Etnografía sin remordimientos

Professor Wolcott looks back over his studies in anthropology and education to answer the question, “Where do our studies go and what do they do there?”. In this writing he is particularly concerned with regrets –things that he wishes he had done differently or that did not turn out as he hoped and planned–. His advice to future ethnographers is to keep “regrets” in mind as a personal responsibility in deciding how much to reveal about the people with whom one works. He reminds us that we can always add information later, but it is not possible to retract errors of judgment we may make at the time

Designing a social VR clinic for medical consultations

Social Virtual Reality (VR) invites multiple users to "interact" in a shared immersive environment, which creates new opportunities for remote communication, and can potentially be a new tool for remote medical consultations. Using knee osteoarthritis consultation as a use case, this paper presents a social VR clinic that allows patients to consult a nurse represented as a virtual avatar with head, upper body and hands visible. We started with an ethnographic study at a hospital with three medical professionals and observed three patient consultation sessions to map the patient treatment journey (PTJ) and distill design requirements for social VR consultation. Based on the results of the study, we designed and implemented a social VR clinic to meet the identified requirements. Our work expands on the potential of social VR to help reshape patient treatment by reducing the workload of medical staff and the travel time of patients. In the future, we plan to conduct user studies to compare face-to-face (F2F) with social VR consultations

Trivial and normative? Online fieldwork within YouTube’s beauty community

In this article, I discuss methodological understandings around qualitative research and online ethnographic practice to bring forward a reflexive account on the particularities of doing fieldwork on YouTube. I draw from a multiyear ethnographic examination of YouTube’s beauty community that sought to understand online popularity framed by local norms and practices and shed light into the local significance of knowledge, expertise, and self-development. I argue for an epistemological perspective that acknowledges the diversity of viable, conceivable fieldwork experiences while distancing from prescriptive modes of argumentation. I propose seeing fieldwork in and through its richness and predicaments, persistently naturalistic while interpretive. I approach online popularity, fandom, and even YouTube itself from a perspective that tolerates ambivalence, contradictions, and embraces the complexity of social worlds and human interaction

Transforming qualitative data : description, analysis, and interpretation

433 p.; 22 cm

Writing up Qualitative Research

New York93 p.; 21 cm

Wolcott, Harry F., Posturing in Qualitative Inquiry, pp. 3-52 in Margaret D. LeCompte, Wendy L. Millroy, and Judith Preissle, eds., The Handbook of Qualitative Research in Education. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 1992.*

Reviews types of qualitative inquiry and the several strategies employed in it, sketches the branches in the tree of qualitative inquiry, and distinguishes among the many varieties of end products (table 1)

Writing up qualitative research... better

The article contains the conference given by professor Harry Wolcott in May 2003 in Medellín for the presentation of the second edition in Spanish of his book Writing Up Qualitative Research. He asks why is always the second chapter of a written report the ¿Revision of Literature¿ and could it be something else instead? He proposes for chapter two to be ¿Linking Up¿ of literature, theory and method as an alternative to the traditional literature review, on demand, as necessary, instead of treating this activities as independent exercises. With respect to literature review readers want to be engaged immediately with the problem being addressed. References are critical in helping to analyse and to situate the problem and the research in a broad context. Making the link to theory should be next, but until it is quite clear what is the research interest and how it relates to the report. Finally, linking up through method, what readers want to know is how data was obtained or what are the bases for making inferences. In this manner the researcher may inform the reader since the beginning with enough detail about the problem, its context, the theory it t articulates to and the method.El artículo contiene la conferencia que el profesor Harry Wolcott ofreció en Medellín en mayo de 2003, con motivo de la publicación al castellano de la segunda edición de su libro Mejorar la Escritura de la Investigación Cualitativa. El autor se pregunta porqué razón el segundo capítulo del reporte de una investigación es siempre la revisión de la literatura y si acaso no pudiera ser diferente? Propone la vinculación de literatura, teoría y método como opción al tradicional capítulo dos, incluyendo la información según la medida de lo necesario. Con relación a la revisión de literatura, los trabajos de otros se deberían referenciar sobre la base de la necesidad para ayudar a analizar y ubicar el problema en contexto amplio. En segundo lugar la teoría debe ser útil e introducida sólo hasta cuando esté claro cuál es el interés investigativo y qué relación tiene con el problema. Finalmente con respecto al método, los lectores necesitan saber cómo se obtuvieron los datos del estudio o las bases para hacer las inferencias. De esta manera el investigador puede dejar saber al lector desde el inicio del reporte cual es su problema, el contexto, la teoría con la que se articula y el método

Wolcott, Harry F., Sneaky Kid and Its Aftermath: Ethics and Intimacy in Fieldwork. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2002.

Traces the issues and implications of the author\u27s involvement with an ethnographic study informant for quality research procedure

Etnografía sin remordimientos

Professor Wolcott looks back over his studies in anthropology and education to answer the question, “Where do our studies go and what do they do there?”. In this writing he is particularly concerned with regrets –things that he wishes he had done differently or that did not turn out as he hoped and planned–. His advice to future ethnographers is to keep “regrets” in mind as a personal responsibility in deciding how much to reveal about the people with whom one works. He reminds us that we can always add information later, but it is not possible to retract errors of judgment we may make at the time

Wolcott, Harry F., The Art of Fieldwork. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 1995.

Provides perspective on and methods for doing artful ethnographies