Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T00:48:22.078Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Grounded Theory or Grounded Data?: the Production of Power and Knowledge in Ethnographic Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2015

Neil Harrison
Neil Harrison*
Affiliation:
School of Education, University of New England, Armidale, New South Wales, 2351, Australia
Get access

Abstract

This paper concerns my own reflections on ethnographic research with Indigenous students studying at university. I began the research by using the methodology of interpretive ethnography to discover what constitutes success for Indigenous students studying at university. But after some unflattering critiques of my initial interpretation of the data, I returned to the drawing board to reflect on the methods that I had used to organise and structure the data in my interpretation. This led me to the critical ethnographers who helped me to look back on my initial positioning to see things that I could not see before. The paper consists of critical reflections on how power and knowledge are produced through the ethnographer’s methodology to suggest that knowledge is not just found in the field or in the data but is also negotiated and produced through the relation between the participant and ethnographer. It is this relation that governs how the data are collected and what the ethnographer can find.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education , Volume 32 , 2003 , pp. 101 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2003

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abdullah, J., & Stringer, E. (1997). Indigenous knowledge, Indigenous learning, Indigenous research. Perth: Curtain Indigenous Research Centre.Google Scholar
Bloom, L.R. (1998). Under the sign of hope: Feminist methodology and narrative interpretation. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Bochner, A.P., & Ellis, C. (1996). Composing ethnography: Alternative forms of qualitative writing. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press.Google Scholar
Britzman, D. (1998). Lost subjects, contested objects. Albany: University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Christie, M. (1994). Grounded and ex-centric knowledges: Exploring Aboriginal alternatives to Western thinking. In Edwards, J. (Ed), Thinking: International interdisciplinary perspectives (pp. 24–34). Highett: Hawker Brownlow.Google Scholar
Clifford, J. (1986). On ethnographic allegory. In Clifford, J. & Marcus, G.E. (Eds.), Writing Culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography (pp. 98–121). Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Clifford, J. (1988). The predicament of culture: Twentieth-century ethnography, literature, and art. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Dobbert, M.L. (1982). Ethnographic research: Theory and application for modern schools and societies. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Harrison, N. (2002). An adventure of insight in ethnography and pedagogy: Learning/teaching relationships and the production of knowledge in the cross-cultural classroom. Unpublished PhD thesis, Northern Territory University, Darwin.Google Scholar
Harding, S (1991). Whose science? Whose knowledge?: Thinking from women’s lives. Buckingham: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Hickling-Hudson, A., & Ahlquist, R. (2003). Contesting the curriculum in the schooling of Indigenous children in Australia and the United States: From eurocentrism to culturally powerful pedagogies. Comparative Education Review, 47(1), 64–89.Google Scholar
Keeffe, K. (1992). From the centre to the city: Aboriginal education, culture and power. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.Google Scholar
Lather, P. (1991). Getting smart: Feminist research and pedagogy with/in the postmodern. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LeCompte, M.D., & Preissle, J. (1993). Ethnography and qualitative design in educational research. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Malin, M. (1989). Invisibility in success, visibility in transgression for the Aboriginal child in the urban classroom: Case studies at home and at school in Adelaide. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Minnesota.Google Scholar
Malin, M. (2000). An undebated conundrum in the ethics of classroom research: The conflicting rights of researcher, teacher and student within an agenda of reform. Critical Pedagogy Networker: A Publication on Critical Social issues in Education, 13(1), 1–10.Google Scholar
McConaghy, C. (2000). Rethinking Indigenous education: Culturalism, colonialism and the politics of knowing. Flaxton, QLD: Post Pressed.Google Scholar
Nakata, M. (1995). Culture in education: A political strategy for us or for them. Ngoonjook: A Journal of Australian Indigenous Issues, 11, 40–61.Google Scholar
Nakata, M. (1997). History, cultural diversity & English language teaching. Ngoonjook: A journal of Australian Indigenous Issues, 12, 54–75.Google Scholar
Rosaldo, R. (1993). Culture and truth: The remaking of social analysis. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
St Pierre, E.A., & Pillow, W.S. (2000). Working the ruins: Feminist poststructuralist theory and methods in education. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Tierney, W.G. (2002). Get real: Representing reality. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 15(4), 385–398.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tuhiwai Smith, L. (1999). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Van Maanen, J. (1988). Tales of the field: On writing ethnography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Wiersma, W. (1991). Research methods in education: An introduction (5th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.Google Scholar