Alvesson Methodology for close up studies – struggling with closeness and closure

Higher Education 46: 167–193, 2003.© 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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Methodology for close up studies – struggling with closeness andclosure

MATS ALVESSONDepartment of Business Administration, School of Economics and Management, LundUniversity, PO Box 7080, SE-220 07 LUND/Sweden (Phone: +46 46 222 42 44; Fax: +46 46222 44 37; E-mail: [email protected])

Abstract. The paper critically reviews some themes and methods within qualitative researchand argues for self-ethnography as an approach to study universities and other settings whichthe researcher is highly familiar with, and has direct access to. Advantages and disadvantagesare discussed. In particular the struggle between utilizing closeness to empirically rich situa-tions and avoid the closure following from being (staying) native is highlighted. Some ideasfor self-ethnographic work in organization studies are developed.

Keywords: ethnography, de-familiarization, higher education qualitative methodology,organizational research

Introduction

It is rare that academics study the “lived realities of” their own organizations,e.g. their own universities or rather the more delimited settings in which theyare active, such as departments, research groups, committees or interactionswith students. There may be good reasons for this. It is difficult to studysomething one is heavily involved in. There may be anticipations of thosetargeted for study to experience breaks of trust. Some of the reasons fornot studying the setting in which one is active may be bad, however, butstill dominate due to their taken for granted character. Personal involvementshould not necessarily rule out an inquiry, it may be a resource as much as aliability. Ideas about organizational loyalty requiring that one is not exposing“backstage” conditions may lead to, or be an excuse for, self-disciplinationand subordination to conventions on proper behaviour which are taken forgranted.

Studying university settings as organizations may, of course, be carriedout in a variety of ways. Much of the research work has addressed ratherimpersonal aspects of organizations. At a certain level of abstraction, acts,practices, relations, feelings and cognitions are totally lost to the benefit ofthe correlation of variables. Here, the “subjectivity” of the researcher, or, andrather, the impression of it, has been minimized. My interest circles around

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what “really” goes on in organizations: how people act, interact, talk andaccomplish things. For me, the understanding of organizations calls for aconsiderable amount of “micro-anchoring”. This is typically understood asimplying a qualitative approach.

Normally such an approach means that the researcher tries to get rela-tively “close” to the meanings, ideas, discursive and/or social practices of agroup of people that the researcher is approaching. Qualitative research isoften seen in geographical terms as a movement when a researcher, initiallyat a distance, is coming closer and closer the lived realities of other people.Geographical terminology here is not used solely in a metaphorical manner.In anthropology the ethnographer may travel a long distance in order to get inphysical contact and then make observations at, perhaps, 10–20 yards fromthe natives. In qualitative social science addressing less “exotic objects ofstudy” the researcher perhaps travels a few miles and then carry out fieldworkat microphone-holding distance – say 2 yards – from the subjects.

In this paper I will explore the possibilities of research avoiding theelement of physical and metaphorical distance reducing activity, i.e. to studyone’s own setting rather than the setting of a group of other people. I willthen introduce and explore the idea of a self-ethnography and elaborate on itspossibilities and difficulties. I will start, however, with a brief review of someproblems in qualitative research indicating why we need to go more into theethnographic direction and then discuss why we may want to explore newways of doing so. I concentrate on these two methods (a) for space reasons,(b) as these two probably are the most popular ones, and (c) the points madeabout interviews also indicate some of the problems with methods such asfocus groups and diaries.

Some problems with research interviews

As will be addressed later, the difficulties in doing research about one’sown setting, per definition including (although not necessarily focusing) theresearcher-author her-/himself, are great. There are intellectual as well aspolitical problems involved. Why make research life so complicated andrisky? One answer to this question is to point at problems with the alter-natives. Awareness of the weakness of the alternatives may also, to theextent that one’s critics are familiar with these, provide more space for andacceptance of efforts to experiment with new ways of doing research.

Qualitative research often means conducting and interpreting interviews.The rationale is that a rich set of accounts of the interviewee’s experiences,knowledge, ideas and impressions may be produced and documented. Mostof the literature on interviewing deal at length with how this practice may be

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utilized as effectively as possible. While realizing some of the complexitiesinvolved, it assumes that skills may be developed and an approach taken inwhich errors are minimized and qualified empirical material be produced.

Nevertheless, there are some serious problems with interviews that cannot really be avoided through the use of techniques aiming to make interviewwork as rational as possible.1 There are always sources of influence in aninterview context that can not be minimized or controlled (Alvesson 2003).These go far beyond what may be seen as pure “errors”. As Silverman (1989,1993) has stressed, the value of interview statements is in many cases limitedin terms of their capacity to reflect reality “out there” as well as the subjectiveworld of the interviewee (beliefs, attitudes, psychological traits, etc.). Thisis partly the case because the statements are liable to be determined by thesituation, i.e. they are related to the interview context rather than to any otherspecific “experiential reality”, and partly because they are affected by theavailable cultural scripts about how one should normally express oneself onparticular topics (see also Dingwall 1997; Potter and Wetherell 1987; Shotterand Gergen 1989, 1994, etc.).

An interview is a social situation and that which is said is far too context-dependent to be seen as a mirror of what goes on outside this specific situation– in the mind of the interviewee or in the organization “out there”. Inter-viewees speak in accordance with norms of talk and interaction in a socialsituation. The research interview is thus better viewed as the scene for a socialinteraction rather than a simple tool for collection of “data”. Critics object tothe naïve and rather romantic view of research and research subjects, whichbelieves that genuine experiences can be captured with the help of interviews.

Most proponents of qualitative methods probably agree about the signifi-cance of respondent’s expectations of what the researcher wants to hear andsocial norms for how one expresses oneself. Many would, however, believethat establishing close personal contact with respondents – who then areseen as “participants“ instead – may minimize this problem. Fontana andFrey (1994), for example, suggest that the researcher may reject “outdated”techniques of avoiding getting involved or providing personal opinion andto engage in a “real” conversation with “give and take” and “emphaticunderstanding”.

This makes the interview more honest, morally sound, and reliable,because it treats the respondent as an equal, allows him or her to expresspersonal feelings, and therefore presents a more ‘realistic’ picture that canbe uncovered using traditional interview methods. (p. 371)

Despite my sympathy for this kind of interviewing, I don’t think itguarantees “truthful” interview statements that give a “realistic” picture. All

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experiences and social phenomena may be represented in a variety of waysand there are always the element of arbitrariness, chance and availability of aparticular mix of discourses guiding a specific interview statement. Whilean interview technique trying to maximize neutrality and minimize inter-viewer influence may lead to shallow, convention-guided and not very honestaccounts, closeness-maximizing approaches may lead to that the orientationsof the researcher more strongly guide responses. An interviewer engaging in“emphatic understanding” may trigger sympathy from the interviewee andmake him or her wanting to agree with and please the former. Even if theinterviewer does not espouse his or her stand on the subject matter or evenresearch interests – thus deviating from the ideal of “an honest, sound andreliable” interview expressed in the quote above – the interviewee developsan assumption of what the researcher is up to and this assumption framesthe responses. In many cases the interview probably has clear constitutiveeffects. A feminist woman emphatically interviewing a woman may bringthe latter to express a more pro-feminist opinion or feminism-supportingaccount of experiences than would otherwise be the case. A researcher inter-ested in “academic leadership” may be successful in getting a departmentchairperson to constitute her- or himself as a leader in the interview, some-thing that the chairperson may or may not do in everyday life. Even if aninterviewer should manage to maximize honesty and minimize the want toadapt to the assumptions of the researcher’s anticipations and values or tocomply to social norms for expressing oneself, honesty and independence donot restrict how one can represent the experiential or external world – thereare always a million of aspects, words and empirical illustrations to choosebetween when accounting for non-trivial issues. In addition one can neverknow for certain what expectations research subjects have, how honest theyare, etc. To appear “honest” – and not socially incompetent or odd – is asocial accomplishment and calls for impression management. Intervieweesare frequently politically conscious actors. It seems reasonable to expect thatinterview accounts at least to some extent are driven by interests to heldup specific versions of how social reality preferably should be understoodas much as a neutral wish to tell the truth, as known by the interviewee.Even truth-telling may be selective and guided by ideas of the individualand collective interests of the interviewee. In academic contexts, people aretypically aware of issues like personal, institutional and occupational prestigeand reputation. Organizational and professional loyalties and fear of beingperceived as illoyal are hardly bracketed when people respond to interviewquestions (Alvesson 2003).

I am not against interviews and believe we can learn a lot from askingquestions to people and – with some skepticism – listening to their answers.


Still, there are good reasons to be more restrictive than is presently the casein our reliance on this as a technique for getting knowledge of what goeson outside interview situations. It is simply too difficult to sort out script-following, the social dynamics of the interview situation, impression manage-ment and (other forms of) politically conscious language use from validaccounts about the employee’s feelings, thoughts and ideas, respectively,social practices “out there”.2 It is seldom possible to separate the “distor-tions” from “authentic experiences” or “correct information” (Alvesson 2003;Silverman 1993).

Ethnography

An ambitious alternative to solely or mainly relying on a set of interviews is tocarry out an ethnography. There are, of course, different opinions about whatis included in the concept of ethnography. Some people define it broadly asa study of an explorative nature, working with unstructured data, being caseoriented and expressing an interest in meanings (Atkinson and Hammersley1994) or any study involving observation of what is referred to as naturallyoccurring events (Silverman 1985). I think that the term serves us best ifreserved for studies involving a longer period of fieldwork in which theresearcher tries to get close to the community (organization, group) beingstudied, relies on their accounts as well as on observations of a rich varietyof naturally occurring events (as well as on other material, e.g. documents ormaterial artifacts) and has an interest in cultural issues (meanings, symbols,ideas, assumptions). Unlike the authors just referred to, many authors viewan interest in cultural analysis as a crucial criteria for an ethnography (e.g.Wolcott 1995). One element here is thick description, i.e. careful accounts ofsocial phenomena in which layers of meaning are expressed (Geertz 1973).One may, however, also talk about ethnographies of institutional discourse(Miller 1997; cf Baszanger and Dodier 1997) in which it is not so muchmeaning as discourse in social settings that is investigated. The increasingawareness of problems with interviews, together with interests in relatingmacro and micro levels, as well as the current popularity of cultural analysis,have probably led to a greater interest in ethnography. Ethnography is lookedupon as sophisticated - it involves more than just interviewing. First-handexperiences – having “been there” – offer a deeper level of understandingand a stronger authority-base than sending out questionnaires and listeningto people’s “stories” in interview situations. Its positive aura seems to attractmany people with diverse orientations. The variation amongst those wantingto associate themselves with the ethnography label means that it becomesdiluted as a term, perhaps even as a methodology.

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Sometimes people emphasize two major elements of an ethnography: theprocess of fieldwork and the writing of a text (Van Maanen 1995). Theterm ethnography actually has two meanings: the empirical work and thecompleted study (text).

Ethnographies have some clear advantages. Observations of naturallyoccurring events avoid – or, more usually, reduce – the researcher’s depend-ence of the accounts of respondents. The researcher may discover aspectswhich interviewees may be unaware of or which, for other reasons, theyfind difficult to articulate. However, interviews or less formal, more spontan-eous talks between researcher and informants are almost always an importantcomplement to this method. Without the accounts of the people being studied,it is very difficult to say something about the meanings of and ideas guidingparticular behaviours and practices. Interviews may provide richer results asthe researcher over time develops his/her understanding, can ask better ques-tions and may get better contact with the “natives”. The use of a multitude ofmethods – sometimes referred to as triangulation – is often to be preferred,not in order to zoom in the truth through different methods, but in order tocreate a richer picture (Denzin 1994).

Disadvantages with ethnographies include them being time-consuming,often personally tiresome and stressful to carry out. The method of “hangingaround” involves a lot of dead time. Ethnographies are too ineffective formost research purposes (Wolcott 1995). A somewhat more general problemconcerns cultural studies in general as much as ethnography as a specificmethod. When studying “exotic” groups there is the risk that the researcher“goes native”, i.e. becomes caught in details and local understanding withoutbeing able to say something systematic of wider theoretical interest. Theopposite problem concerns the difficulties for a representative of one cultureto fully or even adequately understanding another one. On the whole, studentsof organizational culture within one’s own national context suffer from a lackof imagination making it possible to accomplish studies not caught up in thetaken-for-granted assumptions and ideas that are broadly shared between theresearcher and the researched (Alvesson 1993). Too much of organizationallife is often too familiar. For academics studying other academics this is anespecially strong problem.

A more fundamental problem, which also characterizes other qualitativeresearch, concerns the difficulties in handling all the empirical material andin producing a text that does justice to it. Even if the ethnographer claimsthat his or her firsthand experiences of the object of study is a strong basisof authority, the text produced is not just a document mirroring something“out there”. The problems of “writing the study up” has received muchattention in anthropology and other ethnographically oriented research areas


(Clifford and Marcus 1986; Geertz 1988; Marcus and Fischer 1986; VanMaanen 1988, 1995). Ethnography has gone from a relatively unreflective,closed and general description of “a whole way of life” – not too difficultto picture in a text - and instead emphasized a more tentative, open andpartial interpretation, drawing attention to matters of uncertainty and stylein writing (Geertz 1973, 1988). Recent critique has drawn attention to thefictional nature of ethnographies – and, for that matter, all social research.The text is seen as central. It tells a story, it adapts a particular style, theauthor make all kinds of moves in order to create certain effects, e.g. trust-worthiness, legitimacy, brilliance. All these go far beyond simply reportingdata and describing objective reality. Things going on in social reality outthere may inspire the author but puts highly uncertain imprints on the text. Wehave every reason to be wary of the realistic or naturalistic mode of writing“in which the production of understanding and construction of the text arehidden by a form of account that purports to present what is described simply’as it appeared’; this being treated, with more or less conviction, as ‘how itis’ ” (Hammersley 1990, p. 606).

This aspect may be concretized through emphasizing the selectivity of theempirical material re-produced in the published text. The output of a set of(open) interviews and long-term observer participation aspiring to describea complex reality is always difficult to transcribe in research texts. Alongwith a whole host of other problems, partly indicated above – e.g. interviewaccounts as an outcome of the social situation and of the following of scripts –the presentation of the material inevitably becomes a question of selection anddiscretion/arbitrariness. This is a particular problem of non-formal, broaderstudies utilizing firsthand experiences, extensive interview and observationmaterial, much of this being collected in a non-structured and non-systematicway. Only a very small portion of all that which has been said by the inter-viewees and observed, usually during several weeks or months, can appear ina publication or even fully considered in analysis. In addition, of course, wehave the “problem” that behaviours, meanings, etc can not really be mirroredin a text.

Writing conventions typically prevent a text from appearing too contra-dictory and confusing for the reader. (The presentation of material pointingin different directions is acceptable, but only to a certain degree, and theauthor is supposed to get it all together at one level or another at some point.)To accomplish a text that gives a good account in the sense of “mirroring”a reality represented in all this empirical material is very difficult, if notimpossible – even if one disregards the fundamental problem of treatinglanguage as standing in a one-to-one relationship to other phenomena.

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For these and other reasons, ethnography has lost some of its innocenceand self-confidence in terms of authority. As Van Maanen (1995, p. 2) says,“ethnography is no longer pictured as a relatively simple look, listen and learnprocedure but, rather, as something akin to an intense epistemological trial byfire”.

Of course, these problems are not only valid for ethnography, althoughpossible more pronounced and apparent there, but are relevant for all research,especially qualitative research.

To sum up, there are many advantages with “conventional” ideas aboutethnography. However, they are time-consuming and often uneconomical,they often mean that “empirical material” (piles of interview and observa-tion notes) receive (too) much attention, at the expense of other virtues inresearch, such as reflexivity at various levels of one’s research and interpre-tations. The idea of covering large chunks of a social reality intensifies theproblem of producing a text “faithful” to this reality and the element of fictionbecomes important to attend to. This problem is somewhat less salient in morestructured approaches such as interview inquiries. The problem of masteringcloseness/distance – learning the culture and being able to read it so thatsomething of a broader/theoretical interests emerges out of the project – is ageneral one for social science, but is of specific relevance for ethnographies,as they are more ambitious than other methods in terms of getting close to thenatives and aim for cultural analysis.

Self-ethnography

As a response to some of the problems of interview-based qualitative researchand ethnographies what I call the self-ethnography may be considered. A self-ethnography is a study and a text in which the researcher-author describes acultural setting to which s/he has a “natural access”, is an active participant,more or less on equal terms with other participants. The researcher then worksand/or lives in the setting and then uses the experiences, knowledge andaccess to empirical material for research purposes. This research is, however,not a major preoccupation, apart from at a particular time when the empiricalmaterial is targeted for close scrutiny and writing. The person is thus not anethnographer in the sense of a professional stranger or a researcher primarilyoriented to studying the specific setting. Participant observation is thus nota good label in this case, observing participant is better. Participation comesfirst and is only occasionally complemented with observation in a research-focused sense. One may also imagine versions of self-ethnography, when themonitoring of what goes on becomes a chief preoccupation. Or one mayimagine certain moments in the research process that are more intense in


terms of observation – the self-ethnographer becomes called to full-time duty.In this case, self-ethnography borders to participant observation. A signifi-cant difference is that the conventional ethnographer uses any kind of activeparticipation for an instrumental purpose – the ethnographer working as alumberjack does so in order to be able to produce research about lumber-jacks, not because of an inner urge to cut down trees – whereas the idea of aself-ethnography is to utilize the position one is in also for other, secondarypurposes, i.e. doing research on the setting of which one is a part.

The term self-ethnography may sound as if the researcher her- or himselfthat is focused. The intention is, however, as said to draw attention toone’s own cultural context, what goes on around oneself rather than puttingoneself and one’s experiences in the centre. Self-ethnography then is abit different from some recent work in which the deeply personal experi-ences of the researcher are in focus. This kind of work is often labelled asautoethnography (Ellis and Bochner 2000). “Autoethnographies are highlypersonalized, revealing texts in which authors tell stories about their ownlived experiences, relating the personal to the cultural” (Richardson 2000,p. 931). There is a strong inward-looking element in this kind of work, eventhough the researcher goes back and forth between

focusing outward on social and cultural aspects of their personal experi-ence; then, they look inward, exposing a vulnerable self that is moved byand may move through, refract, and resist cultural interpretations. (Ellisand Bochner 2000, p. 739)

A related stream, more common in Europe, is called memory work andis linked to feminism (e.g. Widerberg 1995). Memory work and ethnographyshare a focus on strongly personal experiences, e.g. and as a patient in thehospital system (e.g. Kolker 1996) or as a women in a male-dominated society(Widerberg 1995). These texts, that tend to be more autobiographical thanobservational in a conventional social science sense, then differs significantlyfrom the research method described here, which put emphasis on carefuldocumentation and interpretation of social events that one is witnessingand do not necessarily emphasize personal meaning or the strong subjectiveaspects.

In the kind of research that I propose, the work situation provides theviewpoint, but the aim is to carry out cultural analysis and not introspection,although it is important to not overstress this division as one’s own feelings,thoughts and experiences may offer valuable material. As Van Maanen (1988)suggests ethnographies are sometimes written in a confessional style, i.e. theresearcher-author writes from a personal position and proceeds from personalexperiences of the encounter with those being studied. A self-ethnography

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does not necessarily imply a confessional style; it can be written in a conven-tional (realist) or in any other way. One possibility is to provide detailedaccounts of social events that the researcher observes but is not directlyengaged in. Another issue is that a confessional style may be very appropriatein self-ethnographies.

Alternative terms may be home-culture-ethnography or insider-ethnography. (Brannick and Coghlan (2001), talk of insider research,but relates it primarily to action research.) I use the term self-ethnography inthis paper, although with some worry as it may trigger associations to workfocusing the researcher’s self or highly personal experiences, but as said thisis not what I primarily have in mind.

Self-ethnography is especially of relevance for research on univer-sities and higher education. As mentioned, it is not, however, restricted tothis. Other sites in which the researcher is engaged, e.g. neighbourhood,consultancy work, political organizations, other associations, commercialsettings, families may also be targeted. This paper has primarily the contextof higher education in mind, without very heavily focusing on it.

A major difference between self-ethnography and “conventional”ethnography is that the home-base of the former is the setting being studied.When a conventional ethnographer may take a job or do something else inorder to become a (temporary) member of community as the vital part ofthe empirical research process, to get data and learn the culture, the researchthen comes close to a socialization process viz. the community being studied.When the ethnography is a PhD project, the process may be seen as a doublesocialization process: (a) within the research community ending with fullmembership and internalization of the appropriate orientations, and (b) withinthe community being studied, ending with a good understanding and masteryof cultural rules, but also considerable distance to these. While conven-tional ethnography is basically a matter of the stranger entering a setting and“breaking in”, trying to create knowledge through understanding the nativesfrom their point of view or their reading of acts, words and materia used,self-ethnography is more of a struggle of “breaking out” from the taken forgrantedness of a particular framework and of creating knowledge throughtrying to interpret the acts, words and materia used by oneself and one’sfellow organizational members from a certain distance. In the first case, wehave the researcher as burglar, in the second as a run-away. The burglar-researcher wants to overcome obstacles in order to get in contact with atarget of interest, the run-away-researcher struggles in order to create suffi-cient distance in order to get perspective on lived reality. All researchers, inparticular qualitative research and especially so ethnographers, struggle withthe dilemma of closeness/distance, but in different studies different poles


represent the tricky issues to deal with. While the conventional researcher(with a anthropological orientation) may ask “What in hell do they think theyare up to?” the self-ethnographer must ask “What in hell do we think we areup to?” I will address how this may be accomplished later on.

It is of course often difficult to decide the precise territory of the homebase: is it the department, a fraction of it, the school, faculty, university orthe occupational community or perhaps the system of higher education (ina particular country)? I would say that those parts of the social setting withwhich one directly interacts and thus may observe with some regularity forma productive terrain for ethnographic work. Universities are not homogenous,the idea of exploring a university culture as a whole risks to encourage toosuperficial work. But even though universities or even departments are betterconceptualized as multiple cultural configurations (Alvesson 1993; Trowler1998), there are blind spots and intellectual closures shared by people inuniversities that makes also the project of a researcher studying a departmentin significant ways different from his or her own difficult. All research ofnon-alien groups then must take the problem of breaking out seriously.

The conventional ethnographer typically spends an enormous amount oftime on note-taking. Scribbling down observations, informal interviews andperhaps one’s thoughts and associations sometimes appear to be cornerstoneof the entire project, central also for the researcher’s feelings (Jackson 1995).A self-ethnographer is more inclined to rely on familiarity with the settingas an empirical starting point. The trick is more a matter of accomplishing adescription and insightful, theoretical relevant ideas and comments out of thematerial. It is a matter of thinking through what one may already has a good,although perhaps non-articulated and partly taking for granted understandingof. As with all research the trade-off between a good cultural description andan interesting theoretical idea, being abstracted from (theory-impregnated)interpretive description may vary.

Denzin (1997) writes that “ethnography is that form of inquiry and writingthat produces descriptions and accounts about the ways of life of the writerand those written about” (xi). This is a rather peculiar definition, at oddswith almost all other views on ethnography. Denzin seems to have in mindany cultural analysis of a society. Normally ethnographies explicitly study agroup that the writer is not a member of, which of course does not preventthe study from saying something of relevance for the self-understanding ofthe home community of the researcher. But the latter is not focused. Geertz’(1973) famous study of the Balinese cockfight is for example not aboutthe ways of lifes of Princeton professors. Denzin’s definition has, however,unintentionally, I think, bearing on what I have in mind with the concept ofself-ethnography.

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One rationale for self-ethnography concerns its capacity to come upwith novel and interesting empirical material. The insider is, potentially,better positioned than the one of an outside ethnographer to reveal “the truestory”, although position alone is insufficient to realize the potential. Thestranger-ethnographer will normally undoubtedly have some access prob-lems, particularly on the level of depth access, i.e. stories on sensitive mattersmay not readily be produced. Covert studies may score better on this point,but here we face ethical problems.

Another possibility is that the deeper and more profound knowledge ofthe setting may lead to theoretical development that is more well grounded inexperiences and observations than is common. Compared to studying settingswhich the researcher, even after months of research work, still has a relativelylimited knowledge of, the study of settings which the researcher really isfamiliar with may be productive.

In particular, the excellent access possibilities of the self-ethnographer –although within a limited field – may lead to accounts that give a good feelingfor what goes on. There is much dissatisfaction with social research for itsinability to portray everyday life. Representations are often remote, artificialand clumsy. The reliance on procedures for data collection, categorizations,attaining high evaluator interreliability steers research away from giving valu-able insights. So is especially the case with quantitative studies, but manyqualitative research efforts do not score much better. They are boring to read,many people feel (Richardson 1994). Some researchers advocate “fictionalethnographies” in order to be able to produce sensitive and insightful accounts(e.g. Tierney 1993; Watson 2000). Without underestimating the importanceof writing skills and putting one’s own lived experiences in perspective,proceeding from the rich empirical material at hand in one’s everyday lifecould give ample opportunities to produce good accounts. Being “faithful”to a specific empirical material, i.e. trying to stick to what one has seen andheard in a particular context, produces some constraints to one’s fantasy andwish to portray the world in a certain way, which I think is motivated in socialscience, aiming at interpreting social reality.

Of course, there are serious problems involved. I have so far indicatedsome potentials. Much is needed for these to be realized, as will be addressedlater in this paper.

Self-ethnography in universities

There are a few additional reasons for why we should conduct studies ofour own settings. One is about power and politics. The somewhat mixedpleasure of being a target of research is unevenly distributed among thepopulation. It is seldom the elite that is being empirically studied, but more


often people at the other end of the social scale. So is especially the casewhen ethnographic and observational methods are used. When elites arebeing studied, it is normally in the form of interviews where they themselvescontrol the situation and produce their own versions of the world. Workplaceethnographies are carried out among blue collar workers, not executives.(A few go up to middle-lever managers, though, e.g. Jackall 1988; Kunda1992. In addition, there are a few observational studies of senior executivesin mass meetings, e.g. Alvesson 1996; Rosen 1985.) Students are used forexperiments in psychology. Conversational analysis carefully document andscrutinize what is being said more frequently in aids counseling and doctor-patient interaction than in boardroom meetings. In general, it is importantthat also relatively prestigious groups such as professionals get their shareof in-depth exposure3 Despite degradation following from massification ofhigher education universities and the people working there (Trowler 1998),they belong to the upper echelons in society.

Part of the research going in this direction includes, however, its ownproblems in terms of politics. The study of weak or marginal groups orpeople in vulnerable situations (such as in health care settings) involves akind of mild vertical political-ethical dilemma. One may also talk abouta horizontal political-ethical dilemma, associated with the conflicts aboutpower, prestige and cultural capital among groups in, broadly speaking,competitive relationships. Social scientists are, of course, caught in their(our) values, ideas, status aspirations and inclination to collective self-aggrandizement/ego-blowing. Social science can be understood as projectsin which members of a community try to promote its position viz. othergroups which compete in terms of prestige, power and resources, these groupsbeing either other professionals or academics in other fields. This is inherentin the research project: the very idea is to show that we add something tothe knowledge of others. This adding is, preferably, in some (certainly notall) ways superior to the knowledge and self-understandings of these others.Otherwise, there is no reason for tax payers financing research. In sociologyof science, sociologists study the practice and conflicts among the naturalscience. The outcome is often less than flattering for these disciplines. Forexample, one study found that proponents of different competing positionseach explained their view in rational terms, the position of the competitorwas accounted for in non-rational terms, e.g. speculation or personal loyaltywith a master figure (Gilbert and Mulkay, ref. in Potter and Wetherell 1987).

We may understand the outcome of this kind of research as contrib-uting to changing the prestige balance between the natural and socialscience. Demystifying natural science then self-presents social science, atleast sociology of science, as being, in some ways, more insightful than those

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under study about what they really do. Within organization studies, we have alarge industry of studies like this, targeted at organizations and managementin general, although perhaps primarily at the public sector (e.g. Meyer andRowan 1977; Perrow 1978). I am positive to this work, but the absence ofsimilar studies of institutions of social science means a certain amount ofasymmetry in the distribution of critical scrutiny.

Good organizational ethnographies often portray their objects of study innon-flattering terms. When reading them I often feel glad that I work at theuniversity. (See for example Jackall’s 1988 and Watson’s 1994, sharp studiesof corporate managers.) Actually, hardly any social setting comes out of anethnographic study unblemished. Most well-done studies working beyondfront-stage and the level of image-production produce some far from positivedescriptions and analysis. This may be one reason for us being more inclinedto study the Others rather than ourselves.

Even though we within social science frequently internally engage incritique about method, science and the value of our knowledge-products,there is little doubt about the rationality of one’s own position and the flawsin this respect of the others (e.g. “the positivists”). Engaging in the strugglefor the right kind of doing research or the superior view on social science, issomething else than exploring what goes on in higher education institutions.From a “horizontal political-ethical” point of view it seems important forethnographic researchers to address not only the organizations and works ofgroups of people that we, in some sense or another, are competing with, butalso ourselves.

There are a few research efforts going somewhat in an ethnographic direc-tion studying home ground. I have no intention of providing a full reviewof such but will only mention some examples. Watson (1996) studied hisstudents and his interaction with them, Tierny (1993) wrote about policychanges regarding homosexuals in universities using fictional form andFairclough (1993) used his own application for promotion as an exampleof the marketization of universities while I have myself used my universitydepartment as a case for illustrating “multiple cultural configurations” inorganization (Alvesson 1993). One person in a research team got data abouta task force of which he was a member (Gioia et al. 1995), but this studyengaged in coding procedures and abstractions and avoids any recognition ofpersonal experiences, at the expense of rich descriptions of events, talk andactions.

Studying one’s own setting may not only be narcissistic and unethical inrelationship to the people around – people fully capable of inflicting sanc-tions on the researcher – but ethical in terms of wider social relations. Aprecondition is, of course, that the end product of such studies does not


portray the research object in more polished, uncritical or unfair ways thanis the typical case in ethnographic work. While celebratory work tends to beuninteresting to read and the rationale for self-ethnography is that it may leadto realistic, lively and rich accounts going beyond the level of appearance, thisrisk is probably low. I think that is reasonable to expect an self-ethnographyto deliver an engaging empirical account, going beyond the forestage, inexchange for scoring lower on some other possible virtues, e.g. a lot of empir-ical footwork and procedure-following. Still, the problem of blindspots andof missing or omitting some “dark” or “tabooed” aspect of the home culturemust be taken very seriously. So must also the potential opposite problem ofmotivation coming from negative feelings and an urge to get “even”.

On the practice of self-ethnography

The idea of self-ethnography is consistent with a variety of different ways ofcreating and doing something with the empirical material: from a planned-systematic kind of “data collection” to an emergent-spontaneous approach.In the first case the researcher has a reasonable clear idea of what to study,plan the work (although in ethnographies never in a detailed sense) andwant to have a pile of notes or interview statements to work with and from.This appears rational and scientific and looks good in methods section inresearch texts. A planned-systematic study tends to be bound to the empiricalmaterial gathered. To some extent the research interest must be decided uponin advance.4 One may for example be interested in consequences, interpreta-tions or talk about policy issues at the local level, about students’ capacitiesor incidents involving gender and then make observations and take notesevery time one encounters such material. Notes then typically work like animperative. They are there – as a result of the researcher’s tedious work –therefore they should be used. The material may be interesting or it may benot. You can’t know in advance, although with effort, creativity and writingskill empirical material that appears not too promising may lead to an inter-esting text. An emergent-spontaneous study is carried out when somethingrevealing happens. In such a study the researcher waits for something inter-esting/generative to pop up. It may sound risky and not very ambitious. Itmay also lead to a limited representation of the world, chosen arbitrarily.I would recommend care in trying to publish studies based on emergent-spontaneous research in US journals. There are, however, some advantages,the most significant one is that it increases the likelihood of coming up withinteresting material. The researcher does not find the empirical material, itfinds him or her. The researcher’s energy, on low blouse, is spent keepingeyes and ears open and the Macintosh switched on, ready for the fingers tohammer on it, while one is carrying out ordinary academic work: lecturing

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for students, trying to get the copy machine to work, etc. What it is really allabout is to develop a sensitivity for and preparedness to do something withthe rich empirical material that one, at least occasionally, is facing. The idea isthat consistent, long-term scanning of what one experiences produces a moreextended set of incidents candidating for analysis.

Technical issues such as should one rely on retrospective accounts, notes-taking or tape-recording?, are of some but not profound interest. All modescan, of course, be used. Tape-recording does not necessarily imply a planned-systematic approach, as one may have the tape-recorder in the pocket and,given (a priori or ex post) acceptance of other people (suddenly turned intoresearch objects) put it on when something interesting is happening. Retro-spective accounts are selective and does not allow really fine-tuned analysisof type discourse and conversation analysis (Potter and Wetherell 1987;Silverman 1993). Notes-taking and, in particular, tape-recording may disturbthe situation, create irritation and domesticate participants. In particular ifthe researcher-author is active in the situation – and in many interesting andengaging situation in one’s workplace it is difficult to keep one’s mouth shut– detailed notes-taking is difficult.

The reader may wonder what is interesting? This is of course to someextent according to one’s personal taste and pre-understanding, but, accordingto my experiences, generally there is a relatively high level of intersubjectivityin the evaluation of what is interesting. An interesting account tells us some-thing revealing about what goes on in a particular site. It explores somethingunexpected or allows seeing something familiar in a new light. A certainlevel of generality is therefore called for. Highly idiosyncratic stuff may beentertaining but is not necessarily intellectually interesting. Typically an inter-esting account touches upon a mix of familiarity/surprise. This mix assuressome element of generalization (although of course not in any statisticalsense) and some element of variation/uniqueness. All social situations containboth, not all trigger the right combination. One criteria is that it appealsto something in the experiences of readers (cf the concept of “naturalisticgeneralization”, Stake 1994). It involves some element of identification.

In order to produce something interesting, but even more in order toavoid abstractions in which specific processes, acts and events are turned intounrecognizability, it is important to “micro-anchor” the account. This meansthat specific acts, events, situations are in focus. A good account then involvesactors, acts (processes) and an institutional context. This may be referred toas a situational focus (Knorr-Cetina 1981). Instead of finding an average orsomething system-like through rigorous comparisons of a number of micro-situations, the study concentrates on exploring the richness of one or a fewsituations and then rely on one’s general knowledge for evaluations of what


is fairly typical compared to what is outside the mainstream of the organi-zation one is exploring (Alvesson 1996). It is reasonable that the researchercan support the choice of a focused situation or event through being able torefer to at least a few other instances in which the same theme or processis present, thereby indicating that the focused situation is of some relevancefor illuminating broader chunks of the institutional context in which the focalsituation is played out. This would increase the chances of being fair in theportrait painted of the setting.

Of perhaps greater interest than the empirical material is what theresearcher-author may do with it. The material must then work in a productiveand inspiring way and lead to interpretations of a more theoretical nature. Onemay, however, imagine different “ratios” in terms of the intrinsic/instrumentalvalue of an empirical account. It may in itself be informative and revealing –a thick description – or it may work as a lever for the production of a moreabstract, conceptual contribution.

Some problems in self-ethnographic research

Doing self-ethnography is difficult and I don’t think this a method for every-body to use, at least not at any time in one’s life and career. It is riskybusiness from an intellectual point of view as it is more difficult to drawupon – and hide behind – an apparatus of techniques and procedures forcontrolling “subjectivity” and assuring the reader that Science has as much tosay about the outcome as personal idiosyncrasies. Being personally involvedin the object of study (the context in which one is studying) also means thatone may be less able to liberate oneself from some taken for granted ideas orto view things in an open-minded way.

The research situation is in certain ways also more politically complexthan is common. The risk of producing a flattering view of oneself and thesite of which one is a member is perhaps not so great, but taken for grantedassumptions, blind spots, taboos and the want to avoid upsetting colleaguesmay create difficulties and/or self-disciplination. Social research in generalcan not avoid either supporting or questioning existing social institutions andcan therefore not claim to be neutral (Burrell and Morgan 1979; Alvessonand Deetz 2000). If one has, or faces readers of one’s research products witha strong and direct personal interest in the subject matter this dimension canbe more difficult to handle in a sophisticated manner. If the researcher does sos/he may get more enemies at close distance (or give the enemies additionalammunition). Just the anticipation of what people will think and feel maylead to more careful and flatter descriptions than a freer and bolder approachwould imply. Of course, diplomacy is a part of all (qualitative) research efforts– and this may contribute to the end products frequently being somewhat

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watered down – but it may be easier to cope with this aspect if the personsbeing less than happy about the research outcome is at some distance fromthe everyday life of the researcher. There is also an important ethical aspect ofthis – respect fot the feelings and interests of those being studied must guideresearch and their acceptance of the study must at some point be attained forit being published or widely distributed.

The approach forces the researcher to address “subjectivity” and preunder-standing as a complex mix of resource and blinder. Arguably, social research(and perhaps many other forms of research) are profoundly affected, indeeddriven by, personal feelings and life histories, cultural frameworks, socialbelongings, etc. of the researcher. This does not mean that idiosyncrasy,personal opinions and arbitrariness necessarily rules – or do so in a mannerthat means that the research text is of greater interest for one’s shrink thansomebody that wants to learn about university organizations. What is stronglypersonally engaging for the researcher may well be of great interest also forother persons. As Jaggar (1989) claims, emotions are often shared betweenpeople and are an important element in research work. Still, ways of dealingwith the problematic side of closeness and personal involvement must beconsidered. Careful reflections on it is crucial for doing self-ethnography.

The major problem is not necessarily “subjectivity”, in the sense ofhighly individualistic biases. In general, research suffers from the inabilityof researchers to liberate themselves from socially shared frameworks(paradigms, cultures). That evaluators agree may not be a sign on objectivityas much as culturally or paradigmatically shared biases (Alvesson and Deetz2000). The trick is to get away from frozen positions, irrespective if theyare grounded in personal experiences or shared frameworks. A problem isthat staying within socially shared frames and biases may make research lifeeasier – while what is seen as personal biases are sanctioned, proceedingfrom and reproducing socially shared biases may be applauded. The generalproblem can be formulated as accomplishing openness in relationship to aprestructured, fixed line of focusing/interpretation.

Struggling with closure: Creating breakdowns

In ethnographic work within anthropology, the initial difference between thetraditions involved (the researcher’s and that of the object of study) mayproduce a breakdown in understanding, “a lack of fit between one’s encounterwith a tradition and the schema-guided expectations by which one organizesexperience” (Agar 1986, p. 21). The researcher – the professional stranger –deals with this by investigating the cultural elements encountered triggeringthe breakdown and then adjusting her/his schema. Breakdowns continue toappear until the researcher “fully” – given what is to be investigated – under-


stands the culture under study, and therefore ethnography can be describedas “a process of coherently resolving breakdowns” (p. 39). When studyingrelatively familiar phenomena such as the workplaces and educational institu-tions of one’s own country, the problem is not so much resolving breakdownsbut creating them. In the study of foreign cultures breakdowns occur auto-matically, but in one’s own they are mostly marginal. The trick then is tolocate one’s framework (cultural understanding) away from the culture beingstudied, so that significant material to “resolve” emerges. The problem – andrationale – for organizational culture studies is to turn the well known andself-evident into the exotic and explicit – to raise and answer the question“What does it mean (apart from the obvious)?” (Asplund 1970). This is ofcourse to a large extent a matter of creativity, but it is also a matter of aspiringto accomplish “anthropological” rather than technical/pragmatic results. Tosome degree it is a matter of using the “critical strategy of defamiliariza-tion”: “Disruption of common sense, doing the unexpected, placing familiarsubjects in unfamiliar, even shocking, context are the aims of this strategy tomake the reader conscious of difference” (Marcus and Fischer 1986, p. 137).

The art of producing breakdowns in settings only too familiar is not easyto master. The more familiar setting, the fewer breakdowns. It is facilitatedby a rich and generative kind of empirical material, plenty of time to considerwhat it means and access to a broad set of different resources – theories,vocabularies, experiences – to challenge self-evident forms of understanding.

To discover or, to emphasize the need for effort and construction, to createrevealing situations is one vital element. I prefer micro anchoring and richdescriptions rather than covering broader areas in a thin way, although thechallenge is to see how chunks of social reality are “writ small” in specificevents, these showing some similarity with a “reasonable” number of otherevents in the myriad of micro-situations making up social reality. To workwith a situation or a process bounded in time and space and thus possibleto grasp gives the researcher energy and mindpower to illuminate it fromdifferent angles (Alvesson 1996). Considering a variety of perspectives, andshifting these, is always important in research, but perhaps especially so in thetype of research here suggested. As said, the trick is to try to get away fromthe inclination to see things only in a specific light – as this means that one’spersonal and paradigmatic-cultural blinders tend to shadow other aspects thanthose preferred. I will briefly indicate five ways in which one may improvethe prospect that this will be accomplished.

One way of creating distance towards one self and one’s cultural inclina-tions is to try to embrace positions of irony and self-irony (e.g. Brown 1977;Woolgar 1983). These must not necessarily dominate the final text but may betaken temporarily in order to create a certain distance to more serious argu-

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ments put forward. The modern higher education, by its advocates perhapsdescribed as a triumph for equality and knowledge for everybody and/or beinga motor for economic development, may be described as the McUniversity(Parker and Jary 1995), where standardization, rationalization and mana-gerialization take over according to McDonald-like principles. Instead ofdescribing oneself or, in the case of modesty, one’s ideal as the scholarlychampion of academic freedom and knowledge one may sketch a self-portrait of a high-brow egocentric in the ivory tower. Such alien and ironicrepresentations may be used as thought experiments or explicitly in analysis.

A second way is the use of theories which challenges common sense, notonly for the direct application but also for encouraging perspective on one’sown lived reality and thus facilitating looking upon things in a more all-sidedway than is spontaneously the case or if one tries to adopt a grounded theory-approach. Foucault (1976) and Bourdieu (1979) belong to those authorshelpful in this respect. Both may help shake around fixed preunderstand-ings, if these authors are not used solely against positions disliked by theresearcher, but also in a self-questioning way. (This presupposes, of course,that the researcher is not a great devotee of the theory in question – it isdifficult to use a theory highly favoured to get a perspective on one’s ownthinking.)

A third way is to build up an interpretive repertoire sufficiently broad inorder to read empirical material in a variety of ways, thereby considering andperhaps developing themes not too closely tied to one’s personal-politicaltastes. This third way may overlap the two just mentioned. Mind-shakingtheories such as those of Foucault and Bourdieu may be part of the inter-pretive repertoire, as may be (other) ideas of an ironic nature.

A fourth way may be to work systematically with a notion of reflexivity,in which one tries to change level of interpretation so that one’s favored inter-pretations in a first instance is the target of interpretation from a meta-levelposition, inspired by another standpoint. This other standpoint then functionsin a metatheoretical way, i.e. it addresses one’s interpretations and not directly“reality out there” (Alvesson and Sköldberg, 2000). An effort to develop aparticular point may be challenged by seeing this point of view from forexample a feminist perspective exploring the (false) gender-neutral natureof the prior interpretation or from a poststructuralist position exploring thefragility behind the claims of authority of a preferred interpretation. Throughincorporating challenges from counterperspectives framing the issue and lineof interpretation in other ways, the researcher is forced to work through thepreferred wisdom and unfreeze the position associated with personal historyand shared taken for granted meanings.

A fifth way may be to explicitly work with the processual nature of theself. Instead of assuming a fixed essence in terms of orientations and pre-


understandings associated with a single, predefined self, the researcher canwork with different self-concepts. Weedon (1987) and Deetz (1992) talkabout process subjectivity in order to indicate that we can – and actually do –move between different ways of conceiving ourselves and our orienta-tions. As a researcher, one is not only a student of education, but alsoperhaps a woman, middle-aged, senior (to some), junior (to others), ateacher, union person, etc. Attitudes are not fixed of absolute, but context-dependent. The same person who is in favor or accountability and perfor-mance evaluations, likes autonomy and freedom from dysfunctional measure-ments. Drawing upon different orientations – taking different positions, withdifferent perspectives – may facilitate avoidance of getting caught in a certainset of blinders. This way, of course, to some extent overlaps with and isassisted by the other approaches suggested above.

Much more can be said about this issue and many versions of breakingout of constraining frameworks are possible. The important thing is that self-ethnography, in order to escape the specific traps facing it, calls for someadditional efforts in this direction compared to “conventional” modes ofdoing research.

The who and when of self-ethnography

Doing self-ethnography is probably not for everybody. Certain social situ-ations, experiences and periods in one’s career may facilitate it. Having beenin a certain job and organization for a long time and having limited access toother work organizational experiences would do the research difficult. Beinga newcomer and thus having to learn local culture makes the job in someways intellectually easier, but politically more risky and possibly emotionallymore stressful. Being active in other spheres of the working and public life,e.g. consultancy and political work, may also be helpful. In connection tocareer changes and the adaptation to new situations, e.g. becoming a depart-ment chairperson, self-ethnographic work may also be less tricky to carryout. The transitions contingent upon a sabbatical may also offer not just timebut also perspectivating experiences facilitating self-ethnography. Doing suchresearch may thus partly be a matter of timing. Some periods may be moresuitable for it than others.

There are also variations between people, partly related to familiarity withother sites than universities, that are helpful in self-ethnography. Multiplework-related social identities – university professor, consultant, affiliations tomore than one academic discipline – make it easier to avoid being caughtin a “staying native” position. Being an outsider rather than a mainstreamperson may work in the same way – if research is not only used to justify anoutsider’s position against the “inferior mainstream”. Co-authored work mayin which an insider and an outsider collaborate may be one option.

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Apart from making wise choices if and when one is the right person andhas the right kind of background and experiences in order to intellectually“look through” one’s own workplace culture, it is also a good idea to thinkabout the politics involved. I guess that three issues matter here: one is thetolerance and openness of people at the workplace (the victims), a second isone’s own position – a prestigious, tenured researcher has more leeway – andthe third relates to the extent one constructs oneself in terms of integrity andinner-directness. Self-ethnography is not for the mainstream, organizational(wo)man, eager to conform to workplace norms and to be very loyal.

My idea of raising the issue of the when and who of self-ethnographyis only partly to aid people in terms of putting or omitting self-ethnographyproject work in their career planning calendars or to assist recruiters of self-ethnographers to develop personality profiles for candidates, but to repeatand vary the point about the need for working through the problem with aconstraining, taken for granted cultural framework and a too myopic personalview on the subject matter. Cultural belongingness means a high degree ofclosure to the rich variety of potential ways of interpreting one’s organization.These problems can be coped with, but there may be a trade off betweenthe efforts called for and the output of the project. The advantage of self-ethnography in terms of saving energy may not be available for everybody toexploit at any given moment.

Of course, apart from the personal side, periods of great transformationand/or specific organizational changes in which the on-going production ofsocial reality is disrupted offer good occasions for self-ethnographic work.

Conclusions

As a social scientist interested in how universities or knowledge-intensiveorganizations in general work, one is, of course, not obliged to leave one’shome base in order to encounter productive empirical material. This paperargues for the self-ethnography as an alternative or a complement to otherways of doing research. Arguably, there are some major advantages with theapproach here suggested, of course conditioned upon an ability to deal withthe – considerable – traps involved in this kind of work.

• Self-ethnography offers good research economy. In particular if weaccept the rather basic and profound problems with interview material(and other methods assuming that the individual simply reports experi-ences, insights and meanings) as reflections of what goes on “out there”and view conventional ethnography as time-consuming and uneconom-ical, it appears motivated to search for new ways of proceeding.


• Self-ethnography may facilitate the production of rich empiricalaccounts. Given that one is not deciding a priori – thereby constrainingthe options – that a particular time and space area is to be researched, butis modestly engaged in scanning one’s lived reality for research optionsfor some time there is a good chance that one sooner or later runs intoevents making a good account possible, providing a feeling for whatgoes on and facilitating productive interpretations.

I also believe that there are a few minor advantages with self-ethnography:

• Self-ethnography may develop reflexivity in relation to one’s ownorganizational practice, thus combining theory and practice, and tran-scend the border between doing research and being an organizationalmember in other capacities (teacher, committee member, administrator).For the committed researcher, it may reduce some of the frustrations ofadministrative work.

• We avoid the problem of the Other, i.e. constructing the natives as some-body clearly different from Oneself, as it is “we” rather than “they” thatare the targets of research.

• We may also reduce the political-ethical problem of solely doingresearch “downwards” or targeted at groups of people which we, associal scientists, may have a, in a broad sense, competitive relationshipwith. (e.g. other professions).

The problems and difficulties are, however, substantial. These are both ofintellectual and political character. In order to cope with the taken for grantedassumptions and blind spots and utilize the potential the researcher needs toengage in an ambitious struggle with his/her personal and cultural framework.The paper has pointed at a number of possibilities in this respect. While achallange for the ethnograper is to avoid “going native”, the self-ethnographermust make strong efforts to avoid “staying native”. It is, of course, hardlysufficient that the researcher-native avoids excessive idiosyncrasies and getsapproval of the other natives for a particular version of the world. Theproblem of a closed mind may be less a matter of personal bias than aboutbelongingness to the tribe’s shared cultural frame. While the other nativesare inclined to “stay native” – they have no (research-motivated) reasons toescape cultural closure – some difference, or tension, between the researcher-runaway and the researchers-buddies-the inmates may emerge regarding howlived social reality is best made sense of. The self-ethnographer’s efforts maywell involve demystifications and questioning of basic ideas and assumptions.Self-ethnography makes the politics of research more complicated (if oneavoids painting a rosy picture of those being studied) – it can not be held atarms length as is perhaps common in studies of “other kinds of people”. Theethical problems involved here call for careful attention.

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The challenge of ethnography, and of most qualitative work, is to be closeand avoid closure. The first element is no problem in self-ethnography, thesecond calls for struggling. Unlike “conventional” ethnography the challengeis one of creating breakdowns, as one may not spontaneously experiencethem. Doing self-ethnography at the right moment, when the mix of localfamiliarity and access to other frameworks is a good one, may reduce prob-lems. Working with theories perspectivating academic social practice in asomewhat radical – mindshaking – fashion may also be productive.

The idea of self-ethnography pushes for intellectual curiosity not onlydeliminited and wellpackaged into specific projects focusing specific objectsof study at safe distance from one’s everyday life. Self-ethnography impliesa mindset to some extent in opposition to a more technocratic-bureaucraticapproach in which procedures, rules and techniques define and legitimizethe scientific project. It calls for a more reflective approach in which datamanagement matters less than a revealing, insightful account and interpreta-tion. Self-reflection is thus crucial. Self-ethnography is indeed a risky project,but may offer an interesting alternative to other approaches.

Appendix. Work methodology: Elements in self-ethnography

The following offers a very brief sketch – I am no fan of cook books in research –for doing self-ethnography:1. Routinely scan what turns up in everyday life for interesting options for thick

descriptions.2. When something happens, document it, e.g. tape-record it or write it up as

remembering it. Evaluate this specific material compared to other observations.3. Acknowledge that data are constructions: revise the text so that the fictional

nature of the write up becomes clarified (for the author and the reader). Makingexplicit that an account are not simply the reporting of data, but is made up ofconstructions, selective reporting and of various means of framing the story line,with various (unavoidable) effects on the reader.

4. Rethink and possibly rewrite the account from an (self-)ironic position (or withinspiration of a theory running partly against one’s preferences/biases): oneoption is to get self-distance through considering the author as a bit narcissis-tistic; caught in his/her own subjectivity, fusing everything with aspects ofone-self.

5. Coping with ethics and politics: getting input from the victims in order to balanceone’s ideas and biases with those of one’s fellows. Consensus is not the goal,but varying viewpoints, opinions and interpretations need to be considered andworked through. If there are varied views on the subject matter, these shouldcome through in the text and the author should motivate why s/he sticks to aparticular claim despite the views of the others. Of course, those being studied


must approve of the study being published or widely distributed. The self-ethnographer may delay publishing or take pains in order to camouflage thesetting being studied as part of the negotiation with the people involved.

6. Developing some tentative conclusions on the empirical material, havingconsidered it in relation to other empirical impressions and a variety of inter-pretive possibilities.

7. Engage in reflexive lopes: repeat parts of the process (3–6) after having got somenew input (readings or personal experiences), either through a broad(ened) inter-pretative repertoire or the changes of interpretative levels, putting the tentativeinterpretations and conclusions in a metatheoretical perspective (see Alvessonand Sköldberg 2000, for development).

Notes

1. Problems here are seen in the context of the typical purpose with interviews of gettingempirical material saying something accurate about either social reality out there –strategies, decisions, goals, organizational structures, interorganizational relations, etc.– or subjective meanings – values, intentions, ideas about students. Interviews may beused for other purposes, e.g. studying language use (discourse in operation). Interviewsin themselves are, of course, not problematic. Problems emerge in the context of varioususes of interview material for making different kind of empirical claims.

2. In addition to these methodological problems, one can also raise doubts of an ontologicalnature, debating the assumptions of the existence of stable feelings, thoughts, ideas andmeanings and confront these with the idea of these aspects being discursively constitutedin social interaction. While tending to agree with a processual understanding of socialreality, I am here focusing on methodology rather than ontology, even though no strictseparation is possible.

3. In the case of health care or social workers and patients/clients to some extent the practicesof the former, relatively prestigious groups, are highlighted. As the focus is on conversa-tions and one part is located in a weak situation, this type of study does not fully breakwith the tendency to focus on weak or socially low-status groups.

4. As we are talking about self-ethnographies and not questionnaire studies, still a highlevel of openness are characterizing the planned-systematic approach. It is planned andsystematic in relationship to emergent-spontaneous research, not in relationship to forexample half-structured interview studies.

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Alvesson Methodology for close up studies – struggling with closeness and closure

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