Abstract
I was prepared to dislike this book by Alex Stewart, an anthropologist by training, a professor of management at Texas Tech University, and a specialist in cross-cultural entrepreneurship. As Clint Sanders (1999) has said, we have seen just about enough ethnographic cookbooks; it is time to get on with it. I was especially suspicious of any approach that might be characterized as “ethnography lite,” which, as one wit recently put it, may be likened to “a new product designer with a video camera.”
As it turns out, I like the book, and fortunately it is neither a cookbook nor ethnography lite. Instead, it comprises a very useful update of the scientific characteristics of ethnography, especially those that differentiate it from quantitative research and other forms of qualitative research. In this regard, it will be useful to nonethnographers who are frustrated by what they inappropriately perceive to be ethnographers' relatively cavalier attitude toward methodology. The book is also an unapologetic defense of ethnography's special strengths. Finally, it focuses attention on those aspects of ethnography least understood and most poorly practiced by ethnographic neophytes: data analysis and interpretation.
The book is organized around three key characteristics the author employs to differentiate ethnography from other research orientations. Stewart devotes a chapter each to veracity, objectivity, and perspicacity.
Veracity is the first epistemic criterion of good ethnography that Stewart explores. Veracity is his solution to the question often raised by conventional auditors about ethnography's claim to validity. Veracity is simply the verisimilitude of depiction, the truth value of the observations claimed in ethnographic descriptions. Stewart explains how prolonged field work, good participative role relationships, attentiveness to context, deployment of multiple modes of data collection, and searches for disconfirming observations are the best guarantors of veracity. The core characteristics of ethnographic fieldwork, in other words, warrant claims to ethnographic veracity.
Stewart's solution to the question often raised by conventional auditors about ethnography's claim to reliability is the substitute criterion of objectivity. Reliability is not a goal of ethnography, because ethnography cannot make a claim to consistency, one of the dimensions of reliability in conventional research. Objectivity may be partialed into three sub-constructs: replication, bias, and specification. Ethnography cannot be replicated for reasons the author usefully details. However, ethnography can deploy tactics to contend with bias and specificity. Specificity means detailing context and findings in such a way that ethnographic interpretation could be disconfirmed in a follow-up study. Controlling bias and specifying context and results enable auditors to judge whether ethnographers' results transcend their (inevitably) limited perspectives as scientists.
Perspicacity is Stewart's solution to the question often raised by conventional auditors about ethnography's claim to generalizability. Perspicacity is the “capacity to produce applicable insights” (p. 47). This solution is linked to Stewart's point that ethnography is a discovery-oriented procedure unlike conventional statistical work, which is a confirmatory procedure. Furthermore, unlike the findings in laboratory science that are tightly coupled to procedure, ethnography's findings—at least those “revelatory incidents” and “interesting findings that transcend the merely descriptive— are very loosely coupled with procedure” (p. 62). The reason, as Stewart explains, is that “creativity and the overdetermination of pattern and method are prerequisites of ethnographic perspicacity” (p. 62).
This book will be useful to four audiences the author identifies. Beginning ethnographers in marketing and management constitute the first audience. Given the dearth of qualified mentors in these fields, students need all the help they can get. This book provides them with an epistemological warrant, however, not a guide to doing ethnography. The second audience is junior ethnographers hoping for positive reviews from nonethnographic faculty, departments, journals, and funding agencies—an apt description of virtually every audience an ethnographer in marketing or management will encounter. This book provides ammunition for the uninformed critique of ethnographies such audiences are apt to provide. The third audience is faculty members who are not knowledgeable about ethnography but who are honestly looking for criteria by which they may distinguish successful ethnographic projects. The book will be useful for faculty members who are not trained ethnographers but are advising students in employing these methods. The fourth audience is scholars untrained in ethnography who would like to be able to assess the methodological foundations of ethnographies they read. In other words, this book should prove useful for reviewers, those who are placed in a gatekeeping role. Stewart's book provides clear guidelines for evaluating ethnographic work while vigorously defending the paradigmatic differences between ethnography and so-called conventional research.
Combining this book with the published record in marketing (e.g., Arnould and Wallendorf 1994; Belk, Sherry, and Wallendorf 1988; Spiggle 1994; Stern 1998) and works in the Sage qualitative methods series, fledging marketing ethnographers begin to have a methodological corpus with which they can position their efforts.