ABSTRACT
Ethnographic participant observation allowed the author to live with the people she studied and to participate in, observe, and describe their day-to-day lives. While in the communities, however, the author often experienced conflict between remaining uninvolved and distant, as she had been taught in methods classes, and participating fully; between recording only her “objective” observations of the Fisher Folk’s actions and speech and noting her sense of their emotional lives, a process that required her engagement. The author also presents stories for conveying lived experience and insisted on inserting vignettes showing specific incidents. The narratives include some of the stories that the author interspersed among the theoretical prose, authoritative voice, and distanced descriptions of common characteristics and typical patterns in Fisher Folk, the book she published from her dissertation.
