Emotional Labor in Critical Ethnographic Work

2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krista McQueeney ◽  
Kristen M. Lavelle
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Labor ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Analytic Tool ◽  
Critical Methodology ◽  
Research Narrative

In this article, the concept of emotional labor is used to capture dilemmas of critical ethnographic research. We frame our experiences not simply as “confessional tales,” or personalized accounts of how researchers experience their fieldwork, but as part of critical methodology itself. We identify three strategies for transforming our emotional labor into an analytic tool: contextualizing emotions, using emotions to unmask power in the research process, and linking emotions to personal biographies. Following ethnographers who question the separation between data and analysis, we explore how emotions and power intersected in two key ethnographic “moments”: collecting data and writing the research narrative.

scholarly journals Ethnographic research with young people: methods and rapport

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 66-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Tickle
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Participatory Methods ◽  
Traditional Methods ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Youth Research ◽  
Rapport Building ◽  
The Impact

Purpose This paper accounts for, and reflects upon, the research design and the methodological approach adopted in ethnographic research with young people. In particular, the purpose of this paper is to reinforce the significance of conducting qualitative participatory and innovative methods with young people, alongside the value of rapport building. Design/methodology/approach Qualitative participatory methods are understood as the most appropriate way to empower and respect young people in the research process. Alongside such methods the ethnographic nature of the research is discussed in conveying the importance of rapport building with young people in the field. In doing so the paper examines a number of important considerations when conducting youth research. Findings The triangulation of qualitative methods was fundamental in exploring and understanding young people’s lives in each locality and allowed for deep and meaningful explorations of specific themes. The additional and complementary methods employed alongside traditional methods were particularly suited to understanding young people’s everyday lives, as complex experiences are not always conveyed through traditional methods alone. Conducting participatory methods produced narratives around safety, security and governance in public places. Originality/value Being reflexive and adapting to a research setting in order to enhance the process of building and maintaining trust with young people is the most important facet when conducting youth research. Giving careful consideration to the impact of a researcher’s presence in the field needs to be carefully navigated.

scholarly journals Moments of identity: dynamics of artist, persona, and audience in electronic music

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanni Formilan ◽  
David Stark
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Electronic Music ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Complete Control ◽  
Analytic Tool ◽  
People’S Daily ◽  
Daily Interactions ◽  
The Creation ◽  
People's Daily

AbstractIn our account of artistic identities among electronic music artists, we point to the notion of persona as a key element in a triadic framework for studying the dynamics of identity. Building on pragmatist theory, we further draw on Pizzorno’s concept of mask and Luhmann’s notion of second-order observation to highlight the dual properties of persona: whether like a mask that is put on or like a probe that is put out, persona is a part that stands apart. Persona is an object that alter can recognize and by which ego can be recognized; but what is recognized defies the person’s complete control. We thus conceptualize identity as a multi-sided relationship that involves person, persona, and others. Building on our ethnographic research among electronic music artists in Berlin and New York, we characterize this relationship in terms of attachment between artist and persona, between artist and audience, and between persona and audience. These attachments are variable and independent from one another. The resulting model is an analytic tool to examine identity as the ongoing outcome of the three-way dynamics of such shifting attachments. We are attentive to persona because the creation and curation of online profiles have become a pervasive element in many people’s daily interactions in both social and work situations.

scholarly journals Making Place in the Media City

2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 559-577 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maja Klausen
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Research Setting ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Media ◽  
Urban Exploration ◽  
Late Modern ◽  
Share Information

The article discusses practices of placemaking through empirical fieldwork undertaken in the subculture of urban exploration in Copenhagen. The making and experience of place is discussed, firstly, in relation to methodology and academic representation and secondly, in relation to urban space and media. The article begins by suggesting that the ethnographic research process should be grasped as the making of an ’ethnographic place’ (Pink 2010), which invites readers/audiences to imagine themselves into the places represented. Based on findings from the fieldwork, the article moves on to the methodologies associated with the examination of urban exploration and its academic representation. The article points to a ’multi-sited’ (Marcus 1995) and mobile ethnography (Lee & Ingold 2006) that acknowledges the ethnographer as ’emplaced’ (Howes 2005) in the research setting. Finally, urban exploration and the placemaking practices involved are positioned in a wider theoretical framework focusing on social media and urban space. The urban explorers use different social media platforms to share information and pictures, which is said to accelerate ’a mediatised sense of place’ (Jansson & Falkheimer 2006). Urban exploration is seen as a practice tied to the late modern ’media city’ (Fornäs 2006; McQuire 2010), where spatial experience is transformed due to the increased convergence of mobile and pervasive media with urban space.

scholarly journals The Memory Places and Color: The Methods and Practices of Color Use in Ethnographic Research

2018 ◽  
pp. 189-202
Author(s):  
Hasan Işıklı
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Data Collection ◽  
Physical Environment ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
City Branding ◽  
The Social ◽  
Strongly Connected ◽  
The Individual

Nowadays art festivals engage more to organize their events in unusual places. Either for the sake of city branding or a pure cultural memory action, a performance might be set in a forgotten memory place. The place which is distinguished sharply by a comfortable concert hall becomes one of the actors of the event and the participant questions a past that s/he hasn’t been strongly connected. Thus, the individual is not only aroused by the performance itself and the information in the booklets but also physical environment has an affect. This article aims to tackle the contribution of color as an instrument of data collection in qualitative research. By using color tablets inspired by the colorist Kobayashi the colors are tested firstly as a visual to learn how they make sense in Izmir during International Izmir Festival. Secondly, they are questioned how the participants embed colors’ senses to the memory places where they attended to the concerts. The research process indicates that the experience of a concert might not be visually powerful enough to associate memory places with the colors. However, the technique of color tablets becomes prompting object which support the dialogue construction between the fieldworker and informant. Thus, as an instrument for evocation and conversation color tablets become interactive objects for remembering of the festival experience and it mediates the social roles of the informants and the fieldworker.

"Good Enough" Methods for Ethnographic Research

2000 ◽  
Vol 70 (4) ◽  
pp. 499-524 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Research Methods ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Crisis Of Representation ◽  
Made In

In this article, Wendy Luttrell reflects on key decisions she made in her own research in order to illuminate reflexivity for other ethnographic researchers. Luttrell addresses the crisis of representation in ethnography, advocating that researchers name the tensions, contradictions, and power imbalances that they encounter in their work, rather than attempting to eliminate them. The author reexamines her own study of working-class American women's life stories to make the case for what she terms "good enough" research methods. Through her own self-reflective lens, Luttrell describes several key realizations she made throughout the research process, and traces seven decisions she made as a result.

A Queer Cyborg Ethnographer in the Performative Friction of Dissenting Ontologies

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (6) ◽  
pp. 639-649
Author(s):  
Päivi Jokinen ◽  
Susan Nordstrom
Keyword(s):  
Research Process ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Research Writing ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Final Layer

The reader of this article is invited to join an encounter of methodological experimenting, productive tensions and a way of writing that seeks to challenge conventional human- and language-centered scholarly discourses. This article speculates with the possibility of two dissenting ontologies co-existing simultaneously and making each other visible. Troubling moments of the ontologies rubbing together are elaborated as friction and demonstrated in “queer reiterations” presented throughout the article. The moments of friction orient and reorient the research process. The article draws on Barad’s agential realist onto-epistemology in an interdisciplinary ethnographic research project embedded in psychometric capturing of data. The first part of the article scrutinizes theoretical frictions. The second part, “empirical frictions” takes the reader through encounters with so-called fieldwork and data. The final layer of research writing, “productive frictions” has been inspired by Haraway’s cyborg manifesto to foreground the emergence of the Queer Cyborg Ethnographer.

The seven deadly sins and ethnography

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Caio Coelho ◽  
Carlos Eduardo de Lima
Keyword(s):  
Research Process ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Seven Deadly Sins ◽  
Organization And Management ◽  
Single Piece ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Organizational Ethnography ◽  
Ethnographic Data

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to conduct a general review of the ethnographic method. It uses metaphors to read several pieces of ethnographic research and discuss the different issues encountered during the research process. The review consisted of new articles but also important books that helped to construct and maintain the field of organizational ethnography.Design/methodology/approachThe paper aims to discuss the ethnography research process through the metaphor of the Christian Seven Sins. It proposes a reflection on planning and conducting ethnographic research. The seven sins are used as a metaphor that can lead to more reflexive research for educational and explanatory purposes. Ultimately, the authors encourage organizational scholars to conduct ethnographic research.FindingsThe metaphors of the Christian seven sins represent issues that may arise during an ethnographic research. Gluttony is the dive in all topics that may appear; Greed is to lose yourself in the amount of data; Lust is to get too much involved in the field; Wrath is to take the struggles of the subjects as your own; Envy is to judge other's research according to your paradigm; Sloth is to not collect enough ethnographic data and Pride is forgetting to have a critical perspective toward your data. The redemption of these “sins” brings reflexivity to ethnographic research.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper opts to treat ethnography as a methodology that can be utilized with different epistemological and ontological approaches which could diminish the degree of reflection. No metaphor would be able to explain all the details of an ethnographic research project, still the seven sins provided a wide range of ideas to be reflected upon when using the methodology.Practical implicationsAs a paper on ethnography, researchers and especially PhD students and early careers can get to know the issues that can arise during ethnographic research and put them in contact with good examples of ethnography in Organization and Management Studies.Originality/valueThis paper groups different complexities and discussions around ethnographic research that may entail research reflexivity. These ideas were scattered through various ethnographic publications. With the review their highlights can be read in a single piece. With these discussions, the paper aims to encourage researchers to conduct good quality ethnography.

The Role of Researcher in Participatory Inquiry: Modeling Intra-Active Reflexivity in Conversational Reflections

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meagan Call-Cummings ◽  
Barbara Dennis ◽  
Sylvia Martinez
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Qualitative Inquiry ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Ethical Considerations ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Participatory Inquiry ◽  
Specific Project

This article presents intimate conversations among three colleagues around ethical considerations of ethnographic inter-racial qualitative inquiry. It draws on an ethnographic research project conducted at a high school in rural Idaho, USA. Focusing on the question, “Why are our teachers racist?” the collective worked together to challenge subtle inequity at this particular school. The authors come together in a dialogue to reflect on the role of the researcher within this specific project, but end up illustrating reflexivity, an often hidden aspect of the research process, opening an entangled, unresolved, and yet meaningful set of interpellations around practical methodological concepts.

Methodological Impression Management in Ethnographic Research

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (6) ◽  
pp. 807-833 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda M. Gengler ◽  
Matthew B. Ezzell
Keyword(s):  
Substance Abuse ◽  
Substance Abuse Treatment ◽  
Impression Management ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Substance Abuse Treatment Program ◽  
Women's Shelter ◽  
Complex Settings ◽  
Abuse Treatment

In this article, we contend that turning a sharp dramaturgical lens on the dynamics of fieldwork clarifies a number of longstanding ethical challenges in ethnography—challenges that have shifted and deepened in the new technological landscape in which ethnographers work. We encourage fieldworkers to adopt an intentional approach to what we call methodological impression management to navigate the research process more strategically. Drawing on our experiences conducting fieldwork in settings where some of our research participants had power over others (a women’s shelter and a substance abuse treatment program), we delineate the strategies we found useful for successful methodological impression management in complex settings and point to the dramaturgical underpinnings of their effectiveness. By bringing dramaturgical theory into direct conversation with the literature on ethnographic methods, we hope to illuminate a path through which ethnographers might make more deliberative methodological decisions and thoughtfully balance ethical responsibilities to their participants with their commitment to analytic rigor.

These Families, Those Families: The Impact of Researcher Identities on the Research Act

1996 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 292-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beth Harry
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
African American ◽  
Children With Disabilities ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Qualitative Researcher ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
The Impact

This article discusses the various, sometimes competing, self-identities of the qualitative researcher and the impact of these identities on decision making in the research process. The author proposes that while culture provides the backdrop to identity, various aspects of the microcultures to which a researcher belongs may result in varying “personas” that influence decision making about the research process. The author illustrates these points with examples from her ethnographic research with African-American/Latino, low- to middle-income families of children with disabilities.

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