- At first glance, writing fieldnotes seems deceptively straightforward. Go to a research site, see what happens, then write it down. But this simple description raises a fundamental question: when typing up notes, exactly what does the researcher choose to annotate? Decisions made at this juncture of the research process may have a profound impact on the final ethnographic report. This article explores some of the taken-for-granted assumptions involved in writing fieldnotes. - Given that writing is traditionally seen as the linchpin of ethnographic inquiry (see Geertz, 1973), it is important to understand how Van Maanen’s ‘many levels of textualization set off by experience’ affect the note-taking process. - When in the field, ethnographers are already deciding what to write about. What do they notice? What do they choose to focus their attention upon? What do they subsequently recall? Of what they remember, what do they choose to document in their notes? In what detail? - How much of his equivocation occurred at the time he conducted his observations and how much was recreated when typing up his notes? The last line in the excerpt suggests the latter: the concern of ‘filling pages’ is specific to the process of writing fieldnotes. - what the ethnographer does at the word processor and what he or she does in the field have a meaningful interaction - While in the field, researchers presumably identify certain phenomena as interesting and worthy of annotation. They therefore must exercise discretion in deciding what should be documented in their fieldnotes. The sources of this discretion are explored in the following sections of this article. - In the last line of this excerpt, Spradley identifies a structure as the judge’s bench. How does he know this? He has background knowledge from three sources: he presumably has some previous exposure to courtrooms, he knows he has been summoned to the grand jury, and he has recorded other observations (of benches, railings, and a jurors’ box) indicating the likely presence of a judge’s bench. Thinking back to his time in the field, his observations resonate with his background knowledge to produce the identification of ‘judge’s bench’. - Deviant cases often lead to salient data. Cases may be deviant in at least two ways. First, they may strike researchers as deviant with respect to their tacit expectations. For example, in his study of rural communards, Bennett Berger (1981) only mentions sexual practices that might be seen as deviant by society at large. He doesn’t waste time describing the monogamous sex lives of cohabiting adults. Thus Berger’s background knowledge influenced what he perceived as salient - An alternate strategy for recording notes is to systematically and comprehensively describe everything that happened during a particular period of time, such as a single trip to the field. Systematic can mean a couple of different things. One place to start is with a generalized list of concerns - Another strategy is to organize one’s note-taking temporally: start at the beginning and end at the end - In recounting entire segments of time spent in the field a researcher will often describe events that might otherwise seem too mundane to annotate. These data may later turn out to be valuable, because they can provide the contrasts that allow an ethnographer to identify deviant cases. Whether or not they are identified as such, these cases will form the background knowledge that guides subsequent note-taking. Methodological self-awareness increases because researchers can make their tacit knowledge explicit. - By documenting omissions, ethnographers convey a more comprehensive depiction of a research site, allowing them to gain valuable insight into the background knowledge that guides subsequent note-taking. This in turn may prove useful in better understanding how and why events take place. | | | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Wolfinger, Nicholas H. "On writing fieldnotes: collection strategies and background expectancies." Qualitative research 2, no. 1 (2002): 85-93. - [Link](https://www.uni-hohenheim.de/fileadmin/einrichtungen/entwicklungspolitik/05_Teaching/02_Lecture_Material/05_Qualitative_Research_Methods_in_Rural_Development_Studies/Day_02/Day_2_-_Reading_text_4.pdf)<br> |