News From Somewhere, News From Nowhere

Douglas W. Maynard

Sociological Methods & Research, 2014, vol. 43, issue 2, 210-218

Abstract: This is a comment suggesting that Jerolmack and Khan’s article in this issue embodies news from “somewhere,†in arguing that ethnography can emphasize interaction in concrete situations and what people do rather than what they say about what they do. However, their article also provides news from “nowhere,†in that ethnography often claims to prioritize in situ organization while dipping into an unconstrained reservoir of distant structures that analytically can subsume and potentially eviscerate the local order. I elaborate on each of these somewhere/nowhere ideas. I also briefly point to the considerable ethnomethodological and conversation analytic research of the last several decades that addresses the structural issue. Such research, along with other traditions in ethnography, suggest that investigators can relate social or political contexts to concrete situations provided that there is, in the first place, preservation of the parameters of everyday life and the exactitude of the local order.

Keywords: ethnography; interaction order; ethnomethodology; conversation analysis; longitudinal ethnography (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:somere:v:43:y:2014:i:2:p:210-218

DOI: 10.1177/0049124114527249

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