Defining and Redefining Ethnography

The works this week on defining ethnography made me question about the nature of defining.

How do we define the lives of those who teach composition (Brooke)?

How do we define ethnography in view of it’s sociological and anthropological roots? What does it mean to 

do fieldwork? (Van Maanen)

During last week’s class, one of my colleagues and I had a fairly lengthy discussion about what it means to “do research.” Is it different than scholarship? Is this an issue of semantics? Of rhetorical moves? Of substance? I think perhaps it’s all 3 of these things. Ethnographic research, we know from Robert Brooke, suggests issues of representation and questions of power. It matters who decides what gets told. With Sohn’s Whistlin’ and Crowin’ Women of Appalachia, the question of who decided to edit out vernacular speech is an important one because it indicates who has the power over the story: Sohn (the researcher) or the women (the subjects)?

Research also involves questions of institutional power, though. Research is how professors across the disciplines get tenure. Research is how scholars and fields build their ethos as they separate themselves from other disciplines: Rhetoric and Composition is not Communications because we’re concerned about writing. Rhetoric and Composition is not Philosophy because we care about words and how they’re used to affect action. These distinctions are made based on the kinds of research we do.