Affiliation:
1. Universiteit Utrecht, Vrije Universiteit en de University of Edinburgh
Abstract
Abstract
Truth and interpretation in ethnography (part 1): Tracking clues with marginalized groups and uniformed professions
This essay is the first part of a reaction to Beuving’s discussion on evidence and truth in ethnography (KWALON 74). Gigengack stresses that ethnography is inferential and involves interpretation work. Whereas social scientists may shy away from “truth,” and prefer “reality,” philosophies of truth illuminate empirical ethnography. Taking the Goffman/Mead controversies as histories of truth, Gigengack discusses created, relative, powerful, and holistic truths on the basis of these ethnographies. It brings Gigengack to a critique of functionalist-empiricist ethnography, and to point out the subjectivist and objectivist fallacies in the ethnographic practice of making truths through social facts.
Publisher
Amsterdam University Press
Reference27 articles.
1. Problemen van bewijs in etnografie: Een methodologische verkenning van de Goffman- en Mead-controverses;KWALON 74,2020
2. Empiricism and its fallacies;Contexts,2019
3. Interrogating ethnography – and coming up with the wrong answers?;Social Science Space,2018