SOAN 2120 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Tacit Knowledge, Ethnomethodology, Explicit Knowledge

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Sociology and Anthropology
• Course: SOAN 2120
• Professor: David Walters

Document Summary

Field research is appropriate when the research question involves learning about, understanding or describing a group of interacting people. Field researchers study people in a location or setting. Call people who are studied in a field setting members: they are insiders/natives in the field and belong to a group, subculture or social setting that the. Outsider field researcher wants to penetrate and learn about. Explicit knowledge is what we know and talk about. Tacit knowledge is what we rarely acknowledge. Includes the unspoken cultural norm (for ex: the proper distance to stand from others people are unaware that they use this norm, feel unease or discomfort when it"s violated and difficult to pinpoint the source of discomfort) Naturalism involves observing ordinary event sin natural settings, not in contrived, invented or researcher- created settings. Field researcher"s goal is to examine social meanings and grasp multiple perspectives in natural social settings.