{"title":"Familiarity and distance in ethnographic fieldwork: field positions and relations in adult education","authors":"Henriette Duch, Annette Rasmussen","doi":"10.1080/17457823.2020.1760910","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Familiarity and distance is an issue that is much discussed in ethnographic fieldwork. This paper focuses on the topic of balancing familiarity and distance when the researcher is directly or indirectly part of the field, which in the study consists of an adult education context of two different teacher-training courses for upper secondary teachers. The fieldworker is also a teacher at one of the courses in the study, which is thus in a double sense framed by the challenge of an adult education study. The analysis is based on Bourdieu’s concept of participant objectification and Gold’s categorising of roles in ethnographic fieldwork. It illustrates how different contexts depending on the prior familiarity of the fieldworker provide access to different degrees of participation. The particular adult education context and fieldworker relations complicate the fieldwork relations and the act of balancing familiarity and distance.","PeriodicalId":46203,"journal":{"name":"Ethnography and Education","volume":"16 1","pages":"77 - 91"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1000,"publicationDate":"2020-05-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17457823.2020.1760910","citationCount":"2","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Ethnography and Education","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17457823.2020.1760910","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Abstract
ABSTRACT Familiarity and distance is an issue that is much discussed in ethnographic fieldwork. This paper focuses on the topic of balancing familiarity and distance when the researcher is directly or indirectly part of the field, which in the study consists of an adult education context of two different teacher-training courses for upper secondary teachers. The fieldworker is also a teacher at one of the courses in the study, which is thus in a double sense framed by the challenge of an adult education study. The analysis is based on Bourdieu’s concept of participant objectification and Gold’s categorising of roles in ethnographic fieldwork. It illustrates how different contexts depending on the prior familiarity of the fieldworker provide access to different degrees of participation. The particular adult education context and fieldworker relations complicate the fieldwork relations and the act of balancing familiarity and distance.
期刊介绍:
Ethnography and Education is an international, peer-reviewed journal publishing articles that illuminate educational practices through empirical methodologies, which prioritise the experiences and perspectives of those involved. The journal is open to a wide range of ethnographic research that emanates from the perspectives of sociology, linguistics, history, psychology and general educational studies as well as anthropology. The journal’s priority is to support ethnographic research that involves long-term engagement with those studied in order to understand their cultures, uses multiple methods of generating data, and recognises the centrality of the researcher in the research process. The journal welcomes substantive and methodological articles that seek to explicate and challenge the effects of educational policies and practices; interrogate and develop theories about educational structures, policies and experiences; highlight the agency of educational actors; and provide accounts of how the everyday practices of those engaged in education are instrumental in social reproduction.