Bob asked us to reply to the following
If you or anyone has any comments about
1]The distinctions between qualitative research and ethnography
2]The nature of ethnography
3]List organization
please do respond.
I thought I'd sort of take the first:
The distinctions between qualitative research and ethnography
I was at a conference recently where, over a beer in the bar afterwards,
someone said that qualitative research was any research where the
researcher had no clear idea of her/his philosophical position, no clear
research methodology, loose ideas (at best) about what she/he was setting
out to study, no anticipations what the findings of the research would be
beforehand and little idea about what they had been afterwards. The same
person said there were no distinctions between ethnography and qual.met
except that ethnography was what qualitative researchers called their
research sometimes.
The fella (it was a fella) didn't share the view of the ethnography list
owners and members, which I of course presented to him, that ethnography is
a specific research approach which may use quantitive methods but primarily
uses qualitative ones. He didn't accept this because he said he'd seen many
a methods book and methods course that put ethnography under a general
course/book title and contents description of qualitative methods. That is,
he said qualitative researchers and ethnographers put e under qmet as a
specific example of a q.met and he quoted a long list of book editors like
Denzin and Lincoln (1994/1998 2nd ed.) Creswell, John. (1997) and Sherman
and Webb (1988).
Cheers: D
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