W8: What we learned from the man with the missing toe: 3 principles to enrich your practice in any environment

Abstract

While there remains vestigial debate about what constitutes authentic ethnography in some circles, we believe the term mandates a specific orientation, which we might call the “way” of ethnography, yet is expansive enough to include observational and participatory research in many different social spheres. This workshop is intended as a forum for discussing participants’ experiences of applying an ethnographic worldview in their research, and also for challenging us to consider how it opens up new ways of thinking about research in highly diverse settings.

Specifically, we will begin this workshop by exploring three core principles of the “way” of ethnography: empathy, multi-vocality and “being there”. Arguably, these principles are at the heart of distinguishing ethnography from other research methods and thus responsible for giving ethnography its unique cast. For example, while historically ethnography has been involved in documenting and categorizing human knowledge systems and behaviors, one could argue that the animating spirit of these endeavors has been empathy, which has called upon the ethnographer to understand another point-of-view from the inside out. In so doing, ethnography has historically been a means to refute exoticism and reveal our common humanity, even while exploring difference. Likewise, the subtly revolutionary principle of multi-vocality demands that we recognize different voices in the constitution and representation of cultures, thereby giving the subjective and objective, the powerful and the powerless, the expert and the layperson all claim to a voice. Through this process, the multi-vocal lens provides the source for revealing underlying power structures and organizing principles, which in applied contexts, we may seek to disrupt. The final principle, “being there”, is foundational because of the method’s insistence on the value of being in context, submitting to the local environment, in part because it facilitates empathy and multi-vocality, but also because it valorizes the embodied experience of the researcher. Our work in healthcare, in which we have occasion to work with highly vulnerable people, has consistently proven the ongoing value and relevance of these principles.

If these three principles are indeed core elements of the way of ethnography, then as applied practitioners, we must ask ourselves what they mean for our work, how they could affect research outcomes, and indeed even how we implement them in the radically different environments we explore, be they differences of geography, industry, context or business. In the final two-thirds of this workshop, therefore, we will provide a mock case and facilitated exercises through which participants can explore and share design and research practices that incorporate these principles in three diverse settings: semi-public (e.g. a hospital), private (e.g. a home) and virtual. The goal is for the organizers and participants to emerge from this workshop with an enhanced understanding of the “way” of ethnography, its unique value, and a strong sense of how we can elevate our current and future practice by imagining and debating how can take them into the diverse settings now and in the future.

Approach

This workshop will be a dynamic discussion, fueled by participants’ experiences and facilitated exercises, in which we make explicit implicit principles of ethnography and practice applying them in three different settings.

Goals

  1. Share best practice across the diverse EPIC community to crystallize three core ethnographic principles: empathy, multivocality and “being there”
  2. Experience the impact setting has on ethnographic engagement and outcomes
  3. Challenge ourselves to consider the implications of a “Way of Ethnography” for the disciplines’ forays into new media

 

Participants will walk out with:

  • A refreshed sense of the unique character of ethnography based on discussion, and on the organizers’ experience working in healthcare with physicians, Pharma, payers and sometimes extremely vulnerable patients
  • A strong understanding of universal best practice, generated by the group, that will be relevant across the multiple contexts in which the EPIC community works
  • A practical sense of how to apply key ethnographic principles in any current or future settings in which we may work.

 

Target Audience

People who are passionate about taking the deepest roots of our discipline into current and emerging settings.

Organizers

Emily Frank, Ph.D.
Lisa Reichenbach, Ph.D.