Newsgroups: bit.listserv.qualrs-l
Date:         Fri, 9 Oct 1992 17:27:00 CDT
              <QUALRS-L@UGA.BITNET>
From:         "Jim Thomas (tk0jut1@niu.bitnet)" <TK0JUT1@NIU.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: What's Ethnography/Chicago Ethnography?

Al raises the crucial question of "what is culture" in response to the
questions of what is ethnography/Chicago ethnography and can a BBS (or
similar electronic medium) be considered a culture.

The questions arise from disputes others have had with editors or
potential dissertation advisors who adhere to a narrow definition of
(Chicago) ethnography and appear to reject anything as "ethnographic"
that fails to mirror something called "Chicago sociology."

Although I'm not convinced that culture is simply anything a
researcher says it is, I do agree that it is a broad concept.  At a
minimum, a "culture" includes some identifiable set(s) of norms,
language, expectations, boundary mechanisms, identity formation
processes, entry/exit rituals, and other identifying symbolic
artifacts and social processes that link participants. A culture of
"garage sales," "bar rooms," "little league baseball," or BBSes would
surely qualify as a culture. As would some specific newsgroups or "the
internet culture."

If we define culture broadly as a complex system of signs and codes,
then the def of Van Maanen and Barley is useful:

    In crude relief, culture can be understood as a set of solutions
    devised by a group of people to meet specific problems posed by
    situations they face in common. . .This notion of culture as a
    living, historical product of group problem solving allows an
    approach to cultural study that is applicable to any group, be it
    a society, a neighborhood, a family, a dance band, or an
    organization and its segments.

In my view, the judgment that "Chicago school ethnography" is limited
to taxi-dance halls or hookers in hotels is abysmally narrow.  Early
Chicago ethnographers illustrated how documents can be used to
reconstruct cultural processes and meanings (eg, The Polish Peasant),
suggesting that cultural artifacts hardly need depend on participant
observation. More recent Chicago-influenced ethnographers, such as the
"Chicago Irregulars" of the 1960s and their followers, have expanded
the data sources dramatically.  Hence, neither the method (participant
observation) nor the data source (a face-to-face setting) are the
defining characteristics of ethnography.

However, even if PO were a necessary criterion (which it's not), then
BBS/cyber-related research could certainly qualify.  It should also be
noted that the early Chicago ethnographers themselves revised the
then-conventional view of ethnography as defined primarily by
anthropoligists as they applied broad cultural studies to a more
narrow urban scene.  Changing technology creates and opens up for
analysis new terrains that were not anticipated by the "originals." A
"hacker culture," for example, cannot be studied by hanging out in a
conventional locale requiring f2f interaction, which changes the
definition of PO, which normally presumes f2f interaction.

Cyber-culture (culture that exists in an electronic medium) provides a
number of artifacts by which to establish "the meaning of actiity from
the participants' point of view"--on-line interactions (logs),
newsletters and other documents, clothes (t-shirts) and other stuff by
which to "read off" and analyze it. The works of semioticians and
postmodernists expand theoretical and conceptual methods by which to
do this (for those who want to move beyond the past).

Guess if I had to make a short  response to editors or others who
claimed that analysis of cyber-culture is not (Chicago) ethnography,
it would be "Get a clue!"

Comments?
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
Subject: (no subject given)