Author
Lyn Richards

Pub Date: 11/2009
Pages: 256

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Lyn Richards
Title: Inside the Companionship for Minors. Troubles and Weaknesses of an Ethnographic Approach to Deviance and Education

Authors: Alfredo Berbegal, Researcher, Department of Methods of Research and Diagnostic in Education (MIDE), University of Zaragoza, Spain
Fernando Sabirón, Research Director, Department of Methods of Research and Diagnostic in Education (MIDE), University of Zaragoza, Spain
Patrick Boumard, Research Director, Department of Philosophy, Breton and Celtic Research Center (CRBC-CNRS), University of Western Brittany, France

4. Analysis processes

In Qualitative Research, Data Analysis has to be conducted by several scientificity rules: credibility, confirmability, dependently and transferibility (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Nevertheless, the point is how these rules are applied, not rules themselves. We can not only apply well-known analytic methodologies in an automaton way, like Constant Comparison Methods and its subsequent Grounded Theory (Hardy & Bryman, 2004; Strauss & Corbin, 1990). Scientificity rules ought to be created in accordance with the whole research.

4.1. My Analysis References
Analysis commenced early on the data collection. My Ethnography was something else that a traditional descriptive activity, achieved for later ethnological comparisons and anthropological theorizations (Lévi-Strauss, 1976). My Ethnography had not clearly defined its methodological function and my Data were not inspired in any a priori theoretical construction (Lapassade, 1991, 2001). So... what were my references? In my case, my interpretation of Data was formulated like a reflexivity process which took three important aspects into consideration:

  • Subjectivity Definition: How am I thinking myself as participant and interpreter? I became sufficiently acquainted with the world of people to understand their modes of discourse, communicate in their language and demonstrate appropriate behaviors (Harré, 1978). I was myself primary instrument of inquiry and exclusive investigative tool. For me, fieldwork entailed an unusually active, personal and intellectual commitment with important implications. Therefore, in my analysis I can detect four theories of the subject:

      My Ethnomethodological Subject... Firstly, the aim was becoming the phenomenon of study (Garfinkel, 1967; Ardoino & Lecerf, 1985).

      My Institutionalist Subject... Secondly, I carried out my Participant Observation, and I balanced the "intervention-implication" tension (Ardoino, Boumard & Sallaberry, 2003; Lapassade, 1966, 1975; Lourau, 1970, 1997).

      My Interactionnist Subject... My third subject was near to the notion of "definition of the situation" (Blumer, 1969; Mead, 1934).

    I eventually suggested a professional and complex thinking with new boundaries between subjectivity and objectivity conceptions (Rosen, 2000): my Complex Subject...??? Each subjectivity emphasized particular intelligibilities (Berthelot, 1990), that is, different social significances.

  • Meaning "life-world": How am I thinking the "situation-in-life"? I tried to understand an educational context, its paradoxes. I was simultaneously looking for an open intelligibility to fit together scientific posture and educational thinking (Peyron-Bonjan, 1998). Analysis showed me multiple significances in many of my "situations-in-life" and I had to deal with a theoretical research into the concept of "life-world", that is, the ontology of the social reality I was living.
  • Emergence of Research Object: How am I defining my object of study? My object research suffered from a "progressive focusing". Fieldwork cosmovision and subjectivity formulations drove me to a not predefined identity of my research object. Focusing on the "complexity" of the person promoted an explosion of epistemological languages (Ardoino, 1998). Emergent features were lawful in their own right.
As a result, Analysis detected three main dimensions of companionship (vid. Dimensions diagrams, n° 19, 20 y 21, pp. 2, 3, 4)

  • Companionship I. An institutional and instituted action, which included three functions: assistance, control and institutional mediation;
  • Companionship II. This was the action as pharmakon. It helped to accomplish some therapeutic objectives: affective and effective relationships construction and socio-cultural animation working;
  • Companionship III. A social action, a profane action. It responded to a shared situation, natural and profane, an o?-centre interaction and a lasting coexistence.

The point was how to create my research subject and, at the same time, another and more humanist scientifity demarcation (Mainzer, 1997; Morin & Le Moigne, 1999; Nicolis & Prigogine, 1989; Prigogine & Stengers, 1979; Weaver, 1948) (vid. Transubjectivity diagram, n° 22, p. 5). These dimensions were the result of a conversation between my object research and the professional-research situation.

4.2. My Big Weakness
In this process, I found some hurdles to overcome... How did research manage the intersubjectivity production when the ethnographer exclusively used a covert participant observation?
Methodologically speaking, there was not Data restitution, neither accountability feed back nor contrast control. Nevertheless, the important feature of triangulation is not the simple combination of different kinds of data. It is naive to assume that the use of several different methods necessarily ensures the validity of findings. In my case, even though people (participants) were not present to help negotiated the script, a complex image of them continued to mediate the researcher's interpretation of the Data.
What, then, constitutes the scientificity of my research? My challenge was to manage the subjectivity and intersubjectivity senses and to shape them in a social-scientific way. Maybe I did not achieve this huge goal.

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