Ethnography: a method on the razor’s edge. Introduction

• Authors: Silva, Pedro

Abstracts

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Ethnography: a method on the razor’s edge In this paper I offer my main ideas about ethnography, which I mostly see as a research method, being aware, however, that the word itself might both mean a process and a product. As a method, it can include central techniques, like participant-observation and fieldnotes, and peripheral ones, that can be anyone. In the paper I argue for the need of a reflexive ethnography, i.e., one that takes into account the social relation of investigation and, thus, the possible effects of the researcher’s presence in the complex web of social relations of which s/he becomes a part and parcel when s/he “enters the field”. I also a) try to illuminate the plurality of tensions that integrate any ethnographic research process; b) refer to the hard task of translating cultures; and, c) finish with a reflection on the concept of self-ethnography.

Keywords

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• Publisher: Polskie Towarzystwo Pedagogiczne
• Journal: Problemy Wczesnej Edukacji
• Year: 2009
• Volume: 5
• Issue: 10(2)
• Pages: 46-64

Contributors

author

Silva, Pedro

Identifiers

DOI

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