Research project Participant observation: reflections on a method
The intention of the project is to shed light upon how participant observation has been used and debated in Nordic Ethnology and Folklore Studies in the last five decades, and to reflect upon its prospective future use.
Project description
Recent decades have seen an increased formalisation of research ethics, with wide implications for ethnographic methods. For researchers who want to perform by the book, efforts must be made to adjust their planned research to current regulations and directives, and some kinds of ethnographic methods, most notably participant observation, are particularly hard to fit in. It remains to be seen what may be gained, lost, and transformed in this process, in the long run. This project will provide a back-drop for such reflection by exploring how the method of participant observation has been practiced in the disciplines of European Ethnology and Folklore studies in the Nordic countries from the 1970’s onward. What has been perceived as its most distinctive components? How has it been aligned to theoretical frameworks? What kind of knowledge has it yielded? How has it been discussed and criticised? What kind of development has it been subject to, and to what ends? And returning, finally, to the present and the future: what components or aspects of the method can be maintained for future use?
Project members
Project managers
Barbro Blehr
Professor
