Methodological implications for case study research (ethnography)

Raymond Apthorpe, Human Development Reporting and Social Anthropology

Social Anthropology (1997), 5, 1, 21-34 European Association of Social Anthropologists.

E Geertz (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures, London, Fontana Press, Excerpt from Chapter 1: Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture pp 17-30 ca6720.

Guillemin, M. and L. Gillam (2004) ‘Ethics, reflexivity and “ethically important moments” in research”, Qualitative Inquiry, 10/24, pp 261-278 ca9050.

Methodological implications for case study research (ethnography)

Apthorpe’s article discusses how social anthropology may be committed to current public issues through policy analysis and ultimately to make development policy matter. Apthorpe proffers the question specifically regarding what would follow if social anthropologists were to become seriously involved in both international and national human development reporting. This question presents an assumption that social anthropology has by far been an omitted discipline in approaches towards human development reporting. He embarks on reviewing the present approach to human development reporting used particularly by the UNDP and suggests the exploration of a new approach which takes on board social anthropology as a widening of disciplinary participation.

Apthorpe argues that while UNDP’s approach to human development reporting has been widely admired though it continues to be a subject of scrutiny, it also needs further strengthening of which learning and improvements can be had through individual country or national HDRs carried out by a country’s own research and statistical centres. Apthorpe takes note that most individual country reports publishes as far only as annual Economic Reports, issues no comparable Social Report, and therefore lacks the justification for UNDP’s core construct that which is ‘human development’.

Apthorpe notes the lack of significant interdisciplinarity that could have informed the conceptualizing and design of present HDRs. He narrates his experience with contrasting reception of the HDR in some countries where the most contested issues are those within the realm of social and cultural values. Cross-cultural agreements reached at the ideological level broke down as discourse became more practical and realistic at the member-country level.

Apthorpe is throwing the question of the possibility of ‘policy anthropology’ and the possible contribution of social anthropologists in policy matters. But while he takes on board the matter of interdisciplinarity in conceptualizing and design of the present HDRs with social and cultural anthropology at the fore through his discussion of nearer-the-ground conceptualization and reporting and the idea of describing the description, I find this treading more on the discursive level and the ethnographic becomes subsequent. Consider for example his proposition that different ways of calculating and presenting ‘the same’ statistics tell ‘different’ stories. He argues that different modes of indication could tell different stories such as the change in statistical representation of an indicator or modes of indication from a particular convention to an alternative one, say, crop output per unit of physical area to rice output per some socio-economic unit of organization of rice production. While indeed this may tell us a different story and may subsequently provide us a more holistic insight on poverty and approach to poverty alleviation, I argue that it still moves within the confines of statistics or economic technicalities as it further suggests a mere recycling of such statistics rather than delving into deeper insights such as opening up the ‘black box’ of household dynamics. Does the proposition to expand the concept of poverty by changing the modes of indication or adding more (socio-cultural) indicators translate to embarking on an ethnographic approach to poverty analysis and then reporting? Also consider the case of bargaining power of women in households where Sen and some feminists argue that intra-household dynamics (which takes into consideration local cultural conceptions of entitlements) should be integrated in the analysis of poverty rather than simply measuring poverty per household unit. Taking on board socio-cultural aspects and gender dimensions as well have occupied poverty discourses and perhaps a considerable number of researches may have delved into this concern, therefore demonstrating the subsequent ethnography after the discourse (although on hindsight, it could also be that the discourse had been informed by prior ethnographic undertaking); yet the reporting of such remains to be seen and therefore presents the challenge of fully integrating it in human development reporting.

It is interesting though that Apthorpe brings in some fragments of personal experience in tackling the dynamics of HDRs in his article, a manner which I could consider as ethnographic approach as it resembles “inscribing” of fieldwork and then using this as a springboard to a discourse analysis of human development, HDR, and social anthropology.

Geertz’s article discusses the characteristics and value of ethnographic description in developing an interpretive theory of culture. Geertz delves into an understanding and appreciation of “thick description” explaining such as not to “generalize across cases but to generalize within them” in the process of constituting an explanation of social action.

He argues that theoretical development of cultural interpretation is made more difficult because of one, the need for theory to stay rather closer to the ground, and two, that cultural theory is not predictive which means that “any theoretical framework which an interpretation is based on must be made capable of continuing to yield defensible interpretations as new social phenomena swim into view”. Thus the function of ethnography is to provide a vocabulary of symbolic actions, “guess” its meanings, so that the role of culture in human life may be explicated. The ethnographer then asserts this by committing oneself to a semiotic concept of culture and an interpretive approach to the study of it.

The emphasis on “thick descriptions” as the ethnographers way of “inscribing” not only the actions of people but going beyond, from social gestures to construing meaning to social gestures, informs analysis of beliefs or actions of people. Thick description is more than mere data collection. Ethnographers have to recognize the “signs” and “symbolic meanings” of people’s beliefs and actions in order to understand how and why these are so shaped but also have to be careful not to fall into problematic models of understanding which tend to generalize a “remote locality as the world in a teacup”.

The article by Guillemin and Gillam examines the relationship between reflexivity and research ethics. It is organized within a comparison and the relationship between procedural ethics and “ethics in practice” and focuses on what the authors refer to as the “ethically important moments” in doing research.

Guillemin and Gillam argue that procedural ethics and “ethics in practice” are not divorced from one another. They elaborate that procedural ethics serves a valuable function in forcing researchers to consider and reflect on the fundamental guiding principles that govern research integrity. They also proposed the expansion of the meaning of the notion of reflexivity which points to a researcher acknowledging the ethical dimensions of ordinary, everyday research practice, being sensitive to “ethically important moments” in research practice, and having or being able to develop a means of addressing and responding to ethical concerns if and when they arise in the research (including a way of preempting potential ethical problems before they take hold).

Thus the idea of ethics continues to evolve based on communicative action in practice, in the different and specific particularities and contexts of and between the knower and the known, with reflexivity as a tool for this conceptual change. But however evolving this idea of ethics maybe, it remains to be anchored in accountability for human action.

Common among the three articles is the importance of a solid grounding of theory based on ground level specificities that which turns towards the nuances of ethnographic tradition.