problems in contemporary theory and practice

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Critical Ethnography: problems in contemporary theory and practice Steven Jordan a; David Yeomans b a APSE, McGill University, Montreal b School of Education, University of Leeds,

To cite this Article Jordan, Steven and Yeomans, David(1995) 'Critical Ethnography: problems in contemporary theory and

practice', British Journal of Sociology of Education, 16: 3, 389 — 408 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/0142569950160307 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0142569950160307

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British Journal of Sociology of Education, Vol. 16, No. 3, 1995

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Critical Ethnography: problems in contemporary theory and practice

STEVEN JORDAN, DAVID YEOMANS,

APSE, McGill University, Montreal School of Education, University of Leeds

ABSTRACT This paper reviews and critiques significant developments within contemporary ethnography. The first part of the paper traces the antecedents of ethnography in an anthropology which was itself closely identified and entwined with colonialism and imperialism. The paper then goes on to review contemporary developments within ethnography, particularly those associated with postmodernism. Attempts to establish a critical ethnography are reviewed and critiqued in the following section. The paper then goes on to suggest ways in which the concepts of 'really useful knowledge' and the processes of action research might be combined in order to assist in the construction of critical ethnography. The paper concludes by acknowledging the difficulties which exist for educational researchers and practitioners who wish to practice critical ethnography in the current educational climate in both Britain and North America.

Introduction There can be no doubt today that qualitative research is widely accepted as a legitimate mode of inquiry within the social sciences. Indeed, given the long reign of positivist hegemony since the mid-nineteenth century, its ascendancy in the last 25 years has been quite remarkable. Not only has the 'qualitative turn' challenged the adequacy of quantitative methods, it has simultaneously valued and sanctioned the use of non-positivist methodologies, although some would argue that qualitative research in general, and ethnography in particular, has not broken clearly enough with positivism (see Hammersley, 1994a). In educational research the 'qualitative turn' has had dramatic effects such that it would now be almost unthinkable to begin a study without first considering how it might be conducted from a qualitative standpoint. Within the sociology of education, some researchers have even warned of the danger of instituting a new 'orthodoxy' founded upon ethnographic procedures (Sharp, 1982). However, while ethnography has achieved widespread acceptance within the academic community this has not always, or even often, extended to policy-makers and funders of research and this has implications which we return to at the end of the paper. Historically, the transition to qualitative research in the British sociology of education 0142-5692/95/030389-20 © 1995 Carfax Publishing Ltd


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was heralded by Young's (1971) 'new sociology of education'. This foregrounded neo-marxist and interactionist perspectives in the analysis of education and schooling (Woods, 1988). For interactionists, ethnography posed the possibility of opening up the 'black box' of schooling and thus revealing the 'content' of education to critical examination. The attraction which ethnography has for the Marxist tradition is twofold. First, it allows the exploration of social relations and practices of contemporary capitalism as these materialise within the everyday world, whether in schools, hospitals, prisons, gay bars, factories, or coal mines. Second, ethnographic research has a unique capacity to get close-up to sites of exploitation and oppression, thereby endowing the researcher with not only first-hand experience of what forms these take and how they are organised but also a privileged standpoint in respect of constructing emancipatory practices (Lather, 1986). For this reason, and its apparent compatibility with a non-positivist epistemology/ ontology, ethnography has also been embraced by feminism as a favoured research strategy (Roberts, 1981; Stanley, 1990). Our aim in this paper is to review and critique particular strands of development within contemporary, educational ethnography. In particular we wish to engage with the notion of a critical ethnography which has been advocated since the 1970s as a means of imagining and informing alternative educational practices (Anderson, 1989). While we are in sympathy with such a project, we want to argue that its realisation as a form of radical educational praxis remains problematic. This does not mean, as Martyn Hammersley (1992) has recently argued that the proposal for a critical ethnography is not a viable or desirable alternative to more conventional ethnographic work. Rather, it is our contention that through its affiliation with conventional ethnography, particularly as practised historically by anthropology and sociology, ethnography per se (whether critical or conventional) has remained trapped in what Foucault (1984) has described as the 'revolving door of rationality'. We propose not a retreat to, and reassertion of, ethnographic orthodoxy, but a reflexively materialist approach that seeks to recover and engage with 'really useful knowledge' in everyday life within contemporary capitalism. The paper has three parts. In the first part we critically examine some of the methodological premises that constitute modern ethnographic modes of inquiry. First, we explore the historical relationship that emerged between ethnography and social anthropology. Our purpose will be to show that both were deeply implicated in and defined by colonialism and imperialism (Asad, 1973, 1986, 1994; Said, 1985, 1989, 1993; Kabbani, 1986). We will also be concerned to outline and explore the dominant traditions, in theory and practice, that ethnography inherited from anthropology. Second, we critically evaluate significant trends in contemporary anthropology and sociology, particularly those associated with conventional, postmodern and critical ethnography. We will argue that, despite the innovations that these emergent approaches have pointed to, they have largely ignored or left unanalysed the residual effects of colonialism and imperialism on ethnographic practices in the contemporary period. In particular, we argue that the field practices that constitute the participant-observed relation require re-assessment. Finally, we attempt to take critical ethnography a step further by suggesting that it needs to challenge its own existing institutional relations and practices, some of which have been inherited from orthodox ethnography. In particular, we propose the creation of a pedagogical relation to the everyday world where really useful knowledge and action research are understood as constituting the potential foundations of a critical theory of contemporary society. Such a position is derived from Gramsci's (1974) notion that social relations are always essentially pedagogical in nature.

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Before proceeding to our discussion of these themes, we want to make a brief comment about the terms 'ethnography' and 'qualitative research.' As the debate between Jacob (1987) and Atkinson et al. (1988) has shown, these terms not only have different histories, but signify very different research traditions in education in North America and Britain. In Canada and the US, the term 'qualitative research' has been preferred over ethnography to describe non-quantitative research in educational settings. Most often, it has had a distinct allegiance to a positivist mode of analysis, as the


widespread use of Miles & Huberman's (1984) Qualitative Data Analysis: a source book of new

methods in universities and colleges testifies. In Britain, ethnography has been the preferred term until recently, where it has been mostly used to signify a non-positivist approach within educational research. In recent years however, 'qualitative research' appears increasingly to be the favoured term in Britain as well. The essential point is that ethnography remains a contested and, in our view, often loosely used term. In this paper we are less concerned with defining terms than in marking out an approach which is simultaneously critical and non-positivist. As we will show, this is what defines our understanding of what constitutes critical ethnography.

Ethnography: antecedents Williams (1983) notes that the terms ethnology (a theory of cultural development) and ethnography (a descriptive study of a culture) both derive from the Greeks 'ethnikos,' meaning heathen. From the 14th until the 19th century the English term 'ethnic' was used 'in the senses of heathen pagan or Gentile' (p. 119). By the 1830s and 1840s (when ethnology and ethnography came into usage) ethnic took on its modern racial overtones, so that 'Ethnics' in the US by 1961 was used as 'a polite term for Jews, Italians and other lesser breeds'. It is apparent therefore, that both ethnic and ethnography have nuances of otherness, subordination and marginality. Given these origins, it was not surprising that ethnography came to be closely associated with, and developed by, an emergent anthropology in the 19th century which itself was given form by colonialismn and imperialism. This last point, the relation between anthropology and colonialism/imperialism has been the subject of critical examination by Asad (1973, 1986, 1994), Feuchtwang (1973), Kabbani (1986), and Said (1985, 1989, 1993). All four writers show that modem anthropology (particularly British and American) retains a theoretical perspective and conceptual framework that were shaped by colonial conquest and imperialism. Consequently, anthropology was implicated in a complex historical web of colonial-imperial relations that also influenced developments in ethnography. In advancing their historical critique of anthropology, these authors also point to some significant problems in ethnography which we explore in what follows. Asad (1973) observes that (social) anthropology was coeval with colonialism because: The colonial power structure made the object of anthropological study accessible and safe—because of it sustained physical proximity between the observing European and the living non-European became a practical possibility. It made possible the kind of human intimacy upon which anthropological fieldwork is based, but ensured that intimacy should be one-sided and provisional, (p. 17) Within this context the colonial power structure not only constituted the material basis which made practically possible the emergence of an anthropology, but the discipline was also defined through its readiness to adapt to colonial ideology (Asad, 1973, p. 17).


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Stephen Feuchtwang (1973) has also shown that the British imperial state developed an interest in the discipline of anthropology primarily because it allowed it to collect information and data on its subject territories. Knowledge in this context explicitly implied power and domination. He points out, for example, that by the late 19th century British anthropological organisations began a long campaign 'to make anthropology attractive to British colonial administrators' (1973, p. 81). By the 1920s, anthropologists such as Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown were receiving private foundation (e.g. Rockefeller and Carnegie) funds and government grants to train colonial administrators in the fieldwork practices of anthropology (i.e. mapping techniques such as surveys and reports). In this sense, anthropology was imbued with 'la mission civilisatrice' (Said, 1993, p. xix); the cultural mapping of subject peoples for the purposes of objectifying, controlling and regulating their entry into capitalist social relations. More recently, Asad (1986, 1994) has also argued that anthropological theory and method continue to develop and deploy objectified forms of anthropological knowledge that could potentially act as methods of social regulation. This is most notable in the contemporary period with a return to die 'empiricist tradition' in the discipline that has lead to the re-emergence of two, interconnected, historical tendencies: first, the separation of 'observation' and 'theorisation' as two distinct moments in the ethnographic enterprise; second, the urge to quantify. The latter is a particularly dangerous trend in that, as he notes, 'statistics has been not merely a mode of representing a new kind of social life but also of constructing it' (Asad, 1994, p. 70). In the last decade Said and Kabbani's work on Orientalism has shown how the West has attempted to maintain its hold on empire through culture. Central to tiieir analysis is the way in which Europe and die US constructed a discourse of Orientalism which has simultaneously represented the Orient as Other and subordinate. In this context, Said notes: Orientalism is a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between 'the Orient' and (most of the time) 'the Occident' (...) dealing with it by making statements about it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient. (1985, pp. 2-3) Said is talking here of the methods used to achieve hegemony over the Orient and Third World. Significandy, the discipline that was most infused with and formed by this Occidental hegemony was anthropology. Kabbani (1986) makes this clear in her work Although anthropology came to be a leveller of race and culture (...) it was inextricably linked to the functionings of empire. Indeed, there can be no dispute that it emerged as a distinctive discipline at the beginning of the colonial era, that it became a flourishing academic profession towards its close, and that throughout its history its efforts were chiefly devoted to a description and analysis of non-European societies dominated by the West. It was the colonial cataloguing of goods; the anchoring of imperial possessions into discourse, (p. 62) In this way, early anthropological research constructed Oriental cultures and society as ethnically inferior within the popular imagination of the Occident. Yet, while there is conscious recognition in the writing of modern anthropologists of the historical connections between empire and anthropology, Said (1989) has argued that a systematic, critical evaluation of its impact on the discipline's current practices is still awaited. This is a theme he takes up and broadens in his Culture and Imperialism (1993)



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to other areas, notably cultural studies, that have borrowed their methodologies and methods from anthropology. For example, in relation to the key anthropological concept of 'representation' he observes, 'In much recent theory the problem of representation is deemed central, yet rarely is it put in its full political context, a context that is primarily imperial' (pp. 56—57). A second point that Said (1989) draws attention to is the way in which modern anthropology has become submerged within an institutionalised and disciplinary identity of its own making. Quite simply, anthropologists (and ethnographers we will argue) are too much concerned with reproducing the field strategies inscribed within their academic canon, and too little in exploring alternative epistemological standpoints. Although some moves have been made in this direction under the auspices of postmodernism, as we show, this remains an essentially conservative project in purpose and orientation. To sum up, the main thrust of our argument is that we can not separate ethnography, as an anthropological practice, from the historical context from which it emerged. We suggest that these historical antecedents have had two important, related effects upon contemporary ethnographic practice. First 'narrative realism' (Gitlin et ah, 1993), remains dominant within anthropology and ethnography. Narrative realism is both a product of the empiricist tradition (Asad, 1994) and what Said (1989) terms the problematic of the observer, which he claims has been remarkably underanalysed, even within the more radical and critical versions of anthropology. This problematic is primarily related to the anthropologist's epistemological position. That is, while their work gives often detailed and attractive ethnographic accounts of their stay(s) in the field, the ethnographer's institutional or material standpoint within the everyday world is rarely connected or made problematic in relation to his or her 'subjects' lived actualities. There is a 'thunderous silence over the ethnographic subject'. Or, put another way, 'the contributions of empire to the arts of observation, description, disciplinary formation and theoretical discourse have been ignored; and with fastidious discretion' (Said, 1993, p. 304). This implies that educational researchers, particularly sociologists of education, should adopt participant-observer methods with some caution. In Foucault's language, the participant observer—observed relationship can, in certain contexts, materialise as a technology of power, inscribed with messages of domination. For example, in the contemporary era, the renewed emphasis on the use of ethnography in policy and programme evaluation oriented research renders such an effect more likely (Finch, 1988; Hammersley, 1992). As ethnographers we also have to question our own institutional practices. That is, even in the modern (or postmodern?) era, the state still has a direct interest in promoting research that provides it with facts for the purposes of social regulation (Abrams, 1968; Gorrigan & Sayer, 1985; Gorrigan, 1990). That is, the connections between contemporary ethnography and its antecedents, anthropology and sociology, are enmeshed within the historical development of state forms of power, control and regulation of collective (class, gender, race) and individual identities. Contemporary Ethnography: an outline and critique Various forms of participant observation have been documented by Gold (1958) and Willis (1980) as being central to the repertoire of ethnography. Hammersley & Atkinson (1983) have also indicated that contemporary ethnography is distinctive in its reliance upon a diverse range of data sources. These include the following: content analysis of primary documents e.g. diaries, newspaper cuttings, photographs; interviews (whether


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framed or unstructured); questionnaires (small-scale); life histories. However, what has defined the character and trajectory of ethnography in the past quarter century has been its theoretical eclecticism. In other words, ethnographic practice has been driven less by method than a diverse and competing range of methodologies borrowed from phenomenology, symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, marxism, feminism, semiology, cultural studies and most recently, postmodernism. An emergent theme wimin these approaches, has been a concern with reflexivity and the social positioning of the researcher in relation to his/her subjects. For Hammersley and Atkinson (1983) reflexivity requires explicit recognition of the fact that the social researcher and the research act itself are part and parcel of the social world under investigation. Often misunderstood as being involved with the mere self-reflection of the researcher, reflexivity is really rooted in questions relating to epistemology and modern hermeneutics (Gallagher, 1992). Reflexivity represents ethnography's attempt to resolve the dualisms of contemporary social theory i.e. object/subject, theory/practice, action/ structure and so on. It seeks to overcome these by asserting that the research act and its product are constitutive of, and not separable from, the everyday world. Reflexivity, therefore, operates on the basis of a dialectic, between the researcher, research process and its product. Such an epistemological move has been central to the current postmodern turn in ethnography, of which Clifford & Marcus' edited collection, Writing Culture (1986) and Marcus & Fischer's, Anthropology as Cultural Critique (1986) have been the standard bearers. Although a number of common themes permeate their project in constructing a postmodern ethnography, their collective assertion that we now live under conditions of postmodernity most clearly defines their approach to ethnography. As Marcus & Fischer put it: At the broadest level the contemporary debate is about how an emergent postmodern world is to be represented as an object for social thought in its various contemporary disciplinary manifestations. (1986, p. vii) In this respect, the postmodern condition constitutes the framing story for a postmodern ethnography (Tyler, 1986). From this story flow their central analytical insights. First, the decay and exhaustion of existing paradigms and paradigmatic styles of discourse has provoked an intellectual and institutional crisis widiin the social sciences. Within anthropology and ethnography this has resulted in the disintegration of 'Man' as telos for a whole discipline (Clifford, 1986). Second, this crisis has made possible an experimental moment within anthropology which has led to die exploration of new ethnographic modes of enquiry centred on performative notions such as poetics, evocation and new styles of sensibility and writing which understand ethnography as always caught up in the invention, not representation of cultures (Marcus & Fischer, 1986; Clifford, 1986). Third, postmodern ethnography cannot rely upon the authorial practice of narrative realism (Gitlin et at, 1993), but must seek to produce a polyphonic text, none of whose participants would have the final word in the form of a framing story or encompassing synthesis—a discourse on a discourse (Tyler, 1986). Finally, a postmodern ethnography leads to an engaged relativism, restored and constantly adapting to the changing conditions of the world (Marcus & Fischer, 1986). Postmodernism is coeval with an expansion and pluralisation of the conditions of contemporary multicultural life, and it is only through a fully reflexive, postmodern ethnography, that this can be apprehended. Clifford (1986) sums up the results of the postmodern turn in ethnography thus: There is no longer any place of overview (mountain top) from which to map


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human ways of life, no Archimedean point from which to represent the world. Mountains are in constant motion (...) Human ways of life increasingly influence, dominate, parody, translate, and subvert one another. Cultural analysis is always enmeshed in global movements of difference and power. However one defines it, and the phrase is here used loosely, a world system now links the planet's societies in a common historical process, (p. 22) Combined, these theoretical and methodological advances in conventional and postmodern ethnography have been important in challenging positivism as the dominant mode of praxis in qualitative research. Yet both have important limitations as forms of reflexive ethnography. In relation to conventional ethnography, critical ethnographers in particular have argued that it has ignored questions relating to political economy under capitalism. Further, although conventional ethnography has began to question its key conceptual terms and language, such as validity, generalisability and so on (Hammersley, 1992; Maxwell, 1992), this questioning often responds to a problematic and discourse inherited from positivism (Carr & Kemmis, 1993). In some ways the postmodern turn in ethnography appears to move beyond these criticisms, particularly if Marcus' (1986) critique of Willis (1977) and Tyler's (1986) manifesto for a postmodern ethnography are considered. Nevertheless, feminist anthropologists have criticised the new ethnography for ignoring a long tradition of feminist theory on ethnography in favour of postmodernism. This has led, they argue, to merely exposing power relations within texts rather than overcoming these relations in the field (Messica-Lees et ai, 1989, p. 33). bell hooks (sic) (1990), while approving of the attempt to break new ground in ethnography which Writing Culture makes, does not get beyond the photograph on its front cover before noting that: It blatantly calls attention to two ideas that are quite fresh in the racist imagination: that notion of the white male as writer/authority, presented in the photograph actively producing, and the idea of the passive brown/black man who is doing nothing, merely looking on. (p. 127) She goes on to claim that as we look at this photograph we see visual metaphors of colonialism, domination and racism. There are other problems with which a postmodern ethnography presents us. The condition of postmodemity is simply asserted. But we may ask, postmodern conditions for whom? The peoples of the former Soviet Union? Somalis? The Chinese working class? Muslims in Bosnia? Further, as Said (1993) observes, intellectuals in the Third World are still very much engaged with capitalism and modernity! Relatedly, the postmodern condition is vaguely connected to Wallerstein's (1976) notion of the world system but this relationship remains opaque and under-analysed. While arguing that meta-narratives are dead, are not post-modernists creating another with their adoption of the idea of 'world system'? Do postmodern ethnographers suggest that because every society is in the grip of the world-system, this same system is necessarily postmodern in nature? Concepts such as power, hegemony and domination also have little meaning in this perspective; rather they appear on the page as if some deux ex machina. Ultimately, in postmodern ethnography, we have a vision of the contemporary world which celebrates diversity, difference, identity, equivalence, in short multiculturalism, on a global scale. Understood this way, postmodern ethnography amounts to little more than a re-assertion, under late capitalism, of the politics of a renascent liberal-pluralism within anthropology (see Rieff, 1993). Indeed, we would go so far as to say that postmodernism is in need of political economy. In recent years, critical ethnography has attempted to go beyond the limitations set by

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conventional and postmodern ethnography. We propose now to examine two responses which attempt to define a critical, reflexive ethnography and address some of the theoretical and methodological weaknesses we have outlined above. Critical Ethnography: two responses


Sharp (1982) argues that conventional ethnography, as commonly practised by sociologists of education, tends only to grasp the 'phenomenal forms of everyday life' without apprehending the 'inner relations, causal processes and generative mechanisms which are often invisible to actors' (p. 48). Because of this, she argues that: Ethnography reinforces ontological and epistemological social atomism: the atoms of social life are individuals; their beliefs, intentions, assumptions, and actions form both the starting point of, and dictate the explanatory procedures for, grasping social reality. The experience of social subjects becomes the prime sociological datum. Methodological individualism in addition leads to the neglect of other dimensions of social reality, and the assumption is sometimes made that only individuals exist: they socially construct their own reality, (p. 49) Her critique is aimed at the underlying methodological influences of symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology which effect a methodological individualism and an atomistic standpoint. Sharp's response is to argue for an ethnography which is located within a scientific, Marxist political economy. There are distinct problems with her approach—not least its implicit Althusserian dichotomy between science and ideology— nevertheless she does shed light on some of the weaknesses of conventional ethnographic practice. Sharp (1982) argued over a decade ago that much conventional ethnography mirrored positivist methodologies and methods. She asserts that it employs a classic empiricist inductive method which substitutes the facts of computer printouts with the 'facts of the raw data of consciousness, of the motivations, purposes, and creative acts of active intending minds in interaction with other minds, and of events and happenings as these are subjectively constructed and mediated through everyday encounters and relationships.' (p. 50) The inherently empiricist nature of ethnography therefore precludes it from getting at the 'generative mechanisms and processes which causally effect (...) activities and consciousness' (p. 50). Because of this approach, conventional ethnography could only 'apprehend surface appearances, ideologies and the phenomenological forms of social existence if not informed by a grasp of the logic of modes of production in history which is the essence of the social totality' (p. 52). Although we disagree with Sharp's methodology, her observation that ethnographic research has to be embedded within a broader political economy of capitalism does have resonance. That is, without a broader, historical perspective of the constitution of social relations and culture, the ethnographic gaze will amount to no more than a glance. However, her particular perspective on political economy also poses problems for a critical ethnography. Notably, the dichotomy she draws between science and ideology unnecessarily privileges the standpoint of the ethnographer as social 'scientist'. Relatedly, her adoption of a highly structuralist Marxism produces a mode of analysis which rests on what Marx called the 'violence of abstraction' (Sayer, 1987), where concepts such as the logic of capitalist accumulation, are substituted for detailed, textured investigations of the complexity and messiness of the everyday. What is useful in Sharp's analysis



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therefore, is her focus on developing a political economy of capitalism as the methodological framework within which to construct a critical ethnography. However, as we have argued, her choice of an orthodox marxist political economy places severe limitations on possibilities for ethnographic enquiry. These criticisms lead us onto a second response in critical ethnography, Dorothy Smith's feminist sociology of the everyday world. In her earlier writings, Smith (1974, 1984) is concerned with disclosing the social determinants of knowledge production and organisation within contemporary capitalism. This amounts to an exercise in revealing how 'this social organisation [of knowledge] preserves conceptions and means of description which represent the world as it is for those who rule it, rather than as it is for those who are ruled' (1974, p. 267). In her recent work (1987, 1990a, b), she develops and applies this analysis of the production of 'textually mediated organisation' to mainstream sociology. In doing this, she not only produces a critique of sociology as 'part of the practice by which we are all governed' (1990a, p. 14) but also points to an alternative methodological conception of ethnography which simultaneously moves us beyond the constraints of conventional ethnography and the orthodox Marxism espoused by Sharp (1982). There are several analytical strands to Smith's analysis which are relevant to the critique of ethnography we are proposing. These strands are tied together in her observation that sociology, in concert with the other social sciences have participated in the historical creation of patriarchal modes of knowing. As she puts it, the profession of sociology 'has been based on and built up within the male social universe even when women have participated in its doing' (1990b, p. 13). Entwined with this analysis is also a recognition that patriarchy is inseparable from the 'relations of ruling' which constitute contemporary capitalism. It is in this sense that Smith speaks of the 'ideological practice of sociology.' Sociology is implicated in methods of governing which naturalise ways of experiencing, interpreting and knowing the everyday world from within the social relations of capital. Smith argues that this has had several negative implications for the development of sociology. Historically, it has constituted sociology as an inherently male terrain, thus excluding and marginalising the experience and the methods of knowing particular to women. This not only means that women's ways of knowing are invalidated but that they are re-written and absorbed within the text of a prevailing masculinity. Thus, women's place in sociology is marked by an absence of being there. This is achieved through what Smith (1990a) refers to as the 'ethic of objectivity' where human subjectivity and situatedness are systematically eradicated from research agendas as bias, interest and so on. Social science can then be connected with abstract, conceptual practices in the pursuit of objective knowledge and truth. Any intellectual practice which does not correspond to this generalised form is dismissed as ideology—as contaminated with human subjectivity. Consequent upon the relations of power that are established through such marginalisation (of women and other social groups) arise conceptual practices which create 'a construct of society that is specifically discontinuous with the world known experienced and acted in' (1990b, p. 2). This is accomplished in sociology, as in the other social sciences, through the social organisation of conceptual practices. Thus the social sciences contribute to ruling within contemporary capitalism by 'transposing the actualities of people's lives and experiences into the conceptual currency with which they can be governed' (Smith, 1990a, p. 14). Central to this process is the production and re-cycling of facts which enable the ruling apparatuses (the media; education; the law; professions and management) to network the local (workplace, community) with the extra-local


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(region, nation) thereby allowing the 'co-ordination and co-ordering' of social relations and practices which allow the realisation of governance as an everyday phenomena. A good example of what Smith refers to here would be 'deficit' or 'debt mania' or 'economic refugee'. Such categories could not be worked up and used to legitimate government policy on welfare restructuring and cuts, or immigration policy, without the conceptual infrastructures of either economics or demography. In the light of this analysis and her own experience as a sociologist, Smith asserts that we must look beyond and attempt to redefine the dominant themes of contemporary sociology. In answering this call, she posits an 'institutional ethnography' (1987). This begins with a 'reorganisation of the relationship of sociologists to the object of our knowledge and our problematic' (1990a, p. 22). Such reorganisation has two elements: first, it requires that sociologists are situated 'at the beginning of those acts by which we know or will come to know; and second, to make our direct embodied experience of the everyday world the primary ground of our knowledge' (p. 22). Consequently, inquiry begins with the work organisation within which individuals are situated, whether as mothers, factory operatives or shop assistants. It is through the social relations of work that we can connect apparently micro social processes with the wider political economy of contemporary capitalism (Smith, 1987). If we accept this position, it means we can dispense with the traditional anxieties of conventional ethnography in mimicking science and its associated conceptual baggage of generalisability, validity and so on. For example, rather than adopt the conventional method of grounded theory where accumulated ethnographies or cases are used to generate generic explanations across social contexts, we can re-focus our attention on social relations as 'a point of entry the locus of an experiencing subject or subjects' (p. 157) within contemporary capitalism. Thus, the actuality of the everyday world, not the conceptual practices of the social sciences, become the point of departure for critical analysis. Smith's (1987) conception of an institutional ethnography opens up possibilities for the construction of a critical ethnographic practice with its shift from the conceptual practices of sociology to that of the everyday world. It constitutes a critique and a viable alternative to conventional ethnography, while simultaneously adding a sophisticated methodological dimension to the approach adopted by Sharp. Nevertheless, there are problems with her approach. The dense style of Smith's writing does not lend itself easily to open and accessible interpretation. It is often reined and highly abstract (e.g. her use of the concept of 'apparatus' or 'relations of ruling'). Yet she is appealing to women (and men) through the production of a sociology of knowledge which will impinge on the everyday lives of ordinary women as a form of consciousness-raising. In this way there is a tension in her writing: at one level she intends to write as a feminist who is concerned to revoke the everyday oppressions of women; at another level, she addresses the institutionalised academic, and a very specialised academic too. In short, because of her leaning to an academic audience, her project remains entangled within the very conceptual practices she attempts to deconstruct. Smith (1987) also insists upon an intellectual division between the ethnographer and subject. Institutional ethnography does not 'involve substituting the analysis, the perspectives and views of subjects for the investigation by the sociologist' (p. 161). She makes quite clear, that the 'special business of the sociologist' is to reveal, through 'specialised investigation,' the social bases of power and domination in the social sciences and other ruling apparatuses. However, she does not argue for the institutional ethnographer as expert or professional, as conventional ethnography would. Her position is that while the


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ethnographer can and should engage with her subjects in the research setting with a view to the production of critical knowledge, there exists a necessary division of labour that hinders the harmonisation of the two roles. While this cannot be entirely by-passed the ethnographer should strive to establish an exchange process that is mutually enriching in which a sharper, critical account of the everyday world emerges. However, there is a tension in her work concerning the relationship of the ethnographer to her subjects which remains unresolved. A final consideration is that although Smith's institutional ethnography represents a powerful methodology, she has mostly left it to others to investigate the problematic of the everyday world (see Campbell & Manicom, 1995).


Critical Ethnography, Really Useful Knowledge and Action Research Different approaches to critical ethnography have therefore sought to establish an alternative to conventional and postmodern qualitative research. As well as emphasising the inherently ideological nature of the social sciences and their part in governing contemporary capitalism, critical ethnography has attempted a reconstruction of the conceptual practices which have comprised ethnography per se. Consequently, accepted canons of ethnographic practice, such as grounded theory, the use of (borrowed) analytical concepts such as validity, generalisability and so on, have either been rejected or reformulated. Although this approach is still in its nascent stages, the implied critique of grounded theory within the approach of'extended case method' (Burawoy et ai, 1991), Anderson's (1989) concept of a 'critical reflexivity' or Smith's (1987) notion of 'entry points' within the everyday, suggest the emergence of a coherent, viable, alternative research programme(s) to that of conventional and postmodern ethnography. Nevertheless, the emergence of critical ethnography has given rise to a paradox. While conventional ethnography has now accumulated an impressive history of empirical studies and techniques, it has not managed, as yet, to produce a theory of ethnography. The contribution of postmodern ethnography to empirical work has to date been minimal. It's position on theory production remains contradictory in that while it is suspicious of meta-theory, it nevertheless displays an obvious adherence to a (meta)theoretical discourse embedded within postmodernism. On the other hand, critical ethnography has made substantial contributions to the domain of theory production and has contributed some important empirical studies (e.g. Willis, 1977; Corrigan, 1979; Cockburn, 1987; McRobbie, 1989; Foley, 1990; Burawoy et al, 1991; Angus, 1993; Bates and Riseborough, 1993; Campbell & Manicom, 1995). Yet there is a paradox in the success of critical ethnography. While it has achieved respectability and is now part of the qualitative tradition within universities, the question remains as to whether it has had any significant impact beyond the seminar room. Lack of such impact would be acceptable if we were to evaluate its progress using conventional academic criteria, but this is exactly what we must not do. As we have seen, critical ethnographers claim that their work has to be measured in terms of its impact on developing critical consciousness among a broad range of social groups. Our point is that academic success and respectability is one thing, changing the world is quite another. The critical ethnographer is caught in a double-bind. The first problem relates to how she might enter into a dialogue with other members of her guild so as to persuade them of the continuing utility of her methodology and field methods. The institutional practices of publishing articles and books and giving papers at conferences are useful but constraining strategies in this respect. As Thompson (1976) has warned:

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we must never become wholly dependent upon established institutions: publishing houses, commercial media, universities, foundations (...) socialist intellectuals must occupy some territory which is, without qualification, their own; their own journals, their own theoretical and practical centres: places where no one works for grades or for tenure but for the transformation of society (...) places which pre-figure in some ways the society of the future, (p. 25) In short, critical ethnography has to decide which audiences it intends to address and how and through what methods it may effectively do this. While critical ethnographers have been successful in addressing academic audiences, it is less clear whether they continue to be committed to seeking out and building upon the kind of alternatives that Thompson refers to. Second, and of greater importance, is the problem of the dialogue established through the participant-observed relation. Although critical ethnography purports to present us with a view from the bottom-up, its practitioners nonetheless come from the ivory towers of academia. As we saw with Smith, at the end of the day/night shift, the ethnographer's material location is often at odds with those whom they research. This social relation poses problems for critical ethnographers who wish to engage with others in the shaping, production and dissemination of knowledge for the purposes of conscientisation (Freire, 1972). The problem is how to ensure that research findings, which disclose sources of power and domination, do not decay within the research site. We want to suggest two approaches to overcoming these problems. The first connects critical ethnography with the nineteenth century concept of 'really useful knowledge' recently revived by Richard Johnson (1979, 1988). The idea of really useful knowledge comes from the attempts of early 19th century working class radicals to establish independent forms of education before the advent of mass schooling. In this respect, really useful knowledge relied upon popular culture for its content and forms. Johnson has shown that it had four elements. First, it was oppositional to state forms of schooling. Second, it enacted alternative practices of learning which were concerned with self-education. Third, it was preoccupied with 'education, politics, knowledge and power' (1979, p. 5). Fourth, it focused upon the formation of autonomous educational practices which served practical ends—for the learner, from his or her situation within the world. In these respects, it was counter-hegemonic to the social regulation sought through state schooling. Through lack of resources, its own internal contradictions and finally, mass schooling, the educational practices associated with really useful knowledge were virtually erased from the popular memory. Two hundred years later, really useful knowledge seems like a mirage. However, as the historical work of Simon (1965), Philips & Putnam (1980), and Wrigley (1982) on independent working-class education has shown, forms of really useful knowledge have continually threatened to pose viable alternatives to state provided schooling and post-secondary education. Indeed, even within the state system, curriculum spaces have been created by teachers who used really useful knowledge as a resource. Think, for example, of the pioneering work conducted by the higher grade and central schools during the 'golden-age' (1880-1902) of technical education that was eventually suppressed by the 1902 Balfour Act (Blackman, 1990; Vlaeminke, 1990). Contemporaneously, our research experience of the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative (TVEI) has shown us that although the Initiative did not lead to systematic innovations that drew upon and produced really useful knowledge, its emphasis upon the 'practical' did lead in a limited number of cases to teaching, learning and assessment



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practices that had the potential for its realisation. Another contemporary example concerns the development of records of achievement. While recording achievement has an inherent tendency to be used as a technology of surveillance (Hargreaves, 1989), it also holds out the possibility of allowing students knowledge and experience to inform and shape teaching, learning and assessment. That is, records of achievement have the potential to stimulate pedagogical encounters in which students everyday world, within and without school, is valued in the curriculum. Likewise, as MacDonald & Coffield (1991), Rees (1988), Rees & Rees (1992), and Skillen (1992) have convincingly argued, the concept and practice of 'enterprise education' could be redefined using criteria other than making a loss or profit. Philip Cohen (1990a, b) has attempted to draw upon his experience with the Inner London Education Authority's Mo Kidding! project, to develop forms of social and life skills that avoid the 'negative capability' (i.e. an ideology of possessive-individualism) implicit within existing school-based work experience and Training and Enterprise Council schemes. From outside formal schooling and training the Lucas Aerospace shop stewards' combined committee plan and the projects instituted under the former Greater London Enterprise Board not only drew upon really useful knowledge for the purposes of technology utilisation and production but attempted a redefinition of enterprise itself (Cooley, 1987; linn, 1987; Wainwright, 1982). Consequently, we argue that critical ethnography should not only seek out and constructively engage with such practices, but also support their dissemination. In the era of a renascent 'English tradition' restored by the national curriculum, critical ethnography stands as the only viable research approach that will allow teachers to critically engage and pose alternatives to the conservative pull of current school reforms. It does this not by starting from the dead weight of sociological or anthropological theory, as conventional ethnography does, but from a recognition that critical research begins with and works from the knowledge and skills of the subjects of our research. Such research not only holds out the possibility of a recovery of genuinely popular forms of social consciousness and the social practices which it generates. It also opens up opportunities for reconstructing social and political theory, as well as critical ethnography. This is because, as Johnson makes clear, really useful knowledge contains within it profound insights and critiques of the actuality of the everyday world from those who live there. As well as informing the theory and practice of critical ethnography, a re-appraisal of the participant-observed relation becomes possible. Rather than providing expert knowledge, the role of the critical ethnographer should be oriented to facilitating the production and dissemination of really useful knowledge within the research site. As Connell et al, have argued, educational research 'should embody a relationship where expertise is a resource available to all rather than a form of power for a few' (1982, p. 216). For this to happen on an on-going basis and to avoid the problem of data decay, critical ethnographers have to recognise the essentially pedagogical nature of the social relations they enter within any research setting. To create a really useful and critical ethnographic praxis, it is not enough 'to encourage self-reflection and deeper understanding on the part of the persons being researched' so as to attain 'full reciprocity in research' (Lather, 1991, p. 60). Rather, we must aim to learn and impart skills which will allow our subjects to continue investigating the world in which they will go on living. We emphasise skills here because we believe it is not only sources of critical commonsense that we need to tap, but the everyday methods used to produce this knowledge. In short, making the everyday world problematic for ourselves is not enough; making it problematic for those we leave behind in the


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field should be the point. The researched as researchers then becomes the problem for critical ethnography. The second approach to developing emancipatory forms of ethnography draws on the more contemporary and, we argue, complementary, concept of action research. We suggest that by drawing upon concepts and methods derived from both 'really useful knowledge' and action research it may be possible to strengthen the practice of critical ethnography. Action research has been defined as 'a form of research carried out by practitioners' in order to 'improve the rationality and justice of (a) their own social and educational practices, (b) their understanding of these practices and (c) the situations in which the practices are carried out' (Kemmis, 1993). The intellectual origins of action research, particularly in relation to education, can be traced back through Schwab's concept of practical reasoning (Schwab et al, 1978), Kolb's experiential learning cycle (Kolb, 1984), Schon's reflective practitioner (Schon, 1983) to Lewin who coined the term 'action research' (Kemmis, 1993). However, the history of action research in education over the last 50 years is complex, containing many strands, emphases, nuances and variations between national and operational contexts (Noffke, 1994). In Britain, the growth of interest in action research in education is particularly associated with Lawrence Stenhouse and his colleagues working at the Centre for Applied Research in Education (CARE) at the University of East Anglia from the 1970s. Certainly in university education departments, action research is well established on in-service and award-bearing courses for teachers, although how far much of this activity meets the criteria of action research 'purists' is a moot point. Lomax (1994) has recently pointed out some of the tensions which exist between action research and the criteria traditionally brought to bear in assessing work for award-bearing courses in higher education. In similar vein, Kemmis (1993) argues that the intervention of outsiders may introduce significant distortions into the processes of action research. He accuses some so-called facilitators of appropriating action research for the purposes of their careers within the academy. However, despite the relative popularity of action research in universities, much British educational research, including ethnographic, funded by government bodies, research councils and charitable trusts has a much more 'conventional' character, being concerned with 'outcomes', 'findings', 'dissemination' and, increasingly, the 'provision of information to policy-makers'. In contrast to this funded and prestigious research, action research has something of the flavour of a 'cottage industry', although this may be seen as a strength rather than a weakness. In terms of the argument presented in this paper the most significant element of action research is the redefinition of the relationship between the researcher and the researched. Indeed, action research would dissolve the distinction between the two. Insofar as professional researchers have a role within action research this is strictly circumscribed. In this way action research avoids the privileging of the ethnographer which, we have argued, persists in some forms of critical ethnography. This is not to suggest that there is no place for the specialist skills of the ethnographer within action research, but that this expertise should not be privileged but set alongside whatever skills, experience and knowledge other participants bring to the pedagogical encounter. As noted above there are many approaches to action research that emphasise different methodologies and method. Although we cannot detail them here, there is one strand of the debate within the action research community which has particular relevance to our argument that action research, in combination with really useful knowledge, provides a way forward for the future development of critical ethnography. Since its publication in



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1986, Carr & Kemmis's Becoming Critical has become one of the most influential texts in the development of action research. For our purposes, what is significant, is that throughout the text Garr & Kemmis are explicit in grounding their approach to action research in the critical theory of Habermas, and by association, the Frankfurt School. In other words, their analysis begins from a standpoint which is not embedded in the everyday world, but in an institutionalised, theoretically heavy, academic discipline. Because of this theoretical orientation, writers such as Elliott (1991) have gone so far as to accuse this approach to action research of being 'dangerous.' Its debt to critical theory, he argues, implies that this version of action research has 'tended to perpetuate an assumption contained in the anthropological theory of cognition: namely, that the self-understandings teachers have of their everyday practices constitute ideologically distorted misrepresentations of reality' (p. 115). From within this perspective, it is the work of critical social theory to provide a critique of ideology that will allow teachers to penetrate the 'true' nature of their practice, thus reproducing a distinction between science and ideology. Rightly, we believe, Elliott rejects this view and argues that the 'ambiguities, conflicts and tensions' contained within teacher self-understandings makes possible the emergence of a 'self-generating, reflexive and critical pedagogy' (p. 116). However, we would want to take a step back, and add that 'ambiguities, conflicts and tensions' are embedded within a particular, subterranean, 'moral economy' (Thompson, 1971) of schooling within capitalism. That is, schools as communities can be characterised as institutions with their own traditions, customs, practices and notions of 'right' that stand outside, and sometimes opposed to, government policy (as in testing). In recent years, such opposition has intensified as the existing moral economy of progressive education in English schooling has come into conflict with the new vocationalism, the moribund scholastic philosophy underlying the national curriculum, and the market provisions of the 1988 Education Reform Act (Avis, 1991). Critical theory may have a place in developing teachers understandings of these processes, but this should only occur after they have been encouraged to investigate their own forms of really useful knowledge. We propose, therefore, that action research should focus on how and by what means the denser reality of schooling generates oppositional knowledge and practices to current reforms among teachers. This, we contend, is where action research should focus its methodological eye, not upon critical theory. Thus, we foresee a pedagogical encounter in which ethnographic expertise (including social theory) and practitioner perspectives are brought together without any privileged elements arising in the ensuing pedagogical encounter. The results of such encounters are inevitably unpredictable and in this sense problematise the concept and practice of critical ethnography. Some recent accounts of action research have begun to show how critical ethnography can work in teacher development (Gitlin & Smyth, 1989; Smyth, 1991; Tripp, 1993). Nevertheless, we hope that future action research turns to really useful knowledge as both a topic and resource for teacher training and support. Conclusion In this paper we have been arguing for a critical appraisal of the dominant currents in contemporary ethnography (conventional, postmodern and critical). Although this has of necessity been condensed and partial, our intention was to show that conventional ethnography, despite attempts to move beyond positivism, is still concerned with the reproduction of normal science (Kuhn, 1970). Conventional ethnography, that is, situates itself as a disinterested, scientific activity, committed to modes of inquiry that are


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conducted by experts (Atkinson, 1990; Hammersley, 1992). In this way, conventional ethnography has increasingly become subsumed by the production and reproduction of social scientific knowledge for use within the institutional contexts of the academy and government. If this describes the dominant approach in contemporary ethnography, then the lore of textuality regulates postmodernist thought on ethnography. The recent postmodern turn in the 'new ethnography,' with its emphasis upon the understanding of understanding, discloses a programme preoccupied with the surfaces of textual analysis, having little to do with human emancipation—except perhaps, in the text. Belying its apparently radical programme, this is an essentially conservative project, camouflaged in the very fashionable discourses of postmodernity and world-systems theory. Finally, it is our contention that critical ethnography is best suited to the task of producing a radicalised ethnography in the contemporary period, through establishing the principles for a critically reflexive, ethnographic praxis. However, we also recognise that the contribution which a critical ethnography can make to an ethical project for social transformation must remain circumscribed so long as it adheres to mere consciousnessraising among its subjects. Rather, following Gramsci's (1974) observations on the phenomenology of everyday life, our point is that critical ethnographers treat the social relations of their research settings as opportunities for a pedagogical encounter with those they research. In doing this, they should not only focus upon disclosing the forms which critical consciousness takes, but seek to investigate the everyday methods through which it is produced. Showing how these methods produce alternative, concrete ways of knowing and acting within the world to dominant forms then becomes central to the research process. We suggest that recovering 'really useful knowledge,' through the practice of critical pedagogy and action research, will provide important traditions, sources of knowledge, methodologies and ethical principles and procedures which could be fruitfully drawn upon by such a critical ethnography. However, we must acknowledge that current developments in education in both North America and Britain provide an unpromising context for the development of critical, or indeed conventional, forms of action research and ethnography. The intensification of teachers work and tightening control over the curriculum has been well documented e.g. Ball (1994), Apple (1988, 1989, 1993), Hargreaves (1993). Academic researchers also face many difficulties: increased pressure from funding bodies for research which is 'relevant' to 'users'; invitations to carry out 'conformative evaluations' of self-styled 'innovative' programmes (Stronach & Morris, 1994); pressure from within institutions to secure funding in a highly competitive environment and publish research results in order to promote 'performance' in research assessment exercises; the continued and growing use of research staff on short-term contracts; increasing teaching and administrative work loads. These conditions provide a powerful set of material constraints on researchers. In addition, while it is undoubtedly true that ethnography is far more widely accepted within educational research than was the case 20 years ago there is still often great difficulty in persuading funding bodies and national policy-makers who ultimately control funding that ethnography (of any kind), should be supported. The predilection of national policy-makers for quantitative research has been well documented (Bulmer, 1978; Finch, 1986). In the 1980s attempts were made, particularly by Janet Finch (1986, 1988), to persuade national policy-makers that qualitative research could be useful to them and to urge qualitative researchers to be more alert to the potential policy significance of their work. However, recent British educational reforms with the growth of league tables and 'quality' assessments of various kinds, together with the development of more sophisticated approaches to quantitative research, for example the attempts to



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develop league tables which measure the 'value-added' by schools, are likely to reinforce the prevalence of quantitative research in the national policy arena (see Hammersley, 1994b) (not that national policy makers in Britain show much inclination to make use of any type of research). The general point is that just as anthropology emerged through the material and ideological opportunities and constraints offered by imperialism so a critical ethnography of the sort we have advocated must also take account of the circumstances in which potential participants find themselves. We must admit that analysed in this way the prospects for critical ethnography do not look bright. We recognise the unpropitious circumstances in which potential critical ethnographers find themselves and yet we continue to hope that teachers and researchers will be able to find 'shady places' in which they can continue to resist and subvert the coercive and prescriptive effects of current policies and the attenuated concerns of those who promote and fund research. For critical ethnographers the task remains to exploit the 'ambiguities, conflicts and tensions' within the educational state in order to seek out the spaces within which their project can be advanced. Acknowledgements Both authors would like to thank Inge Bates, Nancy Jackson and two of the journal's reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Steve Jordan wishes to thank the Social Science Research and Humanities Council (SSRHC) of Canada for a doctoral grant to support this work. Grant No. 752-92-2643. REFERENCES ABRAMS, P. (1968) The Origins of British Sociology 1834-1914 (Chicago, Chicago University Press). ANDERSON, G. (1989) Critical ethnography in education: origins, current status and new directions, Review of Educational Research, 53, pp. 249-270. ANGUS, L. (1993) (Ed.) Education, Inequality and Social Identity (London, Falmer Press). APPLE, M. (1988) Social crisis and curriculum accords, Educational Theory, 38, p p . 191-201. APPLE, M. (1989) Teachers and Texts (London, Routledge). APPLE, M. (1993) Official Knowledge: Democratic education in a Conservative age (New York, Routledge). ASAD, T . (1973) (Ed.) Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter (London, Macmillan). ASAD, T. (1986) T h e concept of cultural translation in British anthropology, i n : J . CLIFFORD & G.E. MARCUS (Eds) Writing Culture: the poetics and politics of ethnography (Berkeley, University of California Press). ASAD, T . (1994) Ethnographic representation, statistics and modern power, Social Research, 6 1 , p p . 55-78. ATKINSON, P. (1990) The Ethnographic Imagination: textual constructions of reality (London, Routledge/Kegan Paul). ATKINSON, P., DELAMONT, S. & HAMMERSLEY, M . (1988) Qualitative research traditions: a British response, Review of Educational Research, 58, p p . 231-250. AVIS, J . (1991) T h e strange fate of progressive education, in: EDUCATION GROUP II (Eds) Education limited: schooling and training and the New Right since 1979 (London, Unwin Hyman). BALL, S. (1994) Education Reform: a critical and post-structuralist approach (Milton Keynes, Open University Press). BATES, I. & RISEBOROUGH, G. (1993) (Eds) Youth and Inequality (Milton Keynes, O p e n University Press), bell hooks (1990) Yearning: race, gender and cultural politics (Boston, South End Press). BLACKMAN, S. (1990) Beyond vocationalism, in: H . LAUDER & P. BROWN (Eds) Education for Economic Survival: from Fordism to post-Fordism? (London, Routledge). BULMER, M . (Ed.) (1978) Social Policy Research (London, Macmillan). BURAWOY, M.,

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