Design Ethnography:
Strategies for fieldwork
Jack Whalen
16 April 2015
Never a simple matter of inscribing the world, fieldnotes
do more than record observations. In a fundamental
sense, they constitute a way of life through the very
writing choices that the ethnographer makes and the
stories that she tells; for through her writing, she conveys
her understandings and insights for future readers
unacquainted with these lives, people, and events. In
writing a fieldnote, then, the ethnographer does not
simply put happenings into words. Rather such writing is
an interpretive process: It is the very first act of
textualizing. Indeed, this often ‘invisible’ work – writing
ethnographic fieldnotes – is the primordial textualization
that creates a world on the page and, ultimately, shapes
the final ethnographic, published text.
(Emerson, Fretz and Shaw, 2011)
Strategies for entering the field
• Reconnaissance and approaching the
setting/organisation
• Entering into relationships
– Sponsors, champions and gatekeepers
– Tradeoffs in relationship management
• Presenting yourself and your study
• Preparing for negotiation (with the host
and/or sponsor)
• Negotiation in the context of reciprocity
• Where does one start and when?
Strategies for getting organised
• Mapping the setting/organisation
• Selective sampling
– Organising time
– Deciding on specific research location(s)
– Sampling/selecting people and events
• The task and the resources to do it
• Where does one start and when?
Strategies for watching
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First impressions
Grounds for watching
Presenting properties/what to attend
What constitutes your ‘data’?
Representativeness, perspective/angle of
observation,
• Analytic framework (set of interrelated concepts)
• Watching as active presence – but with different
modes of presence
Reminders
• Ethnographic immersion precludes conducting
field research as a detached, passive observer
• The field researcher can only get close to the
lives of those studied by actively participating
in their everyday affairs
• Such participation inevitably entails some
degree of resocialisation
More reminders
• Relationships with those being studied often follow
political fault lines in the setting, exposing the
ethnographer selectively to differing priorities and
points of view…
• which means the task is not to determine ‘the truth’
but rather reveal multiple truths apparent in others’
lives
• Instead of viewing ‘reactivity’ (the consequential
presence of the ethnographer) as a defect to be
carefully controlled or eliminated, the ethnographer
needs to become sensitive to, and perceptive about,
how she is seen and treated by others
Complexities of description: selectivity
• No one ‘natural’ or ‘correct’ way to write about
what you observe
• Writing fieldnotes is not a matter of passively
copying down ‘facts’ about ‘what happened’
• Rather, these descriptive accounts select and
emphasise different features and actions whilst
ignoring and marginalising others
Complexities of description:
what’s ‘significant’, what’s missed
• And so descriptions in fieldnotes differ both in
what ethnographers write down as ‘significant’ as
well as in what they may note but ignore as ‘not
significant’ – and in things they may have missed
all together
• Moreover, differences in how researchers
participate in the ‘same’ event will lead to
different modes of involvement, which will lead
to subtle but perhaps significant differences in
how they write about what occurred
Complexities of description:
inscription and presentation
• The ethnographer inscribes social life and discourse – she
writes it down – turning it from a passing event into an
account, which exists in its inscriptions and can be consulted
• As inscriptions, fieldnotes are products of – and reflect
conventions for – transforming witnessed events, persons and
places into words on paper…
• which necessarily involves – as previously noted – a process
of selection, and a presentation or framing of events in
particular ways
• These presentations incorporate sensitivities, meanings and
understandings the researcher has garnered from having
been close to and participated in the described events
Thick description*
• Descriptive accounts (inscriptions) that make
instructably observable the work of a setting
and its accountable organisation for the
members who do it
• These accounts rely on the development of a
members’ competence in a setting’s work
• Accordingly, analysis is not something that
happens after fieldwork, but runs through it!
*’Thick description’ is a notion we will continue to discuss and reflect upon
So far… (a summary)
• What is observed and treated as ‘data’ and ‘findings’ is
inseparable from the observational process
– It is thus critical that the ethnographer document her own activities,
circumstances and emotional responses, as these factors shape the
process of observing and recording others’ lives
• In writing fieldnotes, the field researcher should give special
attention to the indigenous meanings and concerns of the
people studied
– Again, we seek to get close to to those studied in order to understand
and write about what their experiences and activities mean to them
• Contemporaneously written fieldnotes are an essential resource
for writing broader, more coherent accounts of other peoples’
lives and concerns
• Such fieldnotes must try to detail (‘exactly what’) the social and
interactional processes (‘precisely how’) that make up people’s
lives and everyday activities
Different approaches to writing fieldnotes
• Participating-to-write approach
– Some fieldworkers place fieldnotes at the core
of the ethnographic project
• The essence of field research is the process of
accumulating a corpus of detailed fieldnotes that
provide the foundation and inspiration for
subsequent writings and analyses
• Experiential approach
– Others believe putting too much effort into
writing fieldnotes interferes with the
experience of fieldwork
Writing fieldnotes in actual practice…
• Most fieldworkers employ both experiential and participatingto-write approaches – sometimes participating without much
thought about writing up what is happening, other times
focusing closely on events in order to write about them
– Directing your mind to remember things at a later point (who was
there, where were they seated, who said what to whom, the
physical character of the place)
– Many fieldworkers act as scribes, moving around, notepad in
hand, visibly recording bits of talk and action as they occur
– Jottings translate to-be-remembered observations into writing, as
quickly rendered scribbles about actions and dialogue
– They use these words, written at the moment or soon afterwards,
to jog the memory later in the day so they can recall and
reconstruct significant scenes and events in detail
Participating in order to write: guidelines
• Take careful note your initial impressions
• You can also focus on your personal sense of what is significant or
unexpected in order to document key events or incidents in a
particular social world or setting
– But using personal reactions effectively requires care and reflection –
you have to pay close attention to how others in the setting are reacting
to these events, and how your own reactions and sensitivities differ from
theirs
• Accordingly, in order to document key events and incidents, you need
to move beyond your personal reflections to attend explicitly to what
those in the setting experience as ‘significant’ or ‘important’
• You can begin to capture new settings by writing notes as
systematically as possible, focusing on how routine actions in the
setting are organised and take place
• Your orientation to writable events will change with time in the field
Jottings
• A brief written record (usually quite brief, but can
sometimes be more extensive) of events and
impressions captured in key words and phrases
• Typically translate to-be-remembered observations
into writing on paper as quickly rendered scribbles
about action and dialogue
• Useful for jogging memory later in the day when you
attempt to recall the details of significant actions or to
construct evocative descriptions of the scene
• More extensive jottings may record an on-going
dialogue or set of responses to questions or – if time
and opportunity permits – a relatively detailed
description of a specific event or person or place
What to jot (and not)
• Details of what you sense are key components of
observed scenes, events or interactions
• Sensory details about observed scenes and interactions
• Detailed aspects of scenes, talk, and interaction – short
or more extended direct quotes are particularly useful
here
• The details of emotional expressions and experiences
• General impressions and feelings, even if unsure of
their significance
• But: In all this, avoid characterising scenes or what
people do through generalisations or summaries