The Work of Response in Ethnography

Bibliographic Data

ID7842772
AuthorsE A St Pierre (0000-0002-5585-8173, corresponding author)
Year1999
Volume28
Issue3
Pages266-287
Publication date1999-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Contemporary Ethnography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0891-2416 • E-ISSN: 1552-5414
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/089124199129023442
OpenAlexW2109302290
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited44

The author uses the concept of “response” from literary criticism to examine the work of response in an ethnography with a group of older, white southern women in her hometown. Employing this concept from another discipline, she identifies two different kinds of response data produced in her study. The first is “member-check” data that she found disappointing—her participants did not convince her that she had “got it right.” The second is “imaginary” response data, produced as she imagines an audience's response to her work and as people respond to the study they imagine she is conducting. She describes why the ethics of response leaves her hesitant about writing an ethnography that claims to be the final representation of the women and their culture

Aesthetics · Art · Audience response · Criticism · Ethnography · Literature · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Representation (politics · Sociology · The Imaginary · White (mutation · Work (physics · Anthropology · Computer Science · Gender Studies · Law · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Psychology · Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics · Rhetoric and Communication Studies · Social Psychology

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