Educational Ethnography Past, Present, and Future: Ideas to Think With

I thought this article was interesting to read after the Hammersley article and several of the other articles that focused on ethnographic histories. This article really demonstrates some of the important issues for researchers to consider as they do ethnographers and try to describe "culture"

Question: "If understandings of culture are varied or changing and ethnography is the methodology for studying culture, why hadn't there been more discussion of corresponding variations or changes in method?

Muddles:
1. meaning of "culture"
"If postmodernism has taught anthropologists anything definitive, it is that we can no longer conceive of social groups of people with a culture that is clearly bounded and determined, internally coherent, and uniformly meaningful" (p. 17)
2. enthusiasm for ethnography
3. researcher's responsibility to those he/she writers about and hopes to help
"The tension between protecting those studied and reporting details in ways that compel deeper understanding has been a persistent one. The tension is exacerbated when multiple and diverse perspetives (or "voices") must be represented" (p.19).

I think the most compleling part of this article is the researchers assertation that "I have a responsibility as an anthropologist, a teacher, and a person to speak, and act sometimes, in the moment, on behalf of the girls who are participating in my research" (p. 20). Researcher further notes when "lives of young people seem to be at stake". While I definitely agree that there are sometimes clear ideals that we would like to follow, I particularly wonder about this assertion when ethnographers are working in cultures that are much different than their own. For instance, if the researcher is visiting a very paternalistic culture wehre the education of girls is not valued, then they would very likely not feel that what they see is ok. However, if they know that this is the case, then maybe they should have went into the field as an activist, or a teacher, rather than as a researcher. I don't doubt that there are times when researchers should intercede, I just think this researcher needed to be a bit more specific about what types of cases warrant this.