In class several of you raised important queries and critiques of Goffman’s methodology in particular and ethnography as a methodological tool in particular.
Quinn raised an important point, which the following article addresses: is it that Goffman’s methodology is especially suspect or is the nature of her field site, as well as the IRB protocols of ethnographic research with human subjects, partly responsible for what seems like inaccuracies and flaws?
Here are some excerpts from the article on Slate, you can read the full article here:
“Alice Goffman’s heralded book about inner-city life has come under fire for inconsistencies and inaccuracies. Is the author to blame—or does the fault lie with her field?”
“Ethnography can look like an uncomfortable hybrid of impressionistic data gathering, soft-focus journalism, and even a dash of creative writing.”
“The frustration is not merely a matter of academics resenting oversight out of principle. Many researchers think the uncompromising demand for total privacy has a detrimental effect on the quality of scholarship that comes out of the social sciences—in part because anonymization makes it impossible to fact-check the work.
“It makes it really hard to verify—you don’t even know if the people exist,” said Christopher Winship, a sociologist at Harvard University. He added, “The discipline thinks it’s fine and that’s probably totally wrong.”
University of Chicago sociologist Richard Taub doesn’t think it’s fine and explained why: “Your honor—your word—is the only thing you have to make your stuff believable, because your job is to not let anyone track these people down,” he told me. “It’s a terrible problem”