Open AccessThe ‘Inner Game’ of Ethnography
Author(s) -
JONES STOKES
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
ethnographic praxis in industry conference proceedings
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1559-8918
pISSN - 1559-890X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-8918.2010.00022.x
Subject(s) - ethnography , embodied cognition , feeling , normative , craft , sociology , process (computing) , aesthetics , epistemology , psychology , social psychology , computer science , anthropology , visual arts , art , philosophy , operating system
Ethnography's external outputs such as contextual photos, process models, and personas have overshadowed the actual ‘way’ of practicing ethnography (which has remained largely immune to normative standards). This paper will argue the time has come to re‐embrace a sense of craft and that renewal can be catalyzed by putting individual performance at the center of ethnographic practice. Beginning from practitioners' typical feelings of discontent with the lost potential inherent in most ethnographic encounters, this paper will look for the embodied foundations of a more disciplined way forward. Drawing on awareness techniques from the human potential movement, (that have themselves been adapted to concentration‐intensive sports like tennis) this paper proposes a turn towards the ‘inner game’ of ethnography. As this leads practitioners to tighten norms on today's unseen ethnographic practices, it can end the double‐game between inner and outer standards and increase the discipline's authority.