What was Steve Jobs ‘frame’ when he said this?

“Some people say ‘Give the customers what they want.’ But that’s not my approach.

Our job is to figure out what they’re goingto want before they do”

Football Hooliganism

Media Representations• Mindless behaviour• Meaningless action• Hooligans are swept away

in wave of emotion

6 months ethnographic research in 1974 (I was the first idiot to do this):• Football had central meaning in their lives• Fighting was generally planned and selective• Fighting other ‘firms’ was an enjoyable

activity for working class youths (reflected masculinity and working class values of adherence to local community, solidarity and dislike of outsiders)

• Fighting is influenced by certain perceived ‘definitions of the situation’ (refereeing unfairness, moods of fatalism) which are deeply embedded working class values and mores

What is Ethnography?

Ethnography is a term borrowed from social anthropology and is primarily concerned with understanding the cultural and social world as experienced by people who live in it.

Miller (1997) defines it as a particular perspective that has the following ‘commitments’:

1.‘to be in the presence of the people one is studying, not just the texts or objects they produce

2.‘to evaluate people in terms of what they actually do... Not merely of what they say they do

3.‘to holistic analysis, which insists that...behaviours be considered within the larger framework of peoples lives and cosmologies

Ethnographic Assumptions

• The world is not laid out nicely for objective description, but abounds with actions and language that may seem (especially at the outset) strange and banal

• Reality seen as a constructed evolving process, always situated by the cultural/social context and through the interpretations of both actors and researcher(s)

Ethnography Methods:Participant Observation

• Observation of people in their settings– Avoid precluding or censoring anything in the early stages which

might seem inconsequential

• Conversations with people– Listen to their stories, ask questions and build rapport

• Capture aspects of their world – Make field-notes, take pictures, collect artefacts– Accept that learning often takes time and may occur not at a

conscious level initially – results from indwelling – then may come as flashes of insight much later

Field-notes

Ethnography is created through what Atkinson (1992) characterizes as a ‘double process of textual production and reproduction’. Although culminating in an integrated, coherent ethnographic account, this process begins with the day-by-daywriting up of field-notes ‘observations and reflections concerning “the field”’.

Specifically:

“...the field is produced (not discovered) through the social transactions engaged in by the ethnographer. The boundaries of the field are not ‘given’. They are the outcome of what the ethnographer may encompass in his or her gaze; what he or she may negotiate with hosts and informants; and what the ethnographer omits and overlooks as much as what the ethnographer writes”

Some Notes on Field-notes

• Write as close to the field experience as possible to preserve recall of the experiences, authenticity of perceptions and feelings

• Recognize that even writing descriptive notes is still a process of selective perception, representation and construction

• Often ethnographers write in process memos which help them provide a narrative on what they are doing (e.g., catching personal feelings, raising methodological questions, theorizing, etc)

Use of Life Stories and Co-participants

What matters to people keeps getting told in their stories. Listening carefully to theirstories is one of the cornerstones of ethnographic inquiry.

Similarly, some ethnographers place value in empowering participants as ‘co-participants’ in the research (Lincoln, 1990; Smalling, 1996). In this situation, the Interviewee participates in interpreting the questions and responses, clarifying what their responses meant, and even reframing the research questions.

However, as Riessman 1993) notes:

“Informants stories do not mirror a world “out there”. They are constructed, creativelyanchored, rhetorical, replete with assumptions, and interpretive”

Ethnographic Interviewing

Key assumptions underlying ethnographic interviewing:1. Listen carefully and respectfully2. Be consciously self-aware of our role in the co-construction of

meaning during the interview process3. Be cognizant of ways in which both the ongoing relationship

and the broader social context affect the participants, the interview process, and the project outcomes

4. Recognize that only partial knowledge is likely to be attained

Stages of an Interview Investigation

• Thematizing• Designing• Interviewing• Transcribing• Analysing• Verifying• Reporting

The ‘thematizing ‘ stage involves the researcher in thinking through the goals and primary questions to guide the research. It will involve literature searches and may Include preliminary fieldwork to get an handle on what challenges may be faced, etc

It all starts with Data 1

Gathering rich ethnographic data means answering basic questions about the studied phenomena:

• What is the setting of action? When and how does action take place?• What is going on? What is the overall activity being studied, the relatively

long terms behaviour about which actors organize themselves?• What specific acts comprise this activity?• How are actors organized and stratified? Who is in charge? How is

membership achieved?• What do actors pay attention to? What is important, preoccupying,

critical?• What do they ignore that others may notice?

It all starts with Data 2

• What symbols do actors invoke to understand their worlds, the participants and processes within them, and the objects and events they encounter? What names do they attach to objects, events, persons, roles, settings, equipment?

• What practices, skills, methods of operation do actors employ?• Which theories, motives, justifications do actors use in accounting for

their participation? How do they explain to each other, not to outside investigators, what they do and why they do it?

• What goals do actors seek? How do they judge action, by what standards and on what basis?

• What rewards do various actors gain from their participation?

(Adapted from Mitchel, 1991)

Coding

Coding is essentially ways of organizing/categorizing the often mass of data obtained in order to make sense of it. It enables comparisons between:

– Different people, objects, scenes, or events ( e.g., members’ situations, actions, accounts or experience)

– Data from the same people, scenes, objects, or type of event (for example, individuals with themselves at different points in time

– Incident with incident

Ethnography Moves out of Exotic Zones

• Education• Health

• Now Business – what could account for this?Test for you......