the art and science of ethnography

I think science is probably the wrong word - but I don't have anything more apt at this point to give expression to my current sense of awe and respect for the field and practice of ethnography. This statement I also have to qualify with 'particular branches of the field of ethnography'. Last night I was reading around the topic of fieldwork, fieldnotes and critical ethnography and was once again struck by the detailed and meticulous manner in which ethnographer collect, reflect and consider their research practices.

There are so many ways to write a fieldnote and I don't a mean personalised, anything-goes suite of techniques, these are documented, carefully theorised and empirically verified approaches that then provide the ethnographer with particular kinds of records of their fieldwork experiences. Ethnography is often dismissed as a 'soft science' - a easy option for qualitative researcher to take who don't want to attend to methodological rigour, and just hang about in a particular setting for a long, long time to soak up the atmosphere - but people who make these kinds of assumptions don't have a clue what they are taking about. The good ethnographers are so closely aware of what they are doing and pay such careful attention to the impact of their research, their presence, their interpretations, their positionality, their ontologies and epistemologies on who and what they are researching. I don't think other kinds of researcher get to, or are encouraged to pay this amount of attention to these aspects when conducting research. Qualitative researchers are sometimes encouraged to pay attention to reflexivity and reactively - but usually this is done mostly to ensure that we adhere to validity concerns - but we don't necessarily take it on board in the same way. To be clear I'm not suggesting a hierarchy of research approaches, with ethnography at the top. I'm not that naive to make such a statement, I'm just trying to articulate my deep respect for the kind of work ethnographers do.

I also don't for one moment want to suggest that I'm the kind of quasi-ethnographer or researcher that has taken on the all the principles of ethnography that I'm talking about above - I know I haven't. But I think the point I'm trying to make is that I am really drawn to this kind of research and being critical about my practices - as researcher or teacher. As a result of my time in the UK I've been introduced to and have in many ways taken on board the philosophy of conducting research for the sole purpose of the pursuit of knowledge, influenced rather strongly by the teachings of MH. But through the writings of critical ethnographers I see another agenda that is equally compelling - research that clearly has a political or policy agenda, because it has to. The kind of partisan approach my adult education and feminist professor friend talked about almost two years ago. I can only hope that in the future my path and these more critical methodologies will cross.