Field notes: ethnographic writing reconsidered

Abstract

Even after the so-called ‘crisis of representation’ in ethnographic research the representation of cultural practices constitutes the focal point of ethnographic research practices. Although ethnographic representations are now conceived of as realizations of (other) cultural practices, from a methodological point of view little has been said about the devices with which ethnographic representation is performed. This paper discusses two of the aspects constituting ethnographic research: firstly, the switch between the perspectives of documentarism of the ethnographic data, and a reflexive understanding of this data, and, secondly, the implications of representation devices used in ethnographic research.

Keywords:

• audio technology
• documentarism
• ethnographic research
• performativity
• reflexivity
• representation
• writing

Notes

1 The notion of representation has been intensely and controversially discussed in recent years. One result of these debates maintains that we must not suppose a simple, uncomplicated representation of an artifact or a fact. It is rather emphasized that, firstly, the representation and the object of representation are linked to each other and that, secondly, there is a performative effect of representation: the perception of what is represented is influenced by the practices of representation (Lynch and Woolgar 1990; Rorty 1991).

2 The term code-switching is used by sociolinguistic research to describe linguistic phenomena such as situative change of language or the formation of language pairs in multilingual communities (e.g. Milroy and Muysken 1995).

3 Transcription symbols: P = pupil; T = teacher; … = omission; (…) = unintelligible utterance; – = utterance broken off; (P), (1) = speaking pause (in seconds); high = stress in pronunciation; °exactly° = pronounced in low voice; [ = start of speakers overlapping.

4 On teachers' linguistic activities of assessing student answers during classroom conversation see Kalthoff (2000).

Herbert Kalthoff is Professor of Sociology at University of Mainz (Germany). His research focus is on sociology of knowledge and practices in the field of finance/banking and in the field of education. His empirical work is based on qualitative methods (especially ethnographic fieldwork). He is the author of e.g. “Wohlerzogenheit. Eine Ethnographie deutscher Internatsschulen”, 1997), co-editor of “Facts and Figures. Economic Representations and Practices” (Marburg: Metropolis 2000), co-editor of “Theoretische Empirie” (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp 2008), and co-author of “Ethnografie. Die Praxis der Feldforschung” (Stuttgart: UTB 2013).