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June 30, 2005
Is this *really* ethnography?
Posted by Renee Hopkins Callahan
A few days ago Grant McCracken blogged about our ethnography project, and used the occasion to register a complaint about our use of the term "ethnography" to describe what we are doing here. His issue is this: "There are lots of people claiming to do ethnography who are, um, 'self trained' " and "For all I know, the CPSI 'ethnographer' is smart and variously gifted enough to do a great job leading the research and creating the 'immersion.' But it is not clear to me that the term 'ethnography' is properly used here."
At first this post annoyed me, but then I got to thinking about it. Later in the comments to the post, Grant clarified himself, saying he'd rather have "someone with real intelligence and great powers of observation" than a trained ethnographer. Our fearless leader Maren Elwood does qualify on those counts.
But is what we're doing *truly* ethnography? Probably not. All we are doing this week is data gathering and sorting, and some initial analysis. The heavy lifting of analysis will be taking place in the months following the conference.
And no, we are not going to be able to call ourselves ethnographers after this week. This is a taste and a flavor of a subset of an ethnography-like process, at best.
But what we are doing is useful and has value. The people who run this conference are going to be presented a great deal of information and many insights about what its participants value and don't value in it, and what their actual experience of the conference is.
And if it's a choice between being politically and academically correct, and being insightful and useful, I'm going with the latter.
Comments (4)
| Category: CPSI -- 2005
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Renee Hopkins Callahan started IdeaFlow and serves as chief blog-wrangler. She is 
1. Paula Thornton on July 6, 2005 12:40 PM writes...
When idealism meets realism, the reality is that often a broad-ranged professional who includes ethnographic techniques in their bag of goods is a nice-to-have -- having a specialist is more of a never-to-be, except in highly-specialized, well-funded projects. This is clearly a mainstream type of activity that needs to be included in all projects that will invoke any level of 'change' on individuals.
While as practitioners we come from various backgrounds and often have different focuses and deliverables, many of our techniques overlap. Because of that, we try to honor those overlaps and find synergy in the common activities, of which, ethnographic research is one. See links to various disciplines at: http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/experiencedesign/
Paula Thornton
Permalink to CommentExperience Design Strategist
Arlington, TX
2. Renee Hopkins Callahan on July 6, 2005 4:40 PM writes...
Thanks for your comment! I got into a discussion about this very thing with a co-worker today, and while we both agree that last week's project wasn't truly ethnography, we would be at a loss to figure out something else to call it that would be meaningful to people. People know what "ethnographic techniques" are. They don't generally know what "contextual qualitative research" is (or whatever other generic name could be made up to use). It doesn't make much sense to shy away from using the only word that makes sense to people, in an effort to appease the academics.
:) renee
Permalink to Comment3. Etienne on July 7, 2005 3:45 AM writes...
Hey, forget about "ethnography" i've got a cool word for you you should look at. It's "ethnomethodology"... and i figure this is just what your work is about !
;-)
e.
Permalink to Comment4. John Frederick on July 10, 2005 2:53 PM writes...
Renee,
Just back from a week long vacation (process time)on the Jersey shore after CPSI. Glad you are feeling better.
I wanted to join in to say that, as an academic type - my goal was to get greater insight into ethonographic methodology and analysis. I got a glimpse of this but the point was made that we we mostly involved with the data collection (27+ gigs)! Our binning was a half step toward the analysis process but the real meaning making will take place in the next two months.
I hope that our team can be part of that process.
What I did take away from the immersion was just as important - a keen eye, heightened awareness. I found myself looking for artistic and artifacual images. I also was more alert and aware looking for patterns and interactions that might be part of the CPSI mystique and magic. I was intentionally looking at the CPSI system.
The immersion was also a fine example of team work and it was FUN.
Hugs and a smile,
John
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