Sunday, 10 March 2013
Participant Observation
I am just catching up on some reading, and finished Luker chapter 8. I really liked her discussion of participant observation (PO). Luker explains that with PO you are observing a place you know well, but you can overlook what outside observers would find strange. When studying something within our own culture we tend to try to "highlight the weird and unusual, and faithfully document the trivial, but you are hard-press to see any connections between the two"(p 157). We cannot see the connections because we are too much apart of this environment. Luker suggests the point of participant observation is to document "practices"(p 158). She declares the reason for observing is not so much to test theory, but to build it.
At first I found this a bit confusing, how can you really use the data (and build theory) if you cannot see the connections between the things you are observing. However when Luker explains Howard Becker's guidelines in making sense of PO data, it becomes more clear. Becker argues " that you start by discovering if the events... are typical and wide spread, and seeing how these events are distributed among categories. Then you try to decide how central these events are to the thing you are studying: Next, you try to find other pieces of evidence to validate what you think you are finding theoretically; and finally you try to build on a model of why the people are doing what they are doing" (p 159). The last step of building a model of why people are doing what they do is the point where it became clear. This is how to build theory from PO trying to understand the why.
I think this is a really interesting method for research, and like the idea of building theory this way oppose to testing it.
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Hi Victoria,
ReplyDeleteI also wrestled with Luker a bit on this point. It seemed to me that PO was a bit of catch 22. On the one hand as an observer in an alien culture everything is worth noting, but you may be "tone-deaf to its nuances" (p. 156). On the other hand as an observer in a familiar setting, perhaps your own culture, you overlook the strange precisely because it is familiar. And of course, Luker notes that if you are studying something within your culture but is unfamiliar, then you will fall short on both counts. As I was reading this, I couldn't help but think "if you miss the point in PO regardless of being familiar or unfamiliar with a culture then why bother? You can't seem to catch a break. Why not find a different method?" I was also a little disconcerted that Luker, as someone who teaches observational methods, wasn't even clear in her own mind why it was a desirable method. She just "took it on faith that observational methods were valuable" (p. 157). OK, that makes me confident.
But as you noted, Luker's point wasn't so much to prove the futility of PO but rather illustrate through her own experience that "the point of doing observational methods is to document 'practices,' those moments when belief and action come together." (p. 158). And the quote you cited from Becker really hits it home for me. Like you, I think it is interesting to approach observational research methods as a way to build theory rather than test it. It also helps with my understanding of why we would choose to use it, rather than the bleak outlook intially painted by Luker.