Symbolic Interactionism and Ethnography (Rock, 2001)

I can't shrugg off this image of Paul Rock looking like a character in CSI because of his work in criminology. He is an academic in Mannheim Centre for Criminology, an educational institution that provides undergraduate and postgraduate courses related to criminology. I guess if you want to do the work CSI people do, this is THE PLACE you need to go.

Anyway, his paper entitled Symbolic Interactionism and Ethnography (2001) is cited in 21 papers/books. I list below those resources which I can get access to and share how his paper is cited by others.

1. Rosenblum, L. F., (2008) "The ArXiv as a model for open Access: An Anthropoligical Analysis"
Rosenblum argues of the need to look into the cultural practices of users in order to better design, in this case, an institutional repository that will meet their needs and attract them to use it. I find this interesting because I know of a committee whose work is to look into facilitating internal communication in an organization but in their discussion, no one talks about culture and practices within each section (micro level) and in the organization at large (macro level).

2. Tan, T. K., Wang, X. W., & Zhu, L., "Symbolic interactionist ethnography: Implications for information systems (IS) research and practice"
Tan et al. posit that taking symbolic interactionism as theoretical framework will help researchers to look at a phenomenon in IS from a larger perspective that include complex social relations found in the scope of research. They also talk about adopting contant comparison approach in grounded theory will allow for greater focus in structuring data collection and data analysis process.

3. Carlsson, C. S. (2006). "Culture of practice of Ministry of Education, special education occupational therapist and physiotherapists" Master thesis. Auckland University of Technology
This paper reinforces the need to adopt constant comparison approach technique (highlighted by Tan et al. - see no 2) so that researchers do not walk away at the end of an ethnography journey feeling that they have not cover everything.

4. Tianinen, T., & Koivunen, E. -R. (2006). "Exploring forms of triangulation to facilitate collaborative research practice: Reflections from a multidisciplinary research group". Journal of Research Practice, 2(2), Article M2.
Tianimen and Koivunen discuss about triangulation in ethnography research using at least 2 comparable process to "enhance the comprehensiveness of data, to contextualise the interpretations and to explore a variety of similar and dissimilar viewpoints". They cite Rock here to say that triangulation would mean that researcher have to look into many social setting and analyse many persons assuming different roles. At another point they agree with Rock that information given by an informat may not be comprehensive and representing the view of the entire community. These information are context specific to the informant's experience. Further, they see no reason preventing an informant from lying.

5. Keezhangatte, J. J. (2006). "Transnational migration, resilience and family relationship: Indian household workers in Hong Kong" PhD dissertation. University of Hong Kong
The author introduces Natasha who was his informant and who Rock would call deus ex machina (fairy godmother who will come and help the forlorn ethnographer) - an informant, helper, a source of introductions and so on.

6. Thomas, M. L., (2008). "Faith-based organizations and legislative advocacy: A qualitative inquiry" PhD dissertation. Virginia Commonwealth University.
Thomas makes use of symbolic interactionism as theoretical perspective and social constructionism as epistemology and argues that both are congruent to each other. Also symbolic interactionism is in congruent with ethnography because methods employed in ethnography afford researchers understanding of their research subjects' context and their (research subjects) understanding of the context. Quoting Crotty (1998), ethnography using symbolic interactionism as theoretical perspective can be structured in many ways including grounded theory.

7. O'Reilly, K. (2005). "Ethnographic methods".
Quoting Rock (2001), (1) there is definitely be a topic of interest to pursue in social science research using ethnography, (2) ethnography is iterative-inductive and so researchers need to know a fair bit of their study before going down to the "field", (3) be prepared that people may not be open to be observed, (4) someone will appear "like fairy godmother to help the forlorn ethnographer", (5) tension between writing down everything observed to being selective for fieldnotes in interest of time, and (6) knowing background information first so that interview does not have to be long, repeated (to the annoyance of the interviewee).

In brief, key themes I find here are (1) symbolic interactionism as theoretical perspective allows understanding a phenomenon from a larger scope encompassing cultural practices, (2) ethnography using symbolic interactionism as theoretical perspective can be structured in many ways including grounded theory - for example, enhancing ethnography with constant comparison from grounded theory will ensure all grounds are covered, and (3) key features of ethnography research are discussed.