Ethnography as a Logic of Inquiry

• In Event: Ethnography as Epistemology: An International Dialogue on Challenges Facing Ethnographers Studying Knowledge Construction Across Disciplines, Time Scales, Actors, Institutions, and Countries

Abstract

Over the past four decades, questions of what counts as ethnography has been an ongoing question. In this paper, I propose a series of principles of operation drawing on four central arguments across the past three decades: principles of operation in ethnography (Heath, 1982); distinctions between doing ethnography, adopting an ethnographic perspective, and ethnographic methods (Green & Bloome, 1997); ethnography as epistemology, not method (Agar, 2006); and ethnography as a philosophy of inquiry (Anderson-Levitt, 2006). Building on ethnographic studies across national borders, levels of organizations, policy contexts, and school settings, I make visible a principles of operation that guides the decisions that ethnographers make to select an ethnographic project, to develop theoretical perspectives to guide their work, and to construct orienting questions to uncover an emic, or insider, perspective.

To illustrate these principles, I draw on examples from a two-year ethnographic study in an intergenerational Studio Art Class. Through this analysis, I demonstrate how multiple angles of analysis (time scale, actors, events) were central to identifying differences in performance on a culminating activity, and how contrastive analysis was critical to uncovering how student take up of opportunities for learning were related to points of entry in the class (in a given year) and generation of student (first, second, third or fourth year) (Green, Skukauskaite & Baker, in press).

The principles of operation identified include: Ethnography as a non-linear system, leaving aside ethnocentrism, identifying boundaries of events, and building connections among bits of life. For each principle, I will describe the conceptual issues guiding decisions, and demonstrate the actions taken as I engaged with colleagues in an analysis of this complex, overtime, multi-faceted ethnographic archive that includes video records, fieldnotes, interviews, transcripts, student work, and other artifacts collected daily in this high school class (1 semester for each of two years). To illustrate the issues and decisions involved in this ethnographic analysis, I trace the performance of two students from their presentations of their work in a Public Critique Session (November) backward in time to the first day of school. Through this process, I demonstrate how the discourse of the class as well as the chain of activity undertaken by these students provided a basis for warranting claims about student agency, opportunities for learning and teacher knowledge of students’ development as artists.

In presenting this telling case of an ethnographic logic of inquiry (Mitchell, 1984), I present two types of analyses: 1) findings from the contrastive analysis of students across the first three months of the school year that provide understandings of factors that supported and constrained the performance of two first year students, and 2) illustrative examples of how the principles of operation guided the decisions for constructing a data set from, and analysis of, a multi-year, longitudinal ethnographic archive. This paper will be circulated in advance to participants in this working session as a basis for the epistemological discussions across studies undertaken in different national contexts and for the identification of principles of operation central to those studies.

Author

• Judith L. Green, University of California - Santa Barbara