For Ethnography
Posted on | April 19, 2007 |
I’m heading to Sydney this morning to speak at this conference at UTS tomorrow. It’s a chance to hear some of the work Catherine and I have been doing on our book if you have time to come along - we’d appreciate some feedback during these early stages. We’re also on in the last session with the other ‘cultural studies people’ (Glen and Clif might like to hear this paper!) so conveniently scheduled for a drink afterwards! This is the abstract for our paper:
my profile: the ethics of virtual ethnography
This paper reconsiders academic research in online communities, surveying existing research on ‘virtual ethnography’ and ‘media ethnography’, considering whether this is, in fact, ethnography and the ethical questions raised by online participant observation or even in situ analysis. Our specific examples are livejournal communities, MySpace profiles, and dating sites and we will focus on the tangle of attachments and investments at work in ethnography in such spaces.
One crucial factor here is the greater blurring of work/life boundaries in online culture, which extends across personal scenes and practices, structured and unstructured leisure time, participation in public culture and in publicly visible popular culture, and compulsory as well as less compulsory elements of working life.
These spheres are not separated by time or space or, necessarily, by different behaviours or identities. Ethnography becomes a different kind of problem in such situations when every member of a community has an equally tangled relation to it as an ethnographer, and yet it remains unclear if any other scholarly method would clarify the situation. Our paper aims to raise new questions about ethnography through the prism of online cultural studies, and new questions about online culture through now well-established debates about ethnographic practice.
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7 Responses to “For Ethnography”
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April 19th, 2007 @ 8:39 am
ha! cool.
you reckon they’d mind if I snuck in? i am not waged and less than a student at this very moment (not enrolled).
Mel C shall be in town, too!
April 19th, 2007 @ 11:55 am
I am presently finding it a bit difficult to get aorund - having snapped my achilles tendon some weeks ago - so can’t get across to UTS. Would it be possible to get a copy of the paper? This is right in my area and I’ve been thinking/writing a lot about conceptions of insider/outsider stuff lately. Would be much appreciated.
April 21st, 2007 @ 4:16 pm
Thanks for coming along Glen (and Ben and Clif and Mel!). We’ll have a draft copy of the paper available some time over the next month or so - happy to forward it then. Hope you recover quickly M-H!
April 22nd, 2007 @ 8:45 pm
[...] According to the ill-measuring scales at my gym I am 103-104kgs, which is definitely the lightest I have been for now more than a decade. Crazy. I wouldn’t believe it however my body shape is definitely changing. I have always had a bit of a gut and I still do, but at the top of my stomach just below my rib cage I can feel (hard) muscles for the first time ever. That is surprising and it means that my body shape is transforming to yet another iteration compared to previous couple of times when I have gone exercise crazy. I am certainly the fittest I have ever been when even now when I am totally fluey (after a big night out with Mel and Clif on Friday night, after seeing Mel at the conference (and Ben), w00t! lol!) I do sub-6:30 2km ergo times. [...]
April 22nd, 2007 @ 8:57 pm
yeah, it is a pity you couldn’t stick around. I didn’t realise you were on such a tight flight/transport schedule which meant I didn’t endeavour to find out how you were doing and how things were in brivegas. Sorry, I hope I didn’t appear rude!
Plus it is at such friday night events that non-clock time workers like me and maybe others get to feel a little bit normative and perform the perculiar affective diposition of ‘afterworkness’ (as you well know!!!!).
April 22nd, 2007 @ 8:58 pm
wtf, you can delete my trackback.. bloody blog!!!
April 23rd, 2007 @ 1:59 pm
Thanks Mel. Look forward to it. Am slowly receovering - too damn slowly. People keep saying well-meaning things to me like “It only took my brother-in-law four months” (four months!) and “You know you’re more at risk of snapping the the other one later…”.