ABSTRACT
Writing up involves ethnographers in two kinds of questions: what is the final product of research and how is it to be accomplished? The first of these questions asks what is the nature of the final product – whether classic monograph, research article or ethnographic film – what is its relationship to those aspects of social reality that inspired the research in the first place. The critical realist perspective I have adopted in this book contends that there is a social reality out there, separate from our knowledge of it, which is nevertheless accessible to investigation and understanding. Such understanding while necessarily partial is still open to critical evaluation; there is both good and bad research and criteria to recognize the difference. We can know this social reality because we are, or can become through our actions, a part of it. Clearly in so doing we both attain insight into this social reality and alter it through our presence. This essential reflexivity is a part of all research, but probably more characteristic of ethnographic research than of any other form. Such fundamental reflexivity must be acknowledged and employed at all stages of the research process. Thus, a critical self-consciousness must be developed and incorporated into the research from the initial stage of selecting research topics through the interactions with others in the field to the final analytical and compositional processes. Such critical selfawareness is not simply about the individual ethnographer’s social identities and personal perspectives; it also needs to encompass disciplinary perspectives and broader cultural background. At the same time, this critical reflexivity is not an end in itself – the research is not about the ethnographer; rather it is a means – in fact, the only means – of coming to know, however imperfectly, other aspects of social reality.
