1887
Ethnography, discourse, and hegemony
  • ISSN 1018-2101
  • E-ISSN: 2406-4238

Abstract

In this paper, the idea of ethnograpies of hegemony is taken up as a reflexive orientation in research which addresses the complexity of forms of domination in late modern society also by trying to come to terms with the situatednes of interactionally-established interview data. Following a number of methodological remarks on the establishment of a ‘native point of view’ as well as a number of observations on the data trajectories (tribulations and triangulations) which mark this particular discursive ethnography, the analysis goes on to concentrate on the ways in which case categorisation is ‘spoken’ through social class in one particular account of child protection. As an exercise in ‘classifying the classifiers’ (Bourdieu 1992: 242) 2, the analysis highlights how professional and private talk about social problems is implicated in class-based subjectivities and involves (displaced) representations of class? However, much depends here on what we mean by ‘class’ when referring to a contemporary context such as the Flemish/Belgian field of child protection. If hegemony then counts as a historicising interpretative move which highlights <a> the interwovenness of domain - and profession-based discourses of social problems with discourses of class and <b> the contextualisation of particular sense-making repertoires, then it is just as much about the situational contingencies under which class and domination becomes speakable in a particular way. This, I suggest, is where ethnography becomes all-important - as an investigative strategy and as an epistemology of dialogic engagement with social theory and contemporary analyses of the late modern world.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/prag.13.1.05sle
2003-01-01
2025-04-30
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Agar, Michael
    (1996) The Professional Stranger (2nd ed.). New York: Academic Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Blommaert, Jan
    (2001) Context is/as Critique. Critique of Anthropology 21.1: 13-32. doi: 10.1177/0308275X0102100102
    https://doi.org/10.1177/0308275X0102100102 [Google Scholar]
  3. Bourdieu, Pierre
    (1977) L’économie des échanges linguistiques. Langue française34: 17-34. doi: 10.3406/lfr.1977.4815
    https://doi.org/10.3406/lfr.1977.4815 [Google Scholar]
  4. (1984) Questions de Sociologie. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. (1992) Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Polity Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Briggs, Charles
    (1986) Learning how to ask: A sociolinguistic appraisal of the role of the interview in social science research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/CBO9781139165990
    https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139165990 [Google Scholar]
  7. (2002) Interviewing, power/knowledge and social inequality. In J. Gubrium & J. Holstein (eds.), Handbook of Interview Research. Context and Method. Thousand Oaks, Ca.: Sage, pp. 911-922.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Burawoy, Michael
    (1991) The extended case method. In M. Burawoy , A. Burton , Ferguson Arnett & K.J. Fox (eds.), Ethnography Unbound: Power and Resistance in the Modern Metropolies. University of California Press, pp. 271-287.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Collins, James
    (1998) Our ideologies and theirs. In B. Schieffelin , K. Woolard & P. Kroskrity (eds.), Language ideologies. Practice and Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 256-270.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Cicourel, Aaron
    (1999) The interaction of cognitive and cultural models in health care delivery. In S. Sarangi & C. Roberts (eds.),Talk, Work and Institutional Order. Discourse in Medical, Mediation and Management Settings. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 183-224. doi: 10.1515/9783110208375.2.183
    https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110208375.2.183 [Google Scholar]
  11. Dingwall, Robert
    (1997) Accounts, interviews and observations. In R. Dingwall & G. Miller (eds.), Context and Method in Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks, Ca.: Sage, pp. 51-65. doi: 10.4135/9781849208758
    https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781849208758 [Google Scholar]
  12. Fairclough, Norman
    (1992) Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Fontana, Andrea
    (2002) Postmodern trends in interviewing. In J. Gubrium & J. Holstein (eds.), Handbook of Interview Research. Context and Method. Thousand Oaks, CA.: Sage, pp. 161-175.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Garfinkel, Harold , and Egon Bittner
    (1984) Good organisational reasons for “bad” clinic records. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Cambridge/Oxford: Polity Press/Blackwell, pp. 186-207.
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Goffman, Erving
    (1967) On face-work: An analysis of ritual elements in social interaction. InInteraction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behaviour. New York: Pantheon Books, pp. 5-45.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. (1963) Stigma. Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identities. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Goodwin, Marjorie
    (1990) He-Said-She-Said: The Interactive Organisation of Talk in an Urban Black Peer Group. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Hall, Christopher , and Stef Slembrouck
    (2001) Parent participation in social work meetings - the case of child protection conferences. European Journal of Social Work4.2: 143-160. doi: 10.1080/714052864
    https://doi.org/10.1080/714052864 [Google Scholar]
  19. (2003) Caring but not coping: Fashioning a legitimate parent identity. In C. Hall , K. Juhila , N. Parton , & T. Pösö (eds.), Constructing Clienthood in Social Work and Human Services: Interactions, Identities and Practices. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Holstein, J.A. , and J.F. Gubrium
    (1995) The Active Interview. Thousand Oaks, CA.: Sage. doi: 10.4135/9781412986120
    https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412986120 [Google Scholar]
  21. Hanks, Williams
    (1996) Language and Communicative Practice. Oxford: Westview Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Heller, Monica
    (2001) Undoing the macro/micro dichotomy: Ideology and categorisation in a linguistic minority school. In N. Coupland , S. Sarangi , & C. Candlin (eds.), Sociolinguistics and Social Theory. London: Pearson, pp. 212-234.
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Howarth, David
    (2000) Discourse. Buckingham: Open University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Hymes, Dell
    (1980) Speech and language: On the origins and foundations of inequality among speakers.InLanguage and Education: Ethnolinguistic Essays. Washington: Center for Applied Linguistics, pp. 19-61.
    [Google Scholar]
  25. Laclau, Ernesto , and Chantal Mouffe
    (1985) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso.
    [Google Scholar]
  26. Maybin, Janet
    (1999) Framing and evaluation in 10 to 12-year-old school children’s use of repeated, appropriated, and reported speech in relation to their induction into educational procedures and practices. Text 19:4. 459-484.
    [Google Scholar]
  27. Ortner, Sherry B
    (1991) Reading America. Preliminary notes on class and culture. In R. Fox (ed.), Recapturing Anthropology. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, pp. 164-189.
    [Google Scholar]
  28. Parton, Nigel , and Andrew Turnel
    (2003) Trafficking in meaning: Constructive social work in child protection social practice. In C. Hall , K. Juhila , N. Parton & T. Pösö (eds.), Constructing Clienthood in Social Work and Human Services: Interactions, Identities and Practices. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
    [Google Scholar]
  29. Reay, Diane
    (1998) Rethinking social class: Qualitative perspectives on class and gender. Sociology 32.2: 259-275. doi: 10.1177/0038038598032002003
    https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038598032002003 [Google Scholar]
  30. Sarangi S. , and Stef Slembrouck
    (1996) Language, bureaucracy and social control. London: Pearson.
    [Google Scholar]
  31. Silverstein, M. , and G. Urban
    (eds.) (1996) Natural Histories of Discourse. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  32. Slembrouck, Stef
    (2001) Explanation, interpretation and critique in the analysis of discourse. Critique of Anthropology21.1: 33-57. doi: 10.1177/0308275X0102100103
    https://doi.org/10.1177/0308275X0102100103 [Google Scholar]
  33. (2002) Intertextuality. In J. Verschueren , J.-O. Östman & J. Blommaert (eds.), Handbook of Pragmatics (8th annual installment). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/hop.8.int10
    https://doi.org/10.1075/hop.8.int10 [Google Scholar]
  34. Stallybrass, P. , and A. White
    (1996) The poetics and politics of transgression. London: Methuen.
    [Google Scholar]
  35. Thomas
    (1993) Doing Critical Ethnography. London: Sage.
    [Google Scholar]
  36. Thompson, E
    (1991) The Making of the English Working Class. London: Penguin.
    [Google Scholar]
  37. Voloshinov, Valentin
    (1973) Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. New York: Academic Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  38. Wetherell, Margaret
    (1998) Positioning and interpretative repertoires: Conversation analysis and post-structuralism in dialogue. Discourse and Society9:3. doi: 10.1177/0957926598009003005
    https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0957926598009003005 [Google Scholar]
  39. White, Susan
    (2002) Accomplishing the case in paediatrics and child health: Medicine and morality in inter- professional talk. Sociology of Health and Ilness 25.
    [Google Scholar]
  40. (2003) The social worker as moral judge: Blame, responsibility and case formulation. In C. Hall , K. Juhila , N. Parton , & T. Pösö (eds.), Constructing Clienthood in Social Work and Human Services: Interactions, Identities and Practices. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
    [Google Scholar]
  41. Williams, Raymond
    (1973) Base and superstructure in Marxist cultural theory. New Left Review87: 3-16.
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1075/prag.13.1.05sle
Loading
  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): Class; Discourse and the professions; Ethnography; Hegemony; Interviews
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error