Premium
Beyond the Eighth Moment: Alternative Modes of Evaluating Postmodern Ethnographic Work
Author(s) -
Conner Christopher T.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
symbolic interaction
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.874
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1533-8665
pISSN - 0195-6086
DOI - 10.1002/symb.328
Subject(s) - postmodernism , ethnography , citation , moment (physics) , sociology , work (physics) , media studies , computer science , epistemology , world wide web , anthropology , philosophy , physics , classical mechanics , thermodynamics
One overlooked issue raised by postmodernists is the way in which social scientists represent the social world (Dickens 1995; Dickens and Fontana 1994). While some social scientists have answered the postmodern call to introduce new models of representing their subjects (see Denzin 1989; Ellis and Bochner 1996; Fontana and McGinnis 2003; Halton 2016; Richardson 1997), it remains an underdeveloped idea. One promising area, however, is the genre of “social fiction.” Expanding postmodernists’ critique of traditional ethnographers’ search for truth, and the criticism that producing valid ethnographic accounts is impossible, this work pushes such critiques to their logical conclusion by producing fictional accounts of the social world. J. E. Sumerau’s Cigarettes & Wine blurs the lines between ethnography, autoethnography, and fiction, creating a new way of presenting ethnographic accounts. This type of work creates an intimate connection between author and reader, potentially reaches a wider audience than traditional ethnographic texts, and may offer greater insights due to the flawed nature of scientific models. While not a “scientific account,” this work evokes a passionate emotional response as the reader is drawn into a world where keeping secrets about one’s identity, behaviors, and feelings ensures safety. Readers of this work are shown the great lengths to which some of us have to go in order to feel love, intimacy, and avoid the dehumanizing effects produced by isolation. The author does a fabulous job of showing us the internal psychological turmoil that is embodied within the characters’ psyches as they move through life stigmatized as nonnormative and nonconforming. Another struggle of the book is how it sustains the action across its entirety, thereby maintaining interest until the very end—unlike some traditional ethnographies which can be selectively read based on one’s interest in a particular sociological concept, rather than concern for the actors in the study.