>At 01:06 PM 4/16/01 -0400, Doug Henwood wrote:
>>Kelley Walker wrote:
>>
>>>DOUG! it isn't supposed to be and he doesn't claim it to be.
>>>please don't criticize people on ethnographical methods if you
>>>don't understand how it works and only know statoid econodrone
>>>methods or something.
>>
>>So, Wolfe chooses a sample of people who are more affluent, more
>>white, more married than the U.S. pop - and 100% suburban - and
>>then interviews them using questions he doesn't publish and
>>selectively reports answers from transcripts he doesn't publish
>>either, and this is supposed to tell us something about how
>>"America" thinks. It's crap, I say. It tells us more about the
>>author than anything else.
>>
>>A lot of "ethnography" seems like journalism with pretentions to scholarship.
>
>well, it's what i do and i'll bet that if you read what i do you
>wouldn't castigate it as such be/c you'd agree with my politics.
>
>it is flat out wrong to chide an ethnographer for not using a
>statistically representative sample.
If Alan Wolfe says that what he is doing is to report on typical views held by affluent white married people who live in American suburbs, i.e., a minority of Americans, no one here will object to his claim, but his claim concerns what most Americans think, as his book title advertises.
Yoshie