Scholarship, Politics, and Dialogical Anthropology

The dialogue of cultures . . . characterizes our age and . . . is incarnated by ethnology, at once the child of colonialism and the proof of its death throes: a dialogue in which no one has the last word, in which neither voice is reduced to the status of a simple object. -Tzvetan Todorov There is a great dialogical potential in social and cultural anthropology. I say potential, but the dialogue has been there all along in the very doing of anthropology, or at least the part of the doing that takes place in the field. Anthropology is in fact founded upon the very possibility of dialogues that might reach back and forth across rifts of linguistic, cultural, and social difference. But once the field is left behind and books are published, dialogue has a way of disappearing beneath forms of writing that keep anthropological voices and native voices segregated in separate volumes. In ethnographic monographs we mostly hear the voice of an omniscient narrator, declaring, in the third-person plural, what the natives think and do. If we want to hear a native voice for longer than the time it takes to utter what anthropologists call a "native term," we have to go to a separate book, a volume of "native texts," in which only the natives speak and the anthropologist all but disappears, as if no one had been there asking for texts, recording them, and responding to them. Considering these two kinds of books together creates a dialogue of sorts, but with a very long wait for the change from the anthropological to the native voice. And even then, after all that third-person anthropological narrative, we hear mostly third-person native narrative. In both cases the voices of individuals are subordinated to the voices of traditions

The interview as narrative ethnography : seeking and shaping connections in qualitative research.

Acts of counter-subjectification in qualitative research are always present but are often submerged in accounts that seek to locate the power of subjectification entirely with the researcher. This is particularly so when talking to people about sensitive issues. Based on an interview-based study of infertility and reproductive disruption among British Pakistanis in Northeast England, we explore how we, as researchers, sought and were drawn into various kinds of connections with the study participants; connections that were actively and performatively constructed through time. The three of us that conducted interviews are all female academics with Ph.Ds in anthropology, but thereafter our backgrounds, life stories and experiences diverge in ways that intersected with those of our informants in complex and shifting ways. We describe how these processes shaped the production of narrative accounts and consider some of the associated analytical and ethical implications

When does the action start and finish? Making the case for an ethnographic action research in educational research

This paper explores how ethnographic and action research methodologies can be justifiably combined to create a new methodological approach in educational research. It draws on existing examples in both educational research and development studies that have discussed the use of ethnography and action research in specific projects. Interpretations of ethnography and action research are developed that aim to minimise the epistemological differences between them. The paper also contextualises an ‘ethnographic action research’ approach with reference to an example of the author’s research into participation in three ‘reception’ (first year of schooling) classes in the United Kingdom. It is argued that research into the theme of participation in early years education, using participative methods, was particularly suitable for this new methodological approach

'Working out’ identity: distance runners and the management of disrupted identity

This article contributes fresh perspectives to the empirical literature on the sociology of the body, and of leisure and identity, by analysing the impact of long-term injury on the identities of two amateur but serious middle/long-distance runners. Employing a symbolic interactionist framework,and utilising data derived from a collaborative autoethnographic project, it explores the role of ‘identity work’ in providing continuity of identity during the liminality of long-term injury and rehabilitation, which poses a fundamental challenge to athletic identity. Specifically, the analysis applies Snow and Anderson’s (1995) and Perinbanayagam’s (2000) theoretical conceptualisations in order to examine the various forms of identity work undertaken by the injured participants, along the dimensions of materialistic, associative and vocabularic identifications. Such identity work was found to be crucial in sustaining a credible sporting identity in the face of disruption to the running self, and in generating momentum towards the goal of restitution to full running fitness and reengagement with a cherished form of leisure. KEYWORDS: identity work, symbolic interactionism, distance running, disrupted identit

Tied to the worldly work of writing: parent as ethnographer

Parent narratives have contributed to ethnographic accounts of the lives of autistic children (Kelly, 2005) but there are fewer examples of parents producing their own autoethnographies. This paper explores the affordances of an online blog for enabling a parent of an autistic child to produce a written record of practice which may be considered 'autoethnographic'. Richardson’s (2005) framework for ethnography as Creative Analytic Process is applied to extracts from a blog post in order to consider its contribution; reflexivity; aesthetic merit; and impact. The paper addresses the methodological and ethical implications of reconceptualising parents as researchers and the potential contribution of new writing platforms to the development of auto/ethnography. Key words: Autism, Auto/ethnography, Blog, Disability, Mothe

Disruption, control and coping: responses of and to the person with dementia in hospital

This qualitative study aimed to gain insight into the experience of hospitalisation from the perspectives of the older person with dementia, their family care-giver and other patients sharing the ward (co-patients). Non-participant observation of care on 11 acute hospital wards was supplemented by 39 semi-structured interviews with 35 family care-givers and four co-patients following discharge. Constant comparative analysis produced the core problem facing all those involved: disruption from normal routine meaning that the experience of hospitalisation was disrupted by the presence and behaviour of the person with dementia. Disruption adversely affected the person with dementia, triggering constructive, disengaged, distressed and neutral behaviours. Using Kitwood's model of person-centred care, these behaviours were interpreted as attempts by the person with dementia at gaining a sense of control over the unfamiliar environment and experience. Family care-givers' lives and experiences both inside and outside the hospital were disrupted by the hospitalisation. They too attempted to gain a sense of control over the experience and to give a sense of control to the patient, co-patients and staff. Co-patients experienced disruption from sharing space with the person with dementia and were left feeling vulnerable and sometimes afraid. They too attempted to gain a sense of control over their situation and give some control by helping the person with dementia, the family care-giver and the staff

Winking at Facebook: capturing digitally-mediated classroom learning

In this article I present an innovative combination of methods, used in a study of the use of Facebook as an educational resource by five dyslexic students at a Sixth Form College in north-west England. Through a project in which teacher-researcher and student-participants co-constructed a Facebook group page about the students’ scaffolded research into dyslexia, the study examined the educational affordances of a digitally-mediated social network. Combining multiple data-collection methods including participant-observation, semi-structured interviews, video recordings, dynamic screen capture (Cox, 2007), protocol analysis (Ericsson & Simon, 1993) helped to capture in detail multiple perspectives on the learning that happened in the classroom over the five weeks of the research project's lifetime. Aggregating the resulting data in turn enabled meticulous, comprehensive analysis and rigorous theorising. The article presents and analyses excerpts from the data which help to illustrate the insights gained into one participant's learning trajectory. I argue that the combination of methods employed could be used with any range of research participants in other studies exploring learning through Facebook and other Web 2.0 spaces. The article concludes by suggesting further refinements to the methods used