La Trobe University, Australia.
La Trobe University, Australia.
Soc Sci Med. 2023 Sep;332:116108. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.116108. Epub 2023 Jul 27.
This article offers the first critical review of focused ethnography, an increasingly popular research method across health disciplines. Focused ethnographers, we argue, exemplify the practice of methodological boundary work, defining their method in contrast to the 'traditional' ethnographic approach of anthropology and sociology. To examine this boundary work, we collected two samples of health research articles published over the last decade and compared how focused ethnographers and medical anthropologists described, justified, and practised ethnography. We found that the core characteristics most often asserted to differentiate focused ethnography from conventional ethnography were: a more limited study timeframe and scope; a limited subpopulation sample; more concentrated research questions; the inclusion of insider researchers; and more orientation towards applied results. We show, however, that these are imagined binaries that fail to map onto actual differences of practice in the two samples and which obscure many similarities between them. By contrast, we identified four alternative differences between the two methods of ethnography. These centre on understandings of 'research time'; the very meaning of ethnography; the relationship of researchers to 'data'; and the presumed best method of social intervention. We therefore define focused ethnography as a versatile method of ethnography that attends to specific epistemological expectations within the health sciences regarding valid proof and empirical description, the boundaries of research, the nature of research relationships, and the duty to improve biomedicine. Ultimately, our study highlights that methodological boundary-work matters, because assumed differences and unexpressed misunderstandings can prevent productive dialogue and fruitful collaboration between disciplines to address pressing health problems.
本文首次对聚焦民族志这一在健康学科领域日益流行的研究方法进行了批判性评价。我们认为，聚焦民族志学者是方法学边界工作的典范，他们通过将自己的方法与人类学和社会学的“传统”民族志方法进行对比来定义自己的方法。为了考察这种边界工作，我们收集了过去十年中发表的两批健康研究文章，并比较了聚焦民族志学者和医学人类学家如何描述、证明和实践民族志。我们发现，最常被用来区分聚焦民族志和传统民族志的核心特征是：更有限的研究时间框架和范围；有限的亚人群样本；更集中的研究问题；内部研究人员的参与；以及更倾向于应用结果。然而，我们表明，这些是想象中的二分法，无法映射到两个样本中实践的实际差异，并且掩盖了它们之间的许多相似之处。相比之下，我们确定了这两种民族志方法之间的四个替代差异。这些差异集中在对“研究时间”的理解上；民族志的真正含义；研究人员与“数据”的关系；以及假设的最佳社会干预方法。因此，我们将聚焦民族志定义为一种灵活的民族志方法，它关注健康科学中关于有效证明和经验描述、研究边界、研究关系的本质以及改进生物医学的责任等特定认识论期望。最终，我们的研究强调了方法论边界工作的重要性，因为假设的差异和未表达的误解可能会阻止学科之间进行富有成效的对话和富有成效的合作，以解决紧迫的健康问题。
