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Abstract:
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This paper looks at the relationship between anthropology, fieldwork and what is referred to as ‘organizational ethnography’. It starts by distinguishing between fieldwork, which is a method of conducting qualitative research, initially in the discipline of anthropology, and ethnography, which is the writing up of that research. The paper makes use of the author’s fieldwork experiences in a Japanese advertising agency to illustrate a number of features that define fieldwork as a methodology. It argues that it is the shift from participant observation to observant participation that enables the fieldworker to move from front stage to back stage in the study of an organization, and thereby to gain information and knowledge that is otherwise available only to insiders. Fieldwork, Anthropology, Organizational Ethnography, Observant Participation |
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