Quotation – CLOKE, P.; COOK, I.; CRANG, P.; GOODWIN, M.; PAINTER, J.

;
PHILO, C. Doing ethnographies. In: CLOKE, P.; COOK, I.; CRANG, P.;
GOODWIN, M.; PAINTER, J.; PHILO, C. Practising human geography. London:
SAGE Publications Ltd, p. 169- 205, 2004.

“Frist, is treats people as knowledgeable, situated agents from whom researches can
learn a great deal about how the world is seen, lived and works in and through ‘real’
places, community and place. Secondly, it is an extended, detailed, ‘immersive’,
inductive methodology intended to allow grounded social orders, worldviews and ways
of life gradually to become apparent. Thirdly, it can involve a ‘shamelessly ecletic’ and
methodological opportunist combinations of research methods, but, as it core, there
must be an extend period of participant observation research. […] Finally, therefore,
ethnography involves recognition that its main research tool is the researcher and the
ways in which he or she is used to acting in more familiar circumstances and learns to
act in often strange and strained circumstances of his or her research setting. Here
differently ‘theorized’ (academically and otherwise) and/or taken-for-granted
worldviews, ways of life, self-understandings, relationships, knowledge, politics, ethics,
skills, etc., are accidentally and deliberately rubbed up against one another.” P. 169-170.

“[…]Novice ethnographers must recognize, develop, complement and sometimes

unlearn existing attitudes, habits, sentiments, emotions, senses, skills and performances.
A good ethnographer is someone willing and able to become a more reflexive and
sociable version of him or herself in order to learn something meaningful about other
people’s lives, and to communicate his or her specific findings, including their wider
relevance, to academic and other audiences.” P. 170

References: Jackson, 1998; Jackson and Smith, 1984; Cloke, 19991;

“Clifford Geertz. His interpretative anthropology has been help us as an attractive

alternative to superorganic definitions because its approach is essentially semiotic:
regarding culture as a series if signs and symbols which convey meaning. Allunding to
Weber’s idea that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance which he has
himself spun, Geertz argues that culture comprises these webs and their analysis is not
and experimental science in search of law but an interpretative one in search of
meaning… The diverse and contradictory evidence of human behaviour observed in the
field is thus recognized for what it is, rather than as aspects of some postulated cultural
entity: ‘what we call our data are really our own contractions of other people’s
contractions of what they and their compatriots are up to” p. 185

“First, researches could choose to undertake research to challenge stereotypical,

popular, culturalist explanations of the living conditions of one categorized and located
group […] Secondly, instead of framing ethnography research of moving between
cultures it could better be framed as a process of moving through, and perhaps
extending, existing social networks which, themselves, cross boundaries (sometimes
with difficulty) between discursively and physically separated cultures, communities
and/or places” p. 185

’From the beginning to end ethnography research is all about networking so this should
be ideally done from the beginning of a project. Ethnographers, have to learn how to
work through networks, to make appropriate connections and to go with the flow when
preconceptions come to light and alternative interpretations begin to make more sense.

“Secondly, moving between locates and relations where norms of speech, appearance,
status, ethics, manners and so on may be very different often involves a complex,
confusing, anxiety-provoking, and sometimes bizarre process of identity management.
Some of this is specific to participant observation as decisions have to be made about
how convert or overt this should be (see Hoggart et al., 2002: 156-7). But, research
more generally, ‘can be tricky, fascinating, awkward, tedious, annoying, hilarious,
confusing, disturbing, mechanical, sociable, isolating, surprising, sweaty, messy,
systematic, costly, draining, interative, contradictory, open-ended process’ (Cook et al.,
in press). It is invariably an intellectually and emotionally challenging experience, and
prospective researchers need to be prepared for this.” P. 194

“In development geography, for example, students were often expected to prepare for
fieldwork through ‘a good grasp of theory and a well written literature review’ but,
rarely, through a good grasp of the actual ‘rigours of fieldwork’ (Robson and Willis,
1994b: 1).This is what they were expected to learn through a ‘“baptism of fire” in the
field – probably mirroring their supervisors’ own experiences’ (Robson and Willis,
1994b: 1). In disciplines where ethnography is a core methodology – most notably in
anthropology – the ways in which ‘fieldwork dilemmas arise and are resolved’ have
been an important part of research training (McDowell, 1992a: 408). In geography, it
has not. Here, far more attention has been paid to the products than to ‘the processes of
actually undertaking the research’ (Dwyer and Limb, 2001: 2, emphasis in original).
Yet field noting is necessary to record and to make sense of key events as they happen,
to think about how the research is taking shape, to try to maintain and/or regain its focus
and to plan its next stages. These notes may be systematically written in a proper
research diary but they may also take other forms: as researchers scribble notes on stray
pieces of paper or around the edges of questionnaires; as they write emails and letters
home to friends, family and supervisors; or as they continue to fill the pages of a
personal diary or journal. Field-noting is not the sole preserve of ethnographers, then,
because all research involves a combination of participation and observation in projects
that change as they proceed, and such changes are invariably noted in some way or
other. Proper fieldnotes are, however, the prime data of participant observation research.
These are what should enable researchers to give those who read their work that unique
sense of ‘being there’. P. 196-197
“Field-noting is an ongoing sense-making process. It is a process of creative writing
based on first-hand experience. It involves attempts to tie together minutiae of
theoretical and empirical detail gleaned in and between the different locales of a
project’s expanded field (Batterbury, 1994).” P. 197

“After the initial, highly detailed scenes, characters and roles have been written, field-
noting may narrow its foci as researchers mention only changes to these established
scenes, etc., and focus in on, latch on to and follow up parts of these (Wolfinger, 2002).
Here it is common for researchers to begin to identify patterns and regularities, rhythms
and routines, dominant discourses and ways of seeing/doing, to check facts and verify
claims made in one time/place/setting in others, and so on (Jackson and Smith, 1984).”
P. 198
“1. Space: the physical place or places; 2. Actor: the people involved; 3. Activity: a set
ofrelated acts people do; 4. Object: the physical things that are present; 5. Act: single
actions that people do; 6. Event: a set of related activities that people carry out; 7. Time:
the sequencing that takes place over time; 8. Goal: the things that people are trying to
accomplish; [and] 9. Feeling: the emotions felt and expressed. (Wolfinger, 2002: 91)” p.
199

“How people seem to be reacting to him or her as a result of his or her age, gender, skin
colour, language skills, nationality, politics, dress, etc., and how he or she attempts to
work with and/or against this to get the research done How circumstances change and
breakthroughs are made. The way that field-noting, photography and other forms of
data construction have been able to take place and what effects their inscription and
description have onthe ongoing research process. • How the researcher becomes part of
the scenes he or she is describing, the effects this has on the research process, and on
hisor her sense of self and his or her findings.” P. 199.