In our field

In his 1987 work, The Making of Knowledge in Composition: Portrait of an Emerging Field, Stephen North provides an overview of the field of composition studies as it might be mapped through ways individuals have approached the field. Focusing on a division between Scholars and Researchers, North considers the then current literature as well as the future viability of a variety of approaches and perspectives. As one of the first scholars to do so, North considers ethnography as a research method that can invigorate the field. While he admits the popularity of the approach, he doubts whether it can have any long standing effect since this knowledge does not "accumulate," neither can the community agree upon what he calls a "methodological heart" (278, 273). Following an investigation of the approach as a methodology, North concludes:

For all its promise then, the future of the embattled Ethnographic community cannot be all that bright. There still seems to be, among users and consumers alike, considerable confusion about what sort of authority it has. That situation will not be helped by publication of methodologically-mixed research reports, where the right terminology--the mention of context, participant-observation, key informants, triangulation, and so on--is used rather indiscriminately as a reason for labeling an inquiry as Ethnographic. And confusion over the nature of that authority leads to further confusion about the kinds of relationship Ethnographic knowledge can have with that from other modes of inquiry. However diplomatic its users might wish or need to be in the face of positivist culture's latent hostility, the method itself will inevitably be both threatening and radical. (313)

It's always easy to critique a prediction for the future from the perspective that allows for hindsight. The assertion that the future for Ethnography "cannot be all that bright" is certainly off base, considering the clear increase in the numbers of publications and individuals that illustrate a connection with Ethnographic methods or theories.

But maybe that's the point right there. North critiques Ethnography ONLY as a methodology. Arguing the scientific legitimacy of ethnography as a research methodology is a moot point. I have no issue there; ethnography, as Clifford and Marcus assert, is the representation of "partial truths," not of Truth in any form.

Of course, that is the problem. Without an ability to replicate a study, to build upon the knowledge gained from one investigation by moving beyond it, we cannot accumulate knowledge, we cannot call ourselves a part of the scientific community (even if it is "soft" science) because there is no there there. If you want to really understand the dilemma, talk to an anthropologist.

At any rate, we know that North's prediction that ethnography will become irrelevant to the field falls flat given our current and growing interest in this approach. It seems to me that Ethnography has not only survived but thrived in recent years because those working with its ideas, with the term, even with it as a methodology, have shifted their understanding of its viability from the accumulation of knowledge to the teaching of writing. That is, ethnography exists in our field at a moment when it is just beginning to be understood as a fantastically rich pedagogy.

Certainly, there are those in the field who will continue to write what they may call ethnographies, focusing on participant-observation, field note writing, analysis and synthesis of ideas. However, the real emphasis has grown out of the dilemma in anthropology, over the way in which we rhetorically construct our ideas. Ethnography is about experimentation as much as it is about valid data collection. It is about secondary research as much as it is about primary investigation. It is about the writer, as much as it is about what is being written. It is about the student, as the ethnographer, about their experience, about their understanding of knowledge as much as how they need to conform to the the directives of academia. It is about writing.

In our field * When ethnography and technology meet*

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