Difference between revisions of "Emerson-Pollner1988"

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Emerson-Pollner1988
BibType ARTICLE
Key Emerson-Pollner1988
Author(s) Robert M. Emerson, Melvin Pollner
Title On the Uses of Members' Responses to Researchers' Accounts
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, Ethnography, Research Methods, member validation, psychiatric emergency teams, field research
Publisher
Year 1988
Language
City
Month
Journal Human Organization
Volume 47
Number 3
Pages 189-198
URL Link
DOI
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

Ethnographic field research has oscillated between suspicion and celebration of members' representations of social reality. The emergence of phenomenologically oriented approaches in the social sciences has resulted in a shift toward the latter position. Indeed, the member's voice has been endowed with such authority that some have suggested that members' responses to a researcher's description comprise a significant measure of the description's adequacy. Using actual episodes in which research findings were presented to members of psychiatric emergency teams, the paper examines the dynamics and problematic~ of so-called "member validation procedures." Attention is focussed on the ambiguous, interactionally negotiated and politically charged nature of such transactions. Although it is proposed that these transactions are as problematic as any other, they are not to be discounted as a resource for research. Indeed, it is precisely because validation episodes often comprise intense moments of organizational and interactional life that they are capable of revealing aspects of the setting or organization in new light.

Notes