Weblog as a research notebook (4): field notes are overrated

And something different:

In my opinion, field notes are the most overrated things since the Edsel. p.161

This is from The Professional Stranger: Informal Introduction to Ethnography by Michael Agar.

He talks about 1:6 observing/recording ratio, memory problems, how-to field note writing and researcher personal diaries. I need to read more to put it in the context, so just another quote:

[In contrast to field notes] a personal diary is a record of another sort. Diaries focus more on the reactions of the ethnographer to the field setting and the informants, the general sense of how research is going, feeling of detachment and involvement, and so on. It is just this sort of material that goes into “personal accounts,” bringing the ethnographer’s role more explicitly into the research process. Personal diaries would profit from more careful development as an ethnographic method in their own right. p.163

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/04/07.html#a1538; comments are here.

• On publishing autoethnography
• Good research…
• Co-constructing: a story of weblog-mediated relationship

Tagged as: ethnography