Passing Bandwagons: Theoretical Fads, Fabulous Insights, and the Illusory Stability of Ethnographic Concepts

• In Event: Stabilizing Change in Ethnography Inquiry

Abstract

This paper considers the instability and flux of those conceptual mainstays that seem to anchor ethnographic study as well as the popularity of alternative conceptualizations. I consider such questions as: How have our claims to ethnographic authenticity changed the nature of our ethnographies? How can we account for the emerging importance of ethnographic reflexivity? Have such recently popular theoretical perspectives as poststructuralism, postmodernism, and post-empiricism changed what we do and who we are as communication ethnographers or have these been passing fads? The idea that the popularity of particular academic concepts and perspectives ebbs and wanes is not new but what I want to consider here is what the illusory stability of key concepts like authenticity or realist representations means for ethnographic study in communication: do we have traditions worth maintaining or not? Does the instability of key concepts in the ethnographic tradition offer a basis for recovering and revising its key concepts or is that tradition passé and deservedly dead and gone along with its unreflective allegiances (imperialism, racism, misogyny, capitalism, elitism, and so on)?

Author

• Patricia Sotirin, Michigan Technological Univ