On the Uses of Members' Responses to Researchers' Accounts

Abstract

Ethnographic field research has oscillated between suspicion and celebration of members' representations of social reality. The emergence of phenomenologically oriented approaches in the social sciences has resulted in a shift toward the latter position. Indeed, the member's voice has been endowed with such authority that some have suggested that members' responses to a researcher's description comprise a significant measure of the description's adequacy. Using actual episodes in which research findings were presented to members of psychiatric emergency teams, the paper examines the dynamics and problematics of so-called "member validation procedures." Attention is focussed on the ambiguous, interactionally negotiated and politically charged nature of such transactions. Although it is proposed that these transactions are as problematic as any other, they are not to be discounted as a resource for research. Indeed, it is precisely because validation episodes often comprise intense moments of organizational and interactional life that they are capable of revealing aspects of the setting or organization in new light.