The Analytic Lenses of Ethnography

Abstract

Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). Original ArticleThis article explores the analytic choices that drive the selection of units of observation and units of analysis in ethnography. These analytic choices have been underspecified in most of the literature and in most scholars' training. While debates rage about the proper relationship between theory and data (i.e., induction, deduction, or abduction) and while students are instructed on practicalities like picking a site, getting access, and writing up field notes, there is often little guidance on what counts as observable units or what the implications are of viewing the field through different analytical traditions (e.g., an interactionist or a dispositional approach).Once someone enters the field, there is simply too much data, too many potential directions the research can take; the most punctilious ethnographer studying the most bounded field site cannot record and analyze everything. To make fieldwork manageable in a way that is methodologically defensible (i.e., not arbitrary), the ethnographer must choose what aspect of social life will be privileged in data collection and analysis-for example, the micro-foundations of interaction, the logic or dynamics of organizations, or the workings of macro forces like power. That is, he or she must select what we call an analytic lens, a particular style of doing ethnography.In this article, we outline eight analytic lenses that we believe typify ethnography, organizing them into three groups that highlight the affinities and contrasts among them. The first set of lenses deals with the level of explanation:Researchers can use ethnography to make claims about phenomena at the micro-, meso-/organizational, or macro-level. The second group focuses on the subject of explanation: Researchers can choose to focus their explanations on particular people and the places within which they organize their lives, or researchers can make abstract social mechanisms the "protagonist" of their ethnographies. The final group is the location of explanation: Researchers can explain situated action as resulting from actors' durable dispositions, or they can prioritize the situational determinants of action. Implicit within the idea of an analytic lens is that researchers have a point of view. Therefore, we conclude by discussing reflexivity and the positioning of the researcher behind the lenses selected. We categorize reflexivity as an analytic lens in order to go beyond the view of embeddedness in the field as "contamination" or as a source of bias. Instead, we suggest how reflexive ethnographers can use the novel situations creat...

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