Martyn Hammersley - Reading Ethnographic Research: A Critical Guide (Longman Social Research Series)

Longman Social Research Series

Series Editor: Professor Maurice Craft, Goldsmiths' College, University of London

Reading Ethnographic Research, 2nd edition
Martyn Hammersley

The Philosophy of Social Research, 3rd edition
John A. Hughes and Wesley W. Sharrock

The Limitations of Social Research, 4th edition
Marten Shipman

LONGMAN SOCIAL RESEARCH SERIES

A Critical Guide

Martyn Hammersley

2nd Edition

First published 1991 by Addison Wesley Longman Limited
Second edition 1998

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First issued in hardback 2016

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ISBN 13: 978-0-582-31104-6 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 978-1-138-16127-6 (hbk)

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hammersley, Martin.
Reading ethnographic research: a critical guide / Martyn
Hammersley. -- 2nd ed.
p. cm. -- (Longman social research series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-582-31104-7
1. Communication in ethnology. 2. Ethnology--Authorship.
3. Ethnology--Study and teaching. I. Title. II. Series.
GN307.5.H35 1997
305.80072--dc21 97-29560
CIP

Set in Times 10/12 by 43

The work on which this book is based was carried out over a considerable period of time, and I am grateful to many colleagues for their assistance, including Stephen Ball, Jeff Evans, Andy Hargreaves, John Scarth, Thomas Schwandt, John K. Smith, and Peter Woods. Barry Cooper, Peter Foster, Roger Gomm and Donald Mackinnon must be singled out for particular thanks for responding to some of my recent work with detailed comments. They are the closest approximation I know to the model of the research community outlined in . They have shaped this book in many ways, not least in those respects in which (to varying degrees) they remain sceptical! Finally, once again, I thank my family for their forbearance.

There is now a considerable literature dealing with ethnographic or qualitative methodology, including many texts for students. However, this literature concentrates very largely on how to do ethnographic research. Very little attention has been given to how we should read and assess the studies it produces. Yet this is a crucial task, and by no means straightforward.

We tend to treat reading as a skill that is learned when we are children, as if it were something that had a well-defined end. But, in an important sense, we are always (or should always be) still learning how to read. A little reflection reveals that reading implies understanding, and that the process of understanding texts is a complex matter that is closely bound up with the nature of the ideas that writers seek to communicate, and with our own back-ground knowledge and experience. Most obviously, there are texts whose vocabulary we may not comprehend, for example those that rely on esoteric mathematical symbols or that are written in unfamiliar natural languages. But even when we understand the grammar and vocabulary employed, we may not always understand the message intended. A mundane example of such lack of understanding happened to me when visiting friends. The son of the house (who was cooking the evening meal) said: 'Tell my mother she looks like a vegetable'. I understood the meaning of the words, but I could not understand the purpose (and therefore the meaning) of the message. It only made sense when I discovered later that his mother had told him that if he cooked her any more vegetarian meals she would look like a vegetable! Understanding is not given merely by knowledge of the meanings of the words used, then, it also depends on the context in which communication occurs and the motivation for the message built into that context. Similarly, in seeking to understand a written text, we must ask: what issues are being addressed, in response to what earlier contributions, and why (Tully 1988) Furthermore, the context of a communication is almost endlessly extendable. Understanding it may involve taking account of the wider society in which it occurs and even of the history of that society. And, usually we are concerned not just to understand, but also to learn and to use. At one level this may be a matter of deriving information from what we read, and implicit in this is assessment of the validity and value of that information. Equally, though, what we read may stimulate lines of thinking that owe much more to our own concerns and knowledge than to the message of the text.

The complexity and importance of reading has long been recognised in the humanities. From at least the time of the Renaissance there has been a concern with how to understand texts produced in earlier periods, especially the writings of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, and of course the Bible. The Humanists were aware of the cultural differences between the societies from which these texts came and their own, and the problems of understanding that this could cause. In the Anglo-American world much of this interest in understanding texts has come to be concentrated in the discipline of literary studies. Early in the twentieth century the influence of what was labelled the 'new criticism', especially the work of I.A. Richards, placed great emphasis on reading. One of Richards' books is entitled How to Read a Page (Richards 1943). Of course, there have been many changes in literary studies since the time of Richards, but if anything there is now even greater emphasis on the active, critical and creative character of reading.