Multi-event ethnography: doing research in pluralistic settings

Abstract

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The purpose of this paper is to overcome the challenges of doing research in pluralistic settings by performing multi-event ethnographies. The proposal redirects the efforts of longitudinal data collection toward field-configuring events (FCEs), wherein multiple organizations with divergent perspectives over an issue are strategizing in concentrated efforts, at the same time and space. The authors apply traditional ethnographic tools in this understudied setting. On the one hand, these tools allow for a thick description that results in in-depth accounts of actors within FCEs. On the other hand, they provide flexibility because they can be used in complementary ways. Design/methodology/approach -The authors propose the use of three interconnected ethnographic tools in multiple events: shadowing, practitioner's diary and researcher's reflexive journal. Findings -The illustration of an ongoing research project showed how the approach helped the researchers to follow a practitioner in multiple discursive spaces but also to see how the practitioner, even with a different status in a later FCE, transported a deviant practice that denounces his persistent disadvantaged position in the field. The approach delineated here allowed the researchers to open a new window for the appreciation of the activities of marginal actors fighting against hegemonic discourses.Research limitations/implications -The application of the shadowing technique might be challenging. Attention might also be paid to the implications of previous FCEs to current dynamics. Practical implications -The tools developed in this approach have a large potential to have practical implications, as the practitioner accounts of the phenomenon in question are at the center of the data collection and analysis. Originality/value -The proposal contributes to the literature on organizational ethnography by drawing attention to the importance of tracking multiple events, not only different sites, to unveil organizational practices in pluralistic settings as events progress over time.

Harvesting a participatory movement': Initial participatory action research with the Jewish Farmer Network

“…Event ethnography is a data collection method that includes participant observation, field journaling, interviews, audio recordings of sessions, and collection of other informational material (see, for example, Garud, 2008, andZilber, 2011). The method generates thick description that includes in-depth accounts of participants at a defined event (Aguilar Delgado & Barin Cruz, 2014), allowing event organizers to understand the participant experience of their events (Holloway et al, 2010).…”

“…It was an opportunity to direct and catalyze a growing movement that embodies justice, regeneration, and ancestral connection to the land and each other. The conference was the focus of our event ethnography, where ethnographic methods were used to generate thick descriptions of the participant experience at a multiday event (Aguilar Delgado & Barin Cruz, 2014;Holloway et al, 2010). The conference also marks the beginning of a still-ongoing participatory action research (PAR) process, the first year of which we explore in this paper.…”

From “blue sky” to real world research

“…Anything in the research setting has the potential to be taken into consideration to help shed light on how things work and prompt theoretical ideas (Watson and Watson, 2012, p. 685). Ethnographic research is especially helpful for multi-level research (Watson and Watson, 2012) such as Syed and Ozbilgin’s (2009) three-level, relational framework (macro-societal, meso-organisation, micro-individual) and the use of multiple organisation sites (Aguilar-Delago and Barin-Cruz, 2014). Further, organisational ethnography facilitates multiple research methods.…”

Multi-Shadowing: A Gateway to Organizing? The Case of Hunting with Hounds

“…Multiple-researcher observation refers to different research methods and practices that appear to be much more emergent and less developed in the literature than solo observation (Jarzabkowski et al, 2015). We have selected several observation configurations found in the literature (see Appendix 3, Summary Table 2): team-based ethnography (Creese, Bhatt, Bhojani, & Martin, 2008;Erickson & Stull, 1998), team-based global ethnography (Jarzabkowski et al, 2015), and approaches that combine various solo observation methods, such as the 'observatory of the organizing' (Rix- Lièvre & Lièvre, 2010;Lièvre & Rix-Lièvre, 2013) and multi-event ethnography (Aguilar Delgado & Barin Cruz, 2014). We also propose to consider the method of 'diary studies' (Czarniawska, 2007(Czarniawska, , 2008Journé, 2008) in the 'multipleresearcher observation' category, since the researcher is alone as researcher but creates a collective by mobilizing actors in the organization to simultaneously collect data for him/her.…”