"Interpretive flexibility"

I actually really liked the Christine Hine chapter, which I think I did a disservice to by reading online. I like the idea that the chapter combines science and technology studies with ethnography. It's interesting to think that even a supposedly "concrete" issue like whether or not a bush pump works can be highly contextual based on what "role" the pump is playing in your life. I think a central point of the article is summed up in the idea that ethnography is thought of as a researcher studying social situations "on their own terms" yet highlighting the necessity of a "highly reflexive process" when writing. I suspect (although what do I know) that this reflexivity is one of the hardest things to come by as a researcher. In fact, when I was going through articles for my peer review, it was often one of the key things that seemed to be missing. Reflexivity is difficult even when  you're aware of the NEED to be reflexive, as I discovered last week while trying to work out the "assumptions" I'd made when designing my unified command centre for INF 1003. Assumptions are difficult identify, and to that end it seems very important to have another party involved-yet-distant from the process. Or at least I am finding that to be an important part of designing my research.

A descriptive science...

As a bear of very little brain I continue to be somewhat uncomfortable with ethnography. That's after having covered some aspect of it in almost all of my classes, mind you. Despite Luker's nod to Foucault and acknowledgement of doxa, etc., the notion of "field" research somehow rings a little false in my mind. (Although I will acknowledge the two assumptions I was making when reading this chapter: First, that "field" research meant human-human interaction. I was somewhat surprised when Luker mentioned her friend who was a primatologist doing ethnographic work with baboons. I think part of my discomfort with the notion of "field" research is that it seems a little bit like putting the human "other" in the zoo. I suppose that, of course, I could extrapolate that ethnography could include animals or any number of other environments, but I keep focussing on the human environments. Second, although Luker has made acknowledgements aplenty of the need for social scientists to be careful about exerting the "special kind of power" that social science has over readers/consumers of the research, I was encouraged by the Shaffir article which says that ethnography is meant to be descriptive, and "attempts to... diminish the subjective component" of that research are folly. Equally interesting is the expansion of ethnographic research to include the researcher's motivations for pursuing the study, which does seem to remove some of my concern about the possibility of privileging the account of the researcher at the expense of "the whole story." I'm an English student, and I guess my concern is that an ethnography runs the risk of reading like a good novel.