Ethnography: Telling Practice Stories
Title
Ethnography: Telling Practice Stories
Author
O'Reilly, Karen
Research Area
Methods of Research
Topic
Research Methods ‐ Qualitative
Abstract
In this essay I argue that the central emerging trend in ethnography is the telling of practice stories, that is narrative (or story‐like) accounts that make sense of social phenomena by understanding how people respond to constraints and opportunities but in turn create the cultures, constraints, and opportunities within which others act. Drawing either overtly or implicitly on different versions of what has become known as practice theory, contemporary ethnographers increasingly aspire to unravel the processes involved in the ongoing constitution of social life. This constitution is made up of free will as well as structures that restrict action. The key principles of ethnography, established to challenge preconceptions and to yield complex understandings, remain fundamental to its methodology. This is despite massive social change and the emergence of “new ethnographies” to understand such things as globalization and technological change. These key principles are exactly what are required for the analysis of social life as practice. Ethnography pays attention to people's feeling and emotions, their experiences and their free choices, but also to the wider constraints and opportunities that frame their agency. And they do this always in the context of people's daily lives, cultures, and communities, using the key methods of watching, taking part, sharing in conversations and listening.