Writing Ethnographic Narratives

Abstract

This essay examines narrative choices in experimental (interpretive) and traditional (analytical) ethnographies. The material covered includes probability in quantitative and qualitative research; ethnographic narratives as ways of knowing and telling about the world; perspective as a consequence of both narrative stance and narrative voice; and the economics of producing interpretations and analyses in academic prose. Underlying the argument is the assumption that decisions ethnographers make about what to tell and how to tell it are influenced by to whom they plan to tell it and under what circumstances. Hence the ethnographer's narrative dilemma glosses over the epistomological crisis that authorship raises for the social sciences, namely, whether the researcher or the research method is telling the story.