Introduction to the Method and Logic of Ethnographic Fieldwork

Instructor:	Jack Katz
Dates:	October 20 & 21, 2004
Time:	10am-12noon, 3pm-5pm on both days
Location:	Room 270B, International Affairs Building, Columbia University (Note: Location is subject to change)

TOPIC:
In four sessions, participants will get a taste of the data gathering and data description challenges of ethnographic fieldwork, and an introduction to a range of methodological issues specific to this way of conducting social research.

Two data gathering and describing tasks will be included. Before the first session, participants will do the following fieldwork assignment and post their fieldnotes on the course website: Check out at a grocery market at least twice. Describe what happens. Then observe what happens when others checkout and describe that. The second assignment will be done in class. The class as a whole will interview one member about his/her last experience going to the movies.

Methodological issues include:
The warrants for ethnographic research: why do it, when it seems to fall short of so many fundamental methodological standards?

The structure of good fieldnotes: good fieldnotes aren't chance products or the result of personal magic, effective writing style, or anything else mysterious. Good fieldnotes track the social structuring of behavior.

How does one move from ethnographic description to explanation? This too is not a matter of magic or inherent mystery. We will analyze what ethnographers do in practice to start explanatory analyses, and the good logic they are following.

How to respond to the standard methodological critiques of ethnographic studies (i.e., that they have no systematic way of showing the representative character of empirical descriptions, that they defy replication, that they undermine reliability by occasioning uncontrolled variations in interaction with subjects, etc.). There are strong responses to the standard methodological questions; ethnographers need not duck these issues by appealing to a rhetoric about "pre-testing" or "only describing."

AGENDA:
1st session: A brief history of ethnographic fieldwork in sociology (and a bit on the tradition in anthropology). Analysis of the fieldnotes participants have produced before the meeting. Discussion of what makes fieldnotes good.

2nd session: Discussion of ethnography's warrants, and of ways of moving the research project from description to explanation. Also, demonstration of data animation techniques that are useful for making the relationship between description and explanation interactive and constructive.

3rd session: Open class interview of one of the members; discussion of how ethnographic interviewing is distinctive and what makes interviews good.

4th session: Discussion of how ethnographers have responded to the standard criticisms typically leveled against ethnographic texts, how they might more effectively respond, and how to conduct fieldwork so as to be prepared to answer standard questions effectively.

Day 1
1st session:
A brief history of ethnographic fieldwork in sociology (and a bit on the tradition in anthropology). The issue of reflexivity: the ocular structure of the fly on the wall.

Ethnography's warrants: how to justify working in this seemingly unsystematic manner.

Analysis of the three dominant genres in ethnographic sociology. An example to focus the contrast: How would you study panhandling/street beggars-vendors ethnographically?

Readings:
Emerson, R., Ed. (2001). Contemporary Field Research: Perspectives and Formulations. Prospect Heights, Ilinois, Waveland. Excerpts provided.

Katz, J. (1997). "Ethnography's Warrants." Sociological Methods & Research 25(4 May): 391-423.

Katz, J. (2004). "On the Rhetoric and Politics of Ethnographic Methodology." The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 595(1): 280-308. (For the purposes of our class, the relevant material is on pp. 286-298, 303-308).

2nd session: Open class interview of one of the members; discussion of how ethnographic interviewing is distinctive and how to build quality in interviews.

Day 2
3rd session: Analysis of the fieldnotes participants have produced before the meeting. Discussion of what makes fieldnotes good.

Demonstration of data animation techniques useful for making the relationship between description and explanation interactive and constructive.

Readings:
Katz, J. (2001). "From How to Why: On Luminous Description and Causal Inference in Ethnography ( Part 1)." Ethnography 2(4): 443-473.

Katz, J. (2002). "From How to Why: On Luminous Description and Causal Inference in Ethnography (Part 2)." Ethnography 3(1): 63-90.

This is a long, two part article. A close reading is not necessary. It contains many examples of how, by focusing on what in a gut sense strikes you as your "best" data (fieldnotes, interview excerpts), you can find a logic for moving from describing how social life proceeds to an explanation of why it takes the form it does.

4th session: How ethnographers have responded to the standard criticisms typically leveled against ethnographic texts, how they might more effectively respond, and how to conduct fieldwork so as to be prepared to answer standard questions effectively.

Discussion of analytic induction as a logic especially suitable for analyzing ethnographic data.

Readings:
Katz, J. (1982). A Theory of Qualitative Methodology: The Social System of Analytic Fieldwork. Appendix to Poor People's Lawyers in Transition. New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers University Press: 197-218.

Katz, J. (2001). Analytic Induction. International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. N. J. Smelser and P. B. Baltes. Oxford, U.K., Elsevier. 1: 480-484.