Class Notes

Qualitative Research

12/3/2013

If a published article does not have an effect on the lives of those you’re studying, it probably isn’t worth doing.

The self is the individual in action; the self became necessary when social science moved away from methodological individualism. What we observe of people is a choice of presentation/performance. We cannot judge or assume that any presentation is the actual self. The cultural encoding of a presentation are largely visible, and it can be manipulated. Postmodernism suggests that the self is always incomplete which leads to desire and resistance. Every expression denies any other expression.

Social theory theorizes relationships, which are a fundamental unit of social life and thus an object of study. Both individuals within a relationship have rights and obligations. Action can be seen as a semiotic system. Performance is within lines of action, and it is characterized by significance, intention of the performer/performance, competence, modality, instrumentality, and effectiveness. We observe performances, and our field notes should begin to translate what the performances are (composed of individual actions).

Relational forms can take several shapes. Intimate relationships are one on one; small numbers of people with other small numbers are cross-membership relationships, and hierarchical relationships refer to the organizational structures that relate single individuals to multiple individuals. Groups include memberships, coalitions, and cliques (the latter two exist within memberships). Within a membership, there will be relational complexity. These are understood at both local and cultural levels.

It is our challenge to figure out the cultural elements in a relationship, identifying them as different from the local elements of the relationship. We need to identify the cultural obligations within relationships, and we can do this by viewing multiple instances of relationships within a culture. Every relationship has subject positions, obligations, and cultural elements.  Action can be semiotic, epistemic, aesthetic (how is it done well?), and social; we should look for the intentionality of the relationship (what do the members of the relationship intend for the relationship to be?). The terms of obligation can be ethical, economic, political, and social. We have to be able to recognize incompetence, and intentionality doesn’t make up for it.

When we analyze at the local level, we can focus on local agents (who have attached others), local practices, and local requirements of status and performance (negotiations). At the local level, we can observe performed relationships, individuals with identity, subjectivity, agency (prevents cultural performance from becoming static, freedom), and agentry (being the agent of/for something larger than yourself, being the cause of a performance or behavior), and acting agents, which are local enactors with relational others. The acting agents performs through implication, complicity (not the same as culpability), invocation, and evocation.

Enactment is the actualized local routines of the relationship. It entails performance, strategies and tactics, competence, modality, instrumentality, and effectiveness. The routine is the sign of what is being done, enactment is the actualized routine, and performance is the attempt to accomplish the routine. Local relationships also have negotiated criteria of the relationship, grace, grants, power and control, expectations, violations and repairs, structurations (the process by which we put into place resources and competencies to make something to happen; we then rehearse and maintain the structure) and sedimentations (repeated structures create sedimentations), shared experiential and communicative history. While we see two people interacting, we interpret subject positions, lines of action, cultural components, and relationships.

When doing ethnography, there are multiple levels of engagement. The lowest of which is the interview. Methodologically, participation and observation are complementary. One cannot do both at the same time. It can range from interview to significant embeddedness. The more familiar something is to you, the harder it is to observe it. Participation must also be consequential for yourself and the group, otherwise it is not significant. Observation moves through three major phrases, starting with perceptual immersion and careful attention, going through interspersing the significance for the members of what was seen/heard, and finally creating the extended record of what happened. We should use member check throughout, not necessarily for agreement, but for getting descriptions from group members.

For actually doing an ethnography, you need to identify the scene and participants. This is followed by evaluation of research potential, hanging around, gaining access, learning the ropes, strategizing participation, and producing observation.  There are significant ethical issues in ethnography. These include claims of translation and representation, constitution and creation, reflexivity and disguised self-interest, the inherent exploitation, issues of informed consent, risk to self, unintended consequences, and real harm.

We must ask ourselves what constitutes good work. How do we know that we have done good work? How is it demonstrated? What disciplines our self-interest? What is the balance between observation and participation as well as ingenuity and systematicity? How do we manage the intentionality of experience, narrative, the critical impulse, and rhetorical force? What is the role of the other? What are the markers of trustworthiness? What is the value of the work?