Father's Blessing: Ethnographic Drama, Poetry, and Prose

Abstract

This article consists of ethnographic drama, poetry, and prose. Following interpretivist traditions focusing on how individuals make sense of and make meaning from their lived experience, the author, a heterosexual woman, travels with a gay male friend/participant to visit his estranged father, a retired Air Force pilot and elder in the Mormon Church. The work attempts to show the dialogic construction, negotiation, and transformation of identities and relationships.

The Ethics of Researching Friends: On Convenience Sampling in Qualitative Management and Organization Studies

“…Overall, I agree entirely with Tillmann's (, p. 126; also see Tillmann, , p. 378) insistence that when we research our friends we should put ‘fieldwork relationships on par with the project’ itself. I also hope I have offered other qualitative MOS scholars food for thought in terms of research with friends and other contacts – the ethics of which we have thus far left largely undiscussed.…”

“…I did this for ethical reasons, not to verify the text as a representation of ‘the real’ – and Tillmann‐Healy (, p. 744) suggests this is crucial when researching friends. For one piece, for example, she met to ‘workshop’ it face to face with the gay man and his father who are its subjects (Tillmann, ). Similarly, Browne (, pp.…”

“…Convenience sampling amongst friends – which raises rather different issues compared with the development of friendships during data collection – has been discussed by researchers from anthropology, sociology, health and social welfare studies, social work, education, social geography, nursing, women's studies and cultural studies (e.g. Barton, ; Birch and Miller, ; Brayboy and Deyhle, ; Browne, ; Ellis, ; Humphrey, ; Irwin, ; McConnell‐Henry et al ., ; Neal and Gordon, ; Taylor, ; Tillmann, , , , ; Tillmann‐Healy, ). But this is not the case in management and organization studies (MOS).…”

“If You Weren’t Researching Me and a Friend . . . ”

“…Kelly thought that open access to her process would involve Ebony, but was this approach too passive? Should she have organized sessions to work through the data together as some qualitative researchers do when working collaboratively with participants (Tillmann, 2008(Tillmann, , 2009? For Ebony, her experiences as Kelly's research participant, mentee, and friend helped her understand the multiple and competing allegiances in her post-powder keg conversation with Anthony.…”

“…"Friendship-as-method," a term first developed by Tillmann-Healy (2003), and further developed in later work by Tillmann (2008Tillmann ( , 2009Tillmann ( , 2010, potentially offers robust affordances to researchers. For example, Kirsch (2005) asserts, "The more successful I was at forming close relationships with interviewees, the more likely they were to reveal personal thoughts or feelings" (p. 2164).…”