ABSTRACT

William James complained that critics of the concept of pragmatism used the “stock phrase … ‘what is new is not true, and what is true is not new’” (quoted in Merton 1967: 21-22). The “stock phrase” he quotes captures an important fact for ethnographers: To count as a valuable contribution, ethnography should be both true and new-and ideally, if originality (the new) is conveyed through vivid, credible, plausible, and trustworthy detail (the true). This joining or coupling of the new and the true is “thick empiricism.” Qualitative researchers are wedded to “thick empiricism.” From Blumer’s

“exploration” and “inspection” of the social world (1954) to Becker’s “inference and proof in participant observation” (1958) through Geertz’s “thickdescription ethnography” (1973: 26) and Schatzman and Strauss’s protocols for “intensive observation” (1973), to Glaser and Strauss’s “grounded theory” (1967), scholars underline the importance of joining close observation and accurate recording with the shaping, reshaping, and refining of concepts. More recently, Tilly (1994) following Stinchcombe (1978) takes up the uses of the thick/thin metaphor to characterize “thick history” and time in/of historical events as “drenched with causes that inhere in sequence, accumulation, contingency, and proximity” (Tilly 1994: 270). “Sensitizing concepts” are central organizing ideas in field research. Where

do they come from? How do they affect the research questions being asked? How are they affected by what the investigator discovers during the fieldwork (interviews, observations, and examination of archival data)? As the ethnography unfolds, how are these “sensitizing concepts” assembled and reassembled as the research problem changes? How are research problems defined and redefined during the course of the investigation? (On the temporal ordering of research problems, see Kuhn 1970: 171-72, 198-200, 209-10.) Certain conditions foster or suppress the new and true in specific contexts.

Ethnographers have many ideas that could be considered sensitizing concepts, but most of them don’t qualify. We have an idea, we try it out, and nothing comes of using it, nothing interesting anyway, so we try another one.

We improvise on concepts. This is disciplined imagination (Becker and Faulkner 2006; Faulkner 2006; Faulkner and Becker forthcoming). The elements of discipline and organization, the rational and the routine, are on one side of the equation. The elements of improvisation and imagination, the spontaneous and the indeterminate, are on the other side. Ethnographers have ideas they develop. They go into the field, talk to people, collect running records of events, and observe and record observations with care and precision. They improvise, try out new ideas and see what happens. If nothing interesting happens, the ideas are forgotten. If something does happen, ethnographers keep following it out to see where it goes. They work with it and on it. The task that is hard for our more “scientistic” colleagues is where a good sensitizing concept takes hold, and where it does not take hold is often completely divorced from the original idea and the initial intention. Ethnographers welcome this, through learning plus adapting. There is interplay between taking sensitizing concepts and making sensitizing concepts. There are two sources of sensitizing concepts and two outcomes. Concept

exploration involves improvisation, experimentation, and the discovery of new knowledge. Concept exploitation involves receiving, refining, and extending existing knowledge. The two outcomes are the coupling or decoupling of concept and evidence. Ethnographic coupling is the tight alignment and interweaving of in-depth fieldwork evidence with the sensitizing concept. In the write up, “thick descriptions” are closely aligned with hard won empirical data. Decoupling, by way of contrast, is characterized by a gap between concept and measurement. To illustrate the interplay of exploration versus exploitation and tight and loose coupling, I draw on Music on Demand (Faulkner 1983), an inquiry into the careers of freelance composers in the Hollywood feature-film industry.