KWALON - Volume 27, Issue 1, 2022

Truth and interpretation in ethnography (part 2): Discrepancies with marginalized groups and uniformed professions

This essay is the second part of my contribution to an ongoing discussion in KWALON on evidence and truth in ethnography. I stress that ethnography is inferential and involves interpretation work, and in this part specifically I shift the attention from the problems of truth about the field to those in it. Using ethnographic material from Alice Goffman and insights from studies of the uniformed services, I focus on the discrepancies that result from secrecy and truth work. Relative, coherent and holistic truths thus emerge in the field. These pose special challenges for writing ethnography; deploying experience requires rhetorical strategies. The emergent character of truth also entails scrutinizing the ‘facts of fieldwork’ and steering clear of the subjectivist and objectivist fallacies of empiricist functionalism. I end the essay with three methodological tips, inviting further research into how secrecy and truth work relate to domination and resistance.

The microanalysis of online and mediated interaction: ‘digital conversation analysis’

The immense increase of digital communication in all spheres of human life has led to a need for qualitative research approaches to study this development. This article sets out the contours of a qualitative micro-analytical approach to online and digitally mediated communication called ‘digital conversation analysis’. It describes its emergence, explains its relation to Conversation Analysis (CA) and Discursive Psychology and outlines its main characteristics. Digital CA is illustrated by providing an analytical example of sharing news in WhatsApp interactions between friends. Despite several challenges, digital CA may be a promising research approach that can be applied in various academic disciplines.

A small movement, a large voice: The power of a visual research method

User involvement in health care research is based on the notion of the human being as an autonomous and speaking subject with a voice. However, not everybody is able to express their experiences in words. In our arts-based participatory health research project on attuning care for people with Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) we developed a visual research method in order to involve all stakeholders in sharing their perspectives. In this article we show that the visual method enlarged the space for the expression of all persons involved in it. Furthermore, it spurred self-reflection and enhanced awareness about the relational-moral aspects, which are not easy to express in words.