Dissertation Distress? (Re: Ethnography? )

Kelley Walker kelley at interpactinc.com
Wed Apr 18 02:26:10 PDT 2001


Yoshie plunged into a shallow sea of platitudes, and with the powerful breast stroke of a channel swimmer, made her confident way towards the white cliffs of Obstinée Folie"


> ethnography which involves "observation of culture in situ" for a
> prolonged period of time

you should stick to jane eyre or something. you are wrong. i have taught a couple of courses on methods, qualitative methods in particular. i am an ethnographer. i think i know what i'm talking about. the way to distinguish between marketing research and social science is to be found in an understanding of the difference between method and methodology. in the future, please refrain from this sort of rubbish. you are a intelligent woman who need not stoop to this sort of thing.

"ethnography usually refers to forms of social research having a substantial number of the following features:

* a strong emphasis on exploring the nature of particular social phenomena, rather than setting out to test hypotheses about them

* a tendency to work primarily with "unstructured" data, that is, data that have not been coded at the point of data collection in terms of a closed set of analysis categories

* investigation of a small number of cases, perhaps just one case.

* analysis of data that involves explicit interpretation of the meanings and functions of human actions, the product of which mainly takes the form of verbal descriptions and explanations with quantification and statistical analysis playing a subordinate role."

--Norman K. Denizin and Yvonna S. Lincoln _Strategies of Qualitative Inquiry_ p 110-111

kelley

p.s. quote thanks to a paraphrase of W. Somerset Maugham



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