An Ethnographic Toolkit for Studying the Networking Pathways of Hard-to-Reach Populations: The Case of Cosmetic Surgery Consumers in South Korea

Abstract

This article develops a novel ethnographic toolkit for examining the networking pathways that hard-to-reach populations use to socially survive. The toolkit consists of two sampling strategies (snowball and purposive sampling) and three data collection practices (role shuttling, site shuttling, and autoethnography). This article illustrates the applications of the toolkit in an ethnography of South Korean cosmetic surgery clinics and digital forums from 2018 to 2019 by uncovering the role that furtive networks play in facilitating cosmetic surgery consumption. Longitudinal in nature, the toolkit excels in examining the network’s dynamism, informal hierarchy, and the meaning-making and networking pathways that allow members of a hard-to-reach population like cosmetic surgery consumers in South Korea to participate in stigmatized practices. In the hard-to-reach population of surgery enthusiasts, I find that surgery is purchased by consumers through persuasive reconstructions of the meanings of success, body, and self by an elusive network of clinicians, who are introduced by an ever-changing roster of past cosmetic surgery consumers perceived to be high-status.

Social capital exchanges in voluntary associations and work organizations: A network perspective

“…The extent to which members participate, for instance, marginal or extensive, is not reflected in such a list. Some solutions have been proposed by way of implementing a snowball design, where respondents are sampled randomly and asked questions about the nature of others’ participation, continuously repeated to produce multiple samples based on indegrees to update the profile of the association’s members (Au, 2022a). This is akin to a “fixed list” type of sampling, where we begin with a list of actors in a network and continually add actors to it based on new linkages we uncover (Doreian et al., 2020).…”

Consumer logics and the relational performance of selling high-risk goods: the case of elective cosmetic surgery

“…From the moment consumers enter the clinic, they are elevated from the asymmetrical, crude regularities of an imperfect world into a realm where the cleanliness, the symmetry, the luxury, the price of the space reflected the promise of what they could do for their person. Like how the presentation of deep expertise generates a sense of trust and willingness to conform among consumers (Au, 2022a), the grandeur of the space depresses consumers' tendency to doubt and plants an inclination to trust.…”