Abductive Ethnography of Practice in Highly Uncertain Conditions

Abstract

The highly contextual nature of ethnographic inquiry allows a researcher to develop and adjust data collection and analysis to specific social situations. This methodological flexibility also makes it possible to choose for analytic attention specific instances of human activity and experience that show potential to illuminate conceptual issues or alter our theoretical understandings. Theoretically interesting social activity can be identified using Peircean abduction. In the field, the researcher embraces serendipity and intuition. Data analysis begins neither with inductive nor deductive reasoning. By initially disassociating the data from their context, specific theoretical debates, and the experience of data collection in the field, the ethnographer is able to play with the data freely and let this process generate a surprising discovery. This discovery is then articulated through a dialog among insight, contextualized empirical evidence, and theoretical knowledge. Leaving open the possibilities of insight and discovery, abductive ethnography is a strategy of unforeclosed possibilities.