Ethnography and scientific realism: a match made in heaven

The aim of this session is to critically engage with how a realist approach can be applied to ethnographic fieldwork, illustrated with examples from the author’s own work and from the literature. In common with a realist... [ view full abstract ]

The aim of this session is to critically engage with how a realist approach can be applied to ethnographic fieldwork, illustrated with examples from the author’s own work and from the literature.

In common with a realist approach, ethnographic research is explicitly theory-driven. As a method, ethnography produces rich data which enables interpretation of the actions and meanings attached to actions which practitioners, organisations or cultures engage in. Realist approaches and ethnographic work produce detailed and contextualised theoretical accounts of the phenomena in question. Furthermore, ethnographic data collection tools, with their focus on developing a deep understanding of the cultural and contextual explanations of how and why phenomena happen, offer the best opportunity for understanding complex, culturally influenced processes; realist research also prizes attempts to explain the complex, with its focus on ‘what works, for whom, in what circumstances and why’. It would seem that ethnography and realist approaches are a match made in heaven.

However, ethnographic work is said to have been historically rooted in positivist ontology, if indeed an underlying ontology is acknowledged. So a researcher wishing to apply a realist approach to ethnographic work needs to critically engage with reconciling these opposing philosophies in a way that is authentic and capable of producing coherent findings.

In this themed paper session, I will share my reflections on how the different ontologies may be reconciled through discussion of how others in the literature have applied a realist approach in ethnographic work and how I approached this in my own research.