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SOC 531: Community Organization Participant Observation
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Sidewalk Methods (Five Points) Talk is Cheap – What people say – What they do – What it means – Consider what we get from Transcriptions Recordings Field notes
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Sidewalk Methods (point #2) Context is crucial – Criminal justice system – Housing market – Can’t be blinded by details (ethnographic fallacy: can understand everything from ethnography, without any background or contextual information) – Must inform ethnography/local detail with larger context
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Sidewalk Methods (point #3) Show people and situations – Need to find living and breathing persons – Need to discover situations – Use people as “incumbents of roles” (or what we have called cats)—not fully developed characters (like social workers in Cornerville) – Can then use sociological theory Confront theories with persons and situations Consider use of twelve step programs in recovery and stories of people who don’t use the programs
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Sidewalk Methods (point #4) Not insulating self from data – Ethnography is an Open Method Don’t know topics in advance Need to be open to – People – Situations – Can’t be captive of first contact (Doc In Cornerville) Need contact to get in Need to go beyond that initial contact
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Sidewalk Methods (continued) – Not a random or representative sample – Need to look beyond the available – Need to ask, “Who and what are missing?” Public urination Drugs Chatting up women
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Sidewalk Methods (point #5) Transparency – Admit personal biases – Recognize when author’s opinion is influencing Respondent’s words Respondents actions – Avoid “cherry picking” or selecting snippets that defend author’s opinion and interpretation – But also avoid letting respondent impose his/her interpretation and presentation of self
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Sidewalk Methods – Example of Ishmael and addiction Ishmael focuses on his own efforts Author recognizes that Ishmael had been in a program
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Moral and Ethical Issues IRB: Do No Harm But what about exploitation? – Author makes money – Author gets status as professor – Proposal to share royalties After the book was published (not to influence production) Effort to share the money (~$200 each) Respondents did not believe that was all
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The Problem of Trust When in the field, trust and honesty is critical – Your identity – Your project – Your ethical standards After the book comes out – Resentment that story was not “fair and unbiased” (Cornerville characters) – Resentment that author profited from encounter
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Resentment is Inevitable Need to take this seriously Need to respect the human subject Above and beyond Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval – Concern about lawsuits – Concern about university’s reputation – Concern about the people (including the guy who was a crack addict: Ron “Obie”)
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