Luker (2008) coins the phrase “salsa dancing into the social
sciences” to describe her way of doing research. She argues this method strikes
a balance between academic rigour of structured scientific methods and a more
open ended pragmatic approach. When reading Luker I have derived that the main
traits of the Salsa Dancing social scientist are found in contrast against what
she terms the canonical social scientist. These basic traits are an ability to
review multiple methods and theories looking to the best ones for your specific
research as well as a flexibility of thinking. This flexibility that ensures
you do not get stuck in a paradigm a theory or method that might cause you to
miss important factors in your research.
When reading Shaffir (1999) it strikes me that
ethnographic research contains the traits of flexibility of salsa dancing
social science. This is demonstrated when he states “Any attempt to codify the
process - much less to force it into the rigid protocols of "hard science"
- is to miss the point,” later adding “practitioners and teachers came to understand
that there was no simple best way of conducting it, that experiences were
highly variable, and that approaches had to be adapted to the particular
research problem and setting” (pg. 677, 679). As a result of the flexibility of
this method I first thought that participant observation should be automatically
defined as a method that fit with salsa dancing social science. On review of
Luker’s (2008) salsa dancing definition I realized that she considered
traditional field research also known as participant observation to be on the
opposite end of the spectrum of canonical social science (pg.2). In other words
Luker suggests that there is not a concrete enough methodology for participant
observation and it is too variable to be automatically considered part of salsa
dancing social science. Luker states that participant observation is still
useful, but she seems to limit this use to what she terms theory building (pg.
160). For me participant observation is a necessary method to understand
actions and behaviors in a social setting. As Mandi mentioned in her earlier
post “Hang around, observe, and record [your] observations” ethnographic
research is an important way to determine the difference between what people
say and what people do. For these reasons participant observation will continue
to be important methods, but we should be aware of its limitations.
Featured
Luker, K. (2008). Salsa dancing into the social sciences: Research in an age of info-glut. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Shaffir, W. (1999). Doing ethnography. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 28(6), 676-686.
'The flexibility of thinking' coupled with the act of ethnographical research; that of cherry-picking from a list of research options the research method one thinks will produce the best results. By naming ethnographic research, and defining what it is not, it could be argued that the authors are indirectly establishing what it is, in effect, 'codifying the process'? It's only my opinion, but it seems to me that the while the flexibility of thinking may support the act of observing, it loses some, if not all of its flexibility once those observations are transcribed into text.
ReplyDeleteThat is an interesting thought that I had not considered. I do agree that when Shaffir describes what not to do it represents a form of codification. I believe he would argue however, that the flexibility lies with no clear statements on what one needs to do to conduct participant observation. Still, if a researcher limits the possible actions to a high degree this will limit the choices and by extension the flexibility that is possible. Thinking back to Shaffir’s woodman metaphor, the woodman could only tell the lost man what roads not to take. When I think about this I wonder if the woodman was able to exclude the majority of the roads, would there not be few possible paths left? In both the Shaffir and Stebbins articles I do not think that they present enough descriptions of what not to do limit the possibilities to a great extent. For me they still leave participant observation to be a flexible and variable enterprise.
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