Participating observation

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Participatory observation is a method of field research in the social sciences . It seeks to gain knowledge about the actions, the behavior or the effects of the behavior of individuals or a group of people.

The characteristic of this method is the personal participation of the researcher in the interactions of the people who are the research object. It is based on the assumption that through participation or direct experience of the situation, aspects of acting and thinking become observable that would not be accessible in conversations and documents about these interactions or situations.

“Participation” can range from mere physical presence to complete interaction with one's own role in the group, depending on the understanding of the method or the well-kept procedure. For the scientist, participatory observation means constantly navigating between closeness (participation) and distance (observation). The distance is necessary in order to scientifically reflect on the experiences and should protect against the "going native" (familiarity and identification with the observed events) or the creeping assumption of the group's self-image.

Participating observation is used less often in the German-speaking area than in the Anglo-American language area and is currently considered to be inadequately theoretically and methodologically thought out. It is “criticized that in research practice an extensive waiver of methodological rules can be observed”, even if there are, for example, evaluations that describe the participating observation as the “queen of the methods of field research” ( Roland Girtler ).

Development of the method

One of the co-founders of Anglo-Saxon social anthropology , Bronislaw Malinowski , developed this method during his long-term research stays. Malinowski's stationary field stay on Omarakana ( Trobriand Islands ) from 1915 to 1918 established the myth of field research in ethnology, but thirty years earlier Frank Hamilton Cushing lived with the Zuñi , Pueblo Indians in New Mexico for a few years . He was adopted by the Zuñi ruler and initiated into the armed brotherhood of the bow, he was also instructed in technologies of the Zuñi. Cushing lived in the southwestern United States in the 1880s on behalf of the Washington Smithsonian Institute . In 1913, W. H. Rivers and Haddon called for “intensive studies” after their experiences with the Cambridge expedition. The term “participatory observation” was used in the 1940s a. a. through Florence Kluckhohn into ethnology.

Open and covert observation

Regardless of whether an observation is participant or not, a distinction is made in sociological observations, which is sometimes much more decisive for the result, between overt and covert observations.

Observations are further distinguished in terms of the dimensions artificial - natural, intrinsic - alien, systematic - unsystematic.

In the case of open observation, the test subjects are aware of the presence of researchers; in the case of covert examination, the test subjects should not find out about the participation of the observers. The social researcher's code of conduct implicitly states that preference should be given to open observation whenever possible, as it is understandably unfair to conduct an investigation on someone without their knowledge.

However, covert observation is sometimes essential because it has been proven that test subjects behave differently when they know that they are being observed. This effect, which can cause serious measurement errors is called Hawthorne Effect , as experimenter effect too, or (according to the sociologist, who described him in detail for the first time) as the Rosenthal effect called.

Conversely, the personal involvement of the investigator in the examined scenario also creates the risk that the desired, as objective as possible findings are superimposed or falsified by subjective experiences.

Basically, the core sentence for all forms of participatory observation as a method of empirical social research is: "As open as possible - as covert as necessary."

The Marienthal investigation

The study by Marie Jahoda and Hans Zeisel on Die Arbeitslosen von Marienthal , whose first book publication was anticipated by Paul Lazarsfeld in early 1933, is considered fundamental in the German-speaking area . The authors of the field study, which was impressively filmed by Karin Brandauer under the title In the meantime, it will be noon in 1998, examined the consequences of massive unemployment in a small village in Austria that was existentially affected by the closure of a textile factory.

Through a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods of social research ( observation , structured observation protocols, household surveys , questionnaires , time sheets, interviews , conversations and simultaneous assistance), this work, first published in 1933, is methodologically trend-setting - even if its reception in German-speaking countries only years (decades) later took place. The group of Austrian research sociologists using the example of the small town of Marienthal , which was shaped by the declining textile industry, demonstrated in their field research for the first time in this form, precision and depth, socio-psychological effects of unemployment and showed in the main result that unemployment does not become active (as was mostly expected until then) Revolution , but rather leads to passive resignation .

The unemployed from Marienthal is not only a dense empirical description illustrated with many examples, but also a socially-theoretically stimulating work with a view to the four types of attitudes: the internally unbroken, the resigned, the desperate and the neglected apathetic - with only the first type still "Knew plans and hopes for the future", while the resignation, despair and apathy of the three other types "led to the renunciation of a future that no longer even plays a role in the imagination as a plan".

Participatory observation is usually used as a research method in the exploratory phase of field research, as it is very time-consuming. At the beginning of social science research, it mostly took place in one place.

Discussions

Ethnocentrism

The participant observation represented a methodological advance to the comparative method of evolutionists like Edward Tylor , Lewis Henry Morgan or James George Frazer . As "armchair ethnologists" they evaluated reports from traveling salesmen. They isolated individual sociocultural phenomena from their context, classified and compared them. So they set up evolutionary rankings such as the "development" of hunter / gatherer cultures via peasant societies to industrial societies. However, these rankings were ethnocentric, that is, Western culture was used as the yardstick by which other cultures were measured.

This ethnocentrism presented Franz Boas , founder of American " cultural anthropology ", the cultural relativism contrary. Bronislaw Malinowski called for a holistic perspective on "culture" in the Argonauts of the West Pacific , which arose from his functionalist theoretical attitude. For him, the individual socio-cultural phenomena were connected. For example, the structure of a village is determined by the social structure , which in turn is legitimized by cosmology .

Natives' point of view

Malinowski wanted to capture the "native 'point of view", that is, the perspective of the indigenous population on their culture. To do this, he divided the culture into skeleton , flesh and blood and spirit . The skeleton corresponds to the social structure that he wanted to capture with the statistical method based on concrete evidence. Flesh and blood correspond to people's everyday actions, which the ethnologist documents with the help of the field diary. The spirit corresponds to the ideas, the cultural knowledge, attitudes and beliefs that Malinowski wanted to capture through characteristic narratives.

Research in this traditional phase of ethnology (1900–1940) was based on the assumption that culture should be equated with a place. It was also assumed that humans are bearers of culture. A concept that was adopted by Émile Durkheim , but also Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict , two representatives of the American school of culture and personality. It was also important that culture is learned during childhood and adolescence.

Over time there have been some methodological discussions in ethnology. However, with his semiotic understanding of culture, the dense description and his hermeneutical approach, Clifford Geertz shifted the weight in favor of qualitative research, to which participatory observation belongs. He saw culture as a web of meanings that actors weave. The researcher reads this network or this text over the shoulders of their informants and thereby reveals structures of meaning that are partly hidden from the actors.

Postmodern approaches

Clifford Geertz paved the way for postmodernism , which is a reservoir of various currents and is understandable through its historical background. What the approaches had in common was that they shook the theoretical and methodological foundations. Due to the (third) wave of globalization and thanks to improved means of transport and communication , more and more people, meanings, objects and capital are crossing national borders and geographical areas. However, this in no way leads to a homogenization of the world. Rather, processes of glocalization must be examined. However, globalization is shaking the old equation of culture and place, which has been rethought. The ethnologist George Marcus demanded that ethnology should follow its mobile and multiply situated actors and research subjects. This “ multi-sited ethnography ” is based on various strategies, which according to Marcus a) follow the people, b) the objects, c) the metaphors, d) the life stories, e) the plot and f) the conflict.

Solving the equation of space and culture makes it possible to examine cultural differences in one place, cultural hybrids and “cultural brokers”. Margaret Rodman no longer understands the space or the location as a setting in which culture takes place. She also refuses to anchor cultural terms in places. So for a long time India was equated with the concept of hierarchy. Instead, she calls for the space to be understood as an independent research point, as it is socially constructed and polysemic . She describes this procedure as "multi-locality". Furthermore, globalization dissolves the prejudice that participatory observation must be carried out in exotic, distant places. Joanne Passaro examined homeless people in New York on the subway . In addition, culture is no longer considered stable and sedentary.

Globalization and the post-colonial debate made it clear that there is no such thing as a homogeneous, authoritarian view of culture. The task now is to capture the discourse in the field and the polyphony of the field. This is achieved through a dialogic ethnology.

The representatives of the “ writing culture debate ” wanted to replace the object of knowledge of culture with a meta-ethnological analysis of the ethnological texts. They found that writers from the traditional phase use a rhetorical style known as ethnographic realism. The ethnologist as the omniscient narrator disappears in the text. These personal characteristics of the ethnologist or ethnologist should, however, be reflected, since gender, age or other characteristics determine the access to the field.

Despite this criticism of the participatory observation method, it remains an important tool as it enables people to understand how people see their lives. In this way, ethnology can contribute to the emancipatory project of cultural criticism and cultural comparison, in which differences and similarities are worked out.

See also

literature

Essays
  • Michael V. Angrosino, Kimberley A. Mays de Perez: Rethinking Observation. From method to context. In: Charlotte A. Davies: Reflexive Ethnography. A Guide to Researching Selves and Others. 2nd Edition. Routledge, London 2008, ISBN 978-0-415-40901-8 , pp. 67-93.
  • James Clifford : On Ethnographic Authority. In: Representations. Vol. 1 (1983), No. 2, pp. 118-146.
  • Norman K. Denzin: Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials. In: Charlotte A. Davies: Reflexive Ethnography. A Guide to Researching Selves and Others, Interviewing. 2nd Edition. Routledge, London 2008, ISBN 978-0-415-40901-8 , pp. 94-116.
  • Carolyn Ellis, Arthur P. Bochner: Autoethnography, Personal Narrative, Reflexivity. Researcher as Subject. In: Normann K. Denzin: Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials. (= Handbook of qualitative research. 3). 3. Edition. Sage, London 2008, ISBN 978-1-4129-5757-1 , pp. 199-258.
  • Verena Keck: Introduction. In: Verena Keck (Ed.): Common Worlds and Single Lives. Constituting Knowledge in Pacific Societies . Berg Publ., Oxford 1998, ISBN 1-85973-164-3 , pp. 1-29.
  • Akhil Gupta, James Ferguson: Discipline and Practice. The "Field" as Site, Method, and Location in Anthropology. In: Akhil Gupta, James Ferguson: Anthropological Locations. Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science . University of California Press, Berkeley 2002, ISBN 0-520-20680-0 , pp. 1-46.
  • Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin : Participant observation. In: Bettina Beer : Methods and Techniques in Field Research . Reimer, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-496-02754-1 , pp. 33-54.
  • Florence Kluckhohn: The Participant Observer Technique in Small Communities. In: American Journal of Sociology. Volume 46, 1940, pp. 331-343.
  • Rüdiger Lautmann : Justice - the silent violence. Participant observation and sociological decision analysis. Wiesbaden 2011. (first edition 1972)
  • George E. Marcus: Ethnography In / Of the World System. The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography. In: Annual Review of Anthropology. Volume 24, 1995, pp. 95-117.
  • Joanne Passaro: You Can't Take the Subway to the Field! "Village" Epistemologies in the Global Village. In: Akhil Gupta, James Ferguson: Anthropological Locations. Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science . University of California Press, Berkeley 1997, pp. 147-162.
  • Margaret Rodman: Empowering Place. Multilocality and Multivocality. In: Regna Darnell (Ed.): American Anthropology 1971–1995. Papers from the "American Anthropologist" . American Anthropologist Association, Arlington, Va. 2000, ISBN 0-8032-6635-9 .
  • Helmar Schöne : Participatory observation as a data collection method in political science. Methodological reflection and workshop report. In: Historical Social Research / Historical Social Research (HSR). Volume 30, No. 1, 2005. ( full text as PDF )
  • Dennis Tedlock: Questions about dialogical anthropology. In: Eberhard Berg, Martin Fuchs: Culture, social practice, text. The Ethnographic Representation Crisis . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-518-28651-X , pp. 268-287.
Books

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b C. Lüders: Participant observation. In: R. Bohnsack, W. Marotzki, M. Meuser (Eds.): Main concepts of qualitative social research. Opladen 2003, pp. 151-153.
  2. ↑ Helmar Schöne: Participating observation as a data collection method in political science. Methodological reflection and workshop report .
  3. ↑ cf. Roland Girtler: 10 commandments of field research .