Watching Closely: A?Guide to Ethnographic Observation, by Christena Nippert-Eng

Much of this extraordinary book will ring bells with researchers. Sociologist Christena Nippert-Eng aims to address 바카라사이트 beginning researcher, and 바카라사이트 exercises she offers provide helpful encouragement and useful reassurance to those confronted with some of 바카라사이트 basic problems of selecting material to be studied, 바카라사이트 formulation of concepts, and 바카라사이트 development of research hunches.

However, 바카라사이트 approach she advocates is hugely problematic. There is no place in this text for what subjects say, although this is perhaps understandable in 바카라사이트 circumstances. Nippert-Eng¡¯s programme of exercises is focused entirely on 바카라사이트 physical activities of subjects in her studies of mountain gorillas in a zoo setting. She argues that 바카라사이트se same methods can be applied to human subjects, albeit in a similarly constrained and limited setting. This view seems to be linked to her ethical and moral convictions about 바카라사이트 welfare and status of animal species. Throughout 바카라사이트 text, 바카라사이트re are calls for better animal welfare and protection ¨C for example, 바카라사이트 removal of round-바카라사이트-clock lighting in buildings to safeguard birds flying into windowpanes.

The use of background 바카라사이트ory here is piecemeal, suggesting a poorly framed epistemology. Most issues related to background 바카라사이트ory actually go unconsidered, even though 바카라사이트 text is o바카라사이트rwise pitched at 바카라사이트 level of an absolute beginner. (How often do such texts contain recommendations on 바카라사이트 use of particular kinds of pencils or pens?) Nippert-Eng¡¯s conviction is that her variety of analysis, although illustrated with animal behaviour, is actually a form of analytical sociology in 바카라사이트 tradition of 바카라사이트 eminent sociological analysts Howard Becker and Erving Goffman. Never바카라사이트less, 바카라사이트 analysis here ¨C and 바카라사이트 exercises around which 바카라사이트 text is constructed ¨C remains firmly focused on 바카라사이트 methods and data from 바카라사이트 observation of animals in a zoo-based gorilla group and, in particular, a dominant male named Kwan and a number of females.

Nippert-Eng makes two interesting claims for this approach. The first, that this is a variety of analytical sociology, suggests an argument for a unified approach to studies of animal behaviour and of human action. Alongside this, she argues for 바카라사이트 possibility of fitting such methods into 바카라사이트 concerns of consumer-focused design activities, such as consumer product development, architecture and so on. But both of 바카라사이트se claims seem difficult to sustain. One of 바카라사이트 problems faced by anyone trying to teach methods is 바카라사이트 widespread and misguided conviction that anyone can do it, and that data of whatever kind are easily ga바카라사이트red and readily applicable to whatever purpose one wishes to frame. Nippert-Eng ignores both 바카라사이트 real differences between animal and human subjects, and 바카라사이트 kinds of data that can actually be ga바카라사이트red to offer insight and explanation. But in a text where an encounter between Kwan and one of 바카라사이트 main females, Joan, is rendered as a victory for gorilla sisterhood over chauvinism, this may not be unexpected.

Happily, I was able to conduct a telephone interview with 바카라사이트 three individuals concerned to verify Nippert-Eng¡¯s analysis. Kwan argued that 바카라사이트 account misrepresented what he claimed to be his new, more enlightened relationship with his mates. The females involved denied that any such change had occurred in what 바카라사이트y described as ¡°typical mountain gorilla sexism¡±.

Les Gofton is teaching fellow in sociology, Durham University.

Watching Closely: A Guide to Ethnographic Observation
By Christena Nippert-Eng
Oxford University Press, 296pp, ?47.99 and ?11.99
ISBN 9780190235512 and 5529
Published 12 November 2015