[Air-l] FWD: 'ethnography' exposed

[Christian Sandvig]

AoIR colleagues,

There is a short, interesting article in Spiked about the appropriation of
ethnography by business and government:

  'Ethnography' exposed
  by Martyn Perks (spiked-IT, 30 December 2003)
  http://www.spiked-online.com/articles/00000006E039.htm

This is an old topic, and this is not a very good *analytic* treatment (it
seems to recommend objectivity as a remedy for poor ethnography).
However, the article is a very good *descriptive* treatment, mentioning
some provocative current manifestations: real-life 'cool hunters' (see
Gibson's _Pattern Recognition_), elected politicians as pseudo-
ethnographers, and revisiting ethnographic approaches to understanding
broadband Internet use.

Christian


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