Problematising ethnography and case study: reflections on using ethnographic techniques and researcher positioning

ABSTRACT

This paper was prompted by the question, what do we mean by conducting ‘ethnography’? Is it in fact ‘case study’ drawing on ethnographic techniques? My contention is that in many cases, researchers are not actually conducting ethnography as understood within a traditional sense but rather are engaging in case study, drawing on ethnographic techniques. Does that matter you might ask? Well it determines what we can expect to discover from a research project in terms of results and the unearthing of deeper complexities. I frame the discussion around a set of closely related issues, namely ethnography, case study and researcher positioning, drawing on ethnographic techniques and fieldwork relations. The original contribution of the piece and overall argument is that research can represent a hybrid form, and based on my own research experience, I propose a new term ‘ethno-case study’ that has advantages of both ethnography and case study.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethnography
• case study
• ethno-case study
• researcher positioning

Acknowledgements

I wish to acknowledge the assistance of Dr Louise Spry, Nottingham Trent University, UK, and Dr Patricia Mannix McNamara, University of Limerick, Eire, who kindly acted as reviewers for this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.