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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
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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

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