Doing
organizational
ethnography
unapologetically
Dvora Yanow
Wageningen University
BAM Research Methodology Special Interest Group 4th Annual
“SHARING OUR STRUGGLES” workshop: On Conducting Ethnographic Research
4.12.12
1. stop being apologetic!!!
London: Routledge, 2003, 1-39; pp. 2, 9
2. but: are there aspects
of ethnography in
anthropological history
and usage that we might
be inheriting, to our ill?
[Salemink 2003: 2]
[Salemink 2003: 21]
[Salemink 2003: 22]
shades of organizationl
culture!!! [see Kunda 1992]
3. other harms?
a. Georges Condominas:
…anthropologist Georges Condominas (1973,
4) found, to his horror, that the United States
Department of Commerce, without his
authorization and hence in direct violation of
international copyright law, had translated
Condominas’s book on Vietnam from French
to English and distributed copies to Green
Beret soldiers fighting in Vietnam.
Condominas learned of this from one of his
study participants whom US Special Forces
had tracked down and tortured. [Fujii 2012:
717]
Condominas, Georges. 1973. “Distinguished Lecture 1972: Ethics and
Comfort: An Ethnographer’s View of His Profession.” In Annual Report:
American Anthropological Association. [Lee Ann Fujii, ‘Research Ethics
101: Dilemmas and Responsibilities’, PS: Political Science & Politics 45:4
(October 2012): 717-23; see also Salemink 2003: 4]
b. Gerald Cannon Hickey:
[Salemink 2003: 4]
c. Oscar Salemink:
[Salemink 2003: 4-5]
4. what is particular about
organizational
ethnography?
Putting some questions on
the table…
• marked ethnography:
political ethnography
medical anthropology
• combine 3 types of evidence:
 what people do [acts; interactions]
 “participant listening” [Forsey]
 material artifacts [ANT; science
studies; space/place…]
• mixed methods?
always!
but not mixed methodologies!!
- realist ontology X constructivist
- objectivist epistemology X subjectivist
• studying ‘our own kind’, in terms of:
educational background?
class background?
race-ethnic background?
etc.
• Venn diagram of dual roles:
observing << >> participating/listening
‘scientist’ US
‘local’
stranger << >> familiar
[epistemological purchase]
• but do we want/need to pass?
[cf. Harry Collins, ‘interactional expertise’, w/ physicists]
Collins, H.M. and Evans, R.J. (2002) The third wave of science studies: Studies
of expertise and experience. Social Studies of Sciences 32/2: 235–96.
• Or is this [‘passing’] but one form
of ethnography? >> taxonomy of
OE.
I need/want fluency;
but I don’t [want to] lose my
accent, else I lose completely the
strangerness that provokes puzzles
>> abductive logic of reasoning
which underpins ethnographic
inquiry.
[see Schwartz-Shea and Yanow 2012, Interpretive research design:
Concepts and processes, Routledge.]