SOC 7141 Chapter Notes - Chapter 11: Fieldnotes, Thick Description, Ethnography

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 7141
• Professor: Kathleen Rodgers

Document Summary

Fieldnotes are what helps workers grip together the information they have gathered. This article seeks to examine fieldnotes as they take into consideration of the self while writing about the other, thus raising issues of self-reflexivity within ethnography. Fieldnotes are generally written for an audience, they help engage memory and stimulate renewal of information that was found in the past. They may be written out in the field or during the interaction itself but it may begin in stages beginning with jotted then to analytic and finally something that is fully typed in narrative form. They may also be read by others for proceedings and may lead to unanticipated sharing. Reading of each others fieldnotes tends to occur during team field research studies, multidisciplinary, often funded. They are generally hierarchal in nature and the agenda is set by the leader while the note takers are responsible to this plan.