have a personal email, I can send you some papers (PDF) of some lists of Old World Hallucinogens by a late colleague, anthropologist, Weston LaBarre.  Dr, LaBarre is author of the Peyote Cult (the definitive book on the peyote religion, used by Native Americans to help set up new charter church groups across the USA).  He also authored the book, The Ghost Dance" which is about the origins of religion, and in that tomb, Dr. LaBarre discusses the theory that most religions began with primitive humankind accidentally consuming plants of an entheogenic nature allowing one to see things they had never seen before and considered the reactions as coming from a deity.  I also have three great short papers by Dr. LaBarre form the late 1970s which lists other cultures that used such plants as sacraments, etc.  

I can also provide you with a list of references to mushroom use in Africa from my CD-ROM, Teonanacatl: A Bibliography of Entheogenic Fungi.  which covers their history from 5,000 years bp through December 2012.  At that time I ran out of funds to update the data and my bibliography has more than 3,000 references, more than 10,000 cross-references all linked to author-date citations, over 2306 annotations, Over 360 references on Soma featuring mainly, Amanita muscaria, and more than 1680 screen sized photographs pertaining to every aspect of psilocybian and other entheogenic Fungi.  Also included in that CD-ROM are several articles and a complete listing of the Wasson/Archives linked form Harvard University.

Other papers include my colleague and co-author of 7 academic papers with me on entheogenic fungi, he published a paper on Old World Hallucinogens.  In my library I have close to over 90 % of every book, journal and magazine articles on psilocybian producing mushrooms as well as papers and books on many other drugs.  One of my mentors over the years was the late Dr. Richard Evans Schultes,  He is known as the Father of Ethnobotany.    Please send me an email and I can supply you with several well written papers on some of the plants of Africa and on shrooms as well.

Happy New year to you and your loved ones, From Seattle and in symbiosis of our interest in this subject matter.

Best Regards,

John W. Allen

Culture is best understood by a double reading. Ideally you should document two voices: the one of the social actor, the other of the researcher looking from outside. The tension between those two voices is essential for the hermeneutic process.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed - sent to you by Ivo, a great scholar too - is The book to read Before We Die. It strikes me that your question, highly relevant, is too rule bound. Ethnography, Statistical research and other methods can all be applied to emancipatory research.

Have a look at a chapter I wrote on poor Romanian beggars in Norway: on RG. My research background is in statistics, but I used ethnography in this particular study. The aim was, in the spirit of ethnography, to bring the voices of the beggars to the policymakers. These are the voices of human suffering that elusively hide behind the neat and tidy statistics in the bureaucrat´s comfortable office.

For all that, it would have helped me, and more importantly, the beggars, if I could find more statistics in order to support an emancipatory goal. How many Romanianns beggars find work? Do any of them die, and if so, from hypothermia during the Norwegian winter when they do not have a roof over their heads? There are many other questions, including: how many of them are officially poor based the EU poverty level scale (much better than the OECD scale, by the way)? 

Such data might jolt the social services and health care system into more action on behalf of this despraretly poor minority group. But, No, they are invisible, except when they are considered a nuisance and told by racists to move on or get a bus back to Romania.

Finally - and this is my main point- research methods, from whatever stable they might come from, can and are used for emancipatory purposes. In that context, for example, reliable statistical data on how best to tackle bullying in schools - a major field in my current and past research - can help schools to choose interventions that show a  real potential to emancipate the victims of bullying. Best wishes, Paul

If you mean Ladins, for example:

POTENTIAL FOR CONFLICTS IN AREAS OF ETHNO-LINGUISTIC MINORITIES OF THE EASTERN ALPS (pdf)

The Effects of Amenity Migration on Ethnic Minorities in the Alps Case Study: the Italian Alps (pdf)

CONTACT MODELS AND INTERGROUP RELATIONS IN AN ITALIAN AREA BORDERING ON AUSTRIA (pdf)

I hope that articles help you, good luck.

I can't give you info on this in Europe, but if you're interested in seeing some comparisons WITH Catholic movements in other places, I would recommend looking at millenarian movements in the New World, particularly that of the Jesuits in the Andes and in what is now the American Southwest, formerly Mexico. One figure worth studying is Father Kino, who established a series of Missions among the Pima Indians in Arizona in the late 17th and early 18th centuries and is alternately viewed as a Messiah or an imperialist, or both, by different scholars, Catholic and non-Catholic. have you looked at more modern movements such as Liberation Theology in 19602-702 Colombia, specifically the figure of Father Camilo Torres? I recommend reading his memoirs, which provide a sharp and brilliant ethnographic vision of poverty in rural Colombia in those years,

It may not be as specific as what you are looking for, but Karen Ho's (2009, Duke University Press) monograph Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street is very good.

Nelson,

I am not classically trained, but symbolism in western thought, Mircea Eliade especially is insightful.  The suggestions made by Ivo Carneiro de Sousa and your comment that the myth is "acted in rituals and [p]oltics" may need some dissection; such separation might reflect what its "function[al]" , as Estibaliz suggests, within the social reality of the northern Ugandan tribe and the associated myth that now finds some current political expression. 

For example a mid 19th Century forced migration of five indigenous nations or tribes in the US might be used in the current context of witnessing other contemporary indigenous migrations; such witnessing may lead to further recall or ritualization of a more ancient migration myth (originating from the same region) for the same peoples as a reinforcement of identity for survival, even if the current political conflict, in the US or back in the context of Uganda, is settled favorable or disfavorably for folks those involved in the US or in N. Uganda. 

Another example is the annual dances in Guatemala in which indigenous Maya dress up as Spanish courtesans and soldiers and perform a ritualized dance  recalling the attempts at conquest of their own peoples, despite the fact that they are still present and recalling the events from that time.

Leidner, Robin.  1991.  "Serving Hamburgers and Selling Insurance: Gender, Work, and Identity in Interactive Service Jobs."  Gender and Society 5:154-177.

Here's what's available in RG:

 Dear Bella Volen,

Please see this book:

Aborigines of Taiwan. Outline of ethnic history and traditional culture

Year: 1993

Author of scientific work: Chygrynskiy, Michael Fal'kovich

Academic Degree: Candidate of Historical Sciences

Place thesis defense: St. Petersburg

Code Special WAC: 07.00.07

Диссертации по гуманитарным наукам - http://cheloveknauka.com/aborigeny-tayvanya-ocherk-etnicheskoy-istorii-i-traditsionnoy-kultury#ixzz3h7VK7qEr

Best regards,

Nikola Benin

You've already received some great answers. And some strong technical answers too. So I'll answer more from my personal experience as a researcher. Participant Observation is a method of data collection: it can seem inherently messy, scrappy, tangential, arbitrary and unpredictable. Ethnography is the way in which we write it up. In other words, Ethnography is the systematic ordering and organic discovery of data gathered from Participant Observation into a layered and in-depth written account of the people/ topic being studied. When I got back from the field, my Participant Observation notes were a mess. I wondered how I would ever find my way through. Then, with the help of my top professors, and as an Ethnographer in training, I managed to use the power of language, description and anthropological theory as the means to make sense of the mess that eventually became chapters of my thesis.  

Keep in mind that ethnographic 'data' is meant to be read within a much larger context, as without a wide knowledge of the practices, values, material, history. environment of the specific "culture" you cannot grasp the meaning of what people say or do. Doing keyword searches and data mining often means you loose a lot of the context that is essential to interpret the ethnographic findings. Being well organized when reading and taking notes is definately is essential, but data-mining is not to be used to simply avoid doing lots of reading and taking notes. It'd only recommend it as a second step, once you already have an understanding of the ethnographic material. If the use of ethnographies is only an additional side track of a project, reconsider what it is you want to get out of the ethnographic data, and how that type of knowledge fits with and complements your other types. Knowing what you are looking for should help you take notes on only those things of interest to you. Good luck!

I'm with Ana on this one, but I am also a bit con-fuss-ed.  Qualitative methodologies do not need such a convoluted methodological approach. Why not review the primary data if it is available...I have refreshed my own data through a new analysis or new theoretical framework. But it is probably easier to enter into a discussion with other authors if its for a literature review. If you can justify what you are doing, just explain yourself and leave an audit trail. Qualitative methodologies are bricolage - patch work creativity.

@ Suresh, well said.

There is an online Indian Journal OMNISCIENCE which was targeted to publish articles relevant to the theme similar to this question, why not write a interesting for common man treatise on Bhagavad-gita is role on university education,

@ Usha, Assimilation of Value system of past into present has not been really transformed in the HOLEAN way? Is it an aftermath of a large adulteration of poverty and power with the perception of raising a great quality of life without marching input of work?

I do feel " basic cultural ethos of centuries old  yet evolving culture... does affect our today's value systems in higher education... but much in bad way" When I preached the.." values of our seers [that] are as relevant today as they were in ancient times.".. I had limited success, because there would be somebody teaching the opposite. Thus there is a need to make a concerted effort by all seniors involved in the education process.  I would wait to see how learned professor Vijay Pereira views it through his forthcoming book, and whether he provides any worthwhile "Ram Ban" to help the direction setting @Indian methodology/ system. 

Fredrik

You might want to look up the "Performance Space" section of Text and Performance Quarterly. These are generally excellent contributions by performers on how they develop plays, solo works, etc. Mercilee M. Jenkins, Tim Miller, Ragan Fox, Matthew Spangler, Paul Bonin-Rodriguez & Steve Bailey are just some of the people who have contributed. Generally they are part of a forum where the performers and theorists dialogue together. Really useful.

You might like to take a look at a book I'm reading at the moment: 'Confronting Suburbanization: Urban Decentralization in Postsocialist Central and Eastern Europe'. It is edited by Kiril Stanilov and Ludek Sykora (2014, John Wiley and Sons, Chichester) who have a broad and simple (but not simplistic) definition of the characteristics of suburbanization globally as well as regionally and contrast urbanisation and suburbanisation in socialist countries before the turn to capitalism. This might give you a new perspective on the breadth of literature in this field so, hopefully, you can align yourself with some whose approach you have sympathies with as well as making critiques.

Some essential readings:

Falzon, M.-A. 2009. ‘Multi-sited Ethnography: Theory, Praxis and Locality in Contemporary Research’, in M.-A. Falzon (ed.) Multi-sited Ethnography: Theory, Praxis and Locality in Contemporary Research. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 1-23.

Hage, G. 2005. ‘A not so multi-sited ethnography of a not so imagined community’, Anthropological Theory 5(4): 463-475.

Hannerz, U. 2003. ‘Being there... and there... and there!: Reflections on Multi-Site Ethnography’, Ethnography 4(2): 201-216.

Marcus, G.E. 1995. ‘Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography’, Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 95-117.

Marcus, G.E. 2005. ‘Multi-sited Ethnography: Five or Six Things I Know About It Now. Problems and Possibilities in Multi-sited Ethnography Workshop, 27-28 June 2005’. Sussex: University of Sussex. Retrieved 6 May 2015 from http://eprints.ncrm.ac.uk/64/

Nadai, E. and C. Maeder. 2005. ‘Fuzzy Fields. Multi-Sited Ethnography in Sociological Research’, Forum: Qualitative Social Research 6(3).

Robben, A.C.G.M. 2007. ‘Introduction to Part VII: Multi-Sited Fieldwork’, in A. C. G. M. Robben and J. A. Sluka (eds), Ethnographic Fieldwork. An Anthropological Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 331-336.

Weisskoppel, C. 2005. ‘Moving across: Looking at multi-sited-ethnography in theory and practice’, Zeitschrift Fur Ethnologie 130(1): 45-68.

My wife is an ophthalmologist and I was discussing your question with her. In turn, I forwarded her remarks onto you for your consideration. May I suggest that you follow this up by contacting a toxicologist?

You may be interested in an article from my own Phd research http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tpp/pap/2012/00000040/00000003/art00007

Hello Vimal

I have no expertise relating to researching children's needs, but in your quest for appropriate research methods, I wondered if it might help to read articles that offer comparison between the different options:

Goulding, C. (2005). Grounded theory, ethnography and phenomenology. European Journal of Marketing, 39(3/4), 294-308 - a ResearchGate member - downloadable from her publications page:

The paper below is also available from the publications section of a ResearchGate member, Professor Michael David Myers:

Myers, M. D., & Avison, D. (1997). Qualitative research in information systems. Management Information Systems Quarterly, 21, 241-242.

Fossey, E., Harvey, C., McDermott, F., & Davidson, L. (2002). Understanding and evaluating qualitative research. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 36, 717-732 - also available from ResearchGate:

Creswell, J. W. (2013). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage publications - below is chapter one:

Thorne, S. (2000). Data analysis in qualitative research. Evidence Based Nursing, 3(3), 68-70.

Merriam, S. B. (2002). Introduction to qualitative research. Qualitative research in practice: Examples for discussion and analysis, 1, 1-17.

Best wishes

Mary