[Air-L] Field notes best practice

Thu Jul 11 10:54:35 PDT 2013

Thanks, everybody who responded, for the very helpful and diverse advice.
Much appreciated!! Happy, too, to have a listserv where I can put forth
such requests and receive kind feedback from experienced and growing (like
me) researchers. Thanks, AoIR!

On Thu, Jul 11, 2013 at 8:32 AM, Knight, Kimberly
<kim.knight at utdallas.edu>wrote:

> Hi Katie,
>
> I don't do ethnographic research so I have no idea if this is really
> appropriate but it struck me while reading your inquiry that Evernote might
> be a good way to manage this. You can set up notebooks to organize notes,
> but most importantly for your case, you can tag individual notes with
> keywords. The search is quite good so if you are consistent with your
> keyword tagging, you could use this to pull up common threads across notes
> and notebooks.
>
> Best of luck,
> _____
> Kim Knight
> Assistant Professor
> Emerging Media and Communication
> UT Dallas - Arts and Humanities
> kim.knight at utdallas.edu
>
>
> ________________________________________
> From: air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org [air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org]
> on behalf of air-l-request at listserv.aoir.org [
> air-l-request at listserv.aoir.org]
> Sent: Monday, July 08, 2013 5:00 PM
> To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
> Subject: Air-L Digest, Vol 108, Issue 8
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> Today's Topics:
>
>    1. Field notes best practice? (Katie Derthick)
>    2. Re: Field notes best practice? (James Robson)
>    3. Why and How to Read Marx?s ?Capital?? Reflections on Johan
>       Forn?s' book ?Capitalism. A Companion to Marx?s Economy Critique?
>       (Christian Fuchs)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2013 09:19:14 -0700
> From: Katie Derthick <derthick at u.washington.edu>
> To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
> Subject: [Air-L] Field notes best practice?
> Message-ID:
>         <CAHHyWPcJkYEMOahc7Gns0shHLOctqsQB=
> Oz-2cmPGGOKxpZe0g at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> Hi everybody. I'm about to embark on my dissertation research study, which
> will include year-long ethnography at 3 different communities. I'm
> wondering what will be better for me: to have one long field notes document
> where entries for each community simply appear one after the other, or
> three separate documents, one for each community. In the end, I'd like to
> be able to paint a picture of each community, but also make claims about my
> overarching research goals.
>
> I appreciate any advice or insight you have to offer! For the record, I'm
> studying the relationship between values, meditation practice, and
> technology use, and looking at a monastery, a meditation center, and a
> virtual org.
>
> Thanks,
> Katie
>
> --
> Katie Derthick
> PhD Candidate
> Human Centered Design & Engineering
> University of Washington
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2013 16:57:09 +0000
> From: James Robson <james.robson at gtc.ox.ac.uk>
> To: Katie Derthick <derthick at u.washington.edu>,
>         "air-l at listserv.aoir.org"       <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
> Subject: Re: [Air-L] Field notes best practice?
> Message-ID:
>         <57D7EB1459457843BB6353F570CB70570FA85D at MBX10.ad.oak.ox.ac.uk>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> Hi Katie,
>
> Your study sounds really interesting.
>
> I'm just (hopefully) coming to the end of my doctorate where, like you, I
> conducted an ethnography and spent a year in 3 communities.
>
> I think it depends on how closely linked your communities are.  If they
> form part of a single network with users interacting across all three
> spaces, then a single document would probably be best.  On the other hand,
> if you're essentially doing 3 ethnographic case studies in independent
> communities, then it's potentially a little different.
>
> My study (on teacher communities) was more akin to the latter and I
> started using using three separate documents.  However, it became fairly
> irritating flicking between them and I was never quite sure where to put my
> more reflexive thoughts about the whole process.  Therefore I quickly
> started using just one document but had 4 colours within it - one colour
> for each community and one for general reflexive thoughts and emergent
> analysis.
>
> I found this more user friendly and pretty useful as it provided a more
> holistic narrative of the whole research process, while easily allowing me
> to separate out the different communities if I wanted to for analysis.  It
> was a good way to keep track of my cross-community thoughts and helped with
> reflexive insight - ie it helped me see where some of my experiences in one
> community might potentially influencing the way I behaved in another.
>
> I don't know if it's best practice but I found the
> single-document-multiple-colours approach really helpful.
>
> Good luck with your fieldwork
>
> Thanks
> James
> ________________________________________
> From: air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org [air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org]
> on behalf of Katie Derthick [derthick at u.washington.edu]
> Sent: Monday, July 08, 2013 5:19 PM
> To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
> Subject: [Air-L] Field notes best practice?
>
> Hi everybody. I'm about to embark on my dissertation research study, which
> will include year-long ethnography at 3 different communities. I'm
> wondering what will be better for me: to have one long field notes document
> where entries for each community simply appear one after the other, or
> three separate documents, one for each community. In the end, I'd like to
> be able to paint a picture of each community, but also make claims about my
> overarching research goals.
>
> I appreciate any advice or insight you have to offer! For the record, I'm
> studying the relationship between values, meditation practice, and
> technology use, and looking at a monastery, a meditation center, and a
> virtual org.
>
> Thanks,
> Katie
>
> --
> Katie Derthick
> PhD Candidate
> Human Centered Design & Engineering
> University of Washington
> _______________________________________________
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Mon, 08 Jul 2013 22:44:15 +0100
> From: Christian Fuchs <christian.fuchs at uti.at>
> To: List Aoir <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
> Subject: [Air-L] Why and How to Read Marx?s ?Capital?? Reflections on
>         Johan Forn?s' book ?Capitalism. A Companion to Marx?s Economy
>         Critique?
> Message-ID: <51DB32AF.7030800 at uti.at>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
>
> Fuchs, Christian. 2013. Why and How to Read Marx?s ?Capital??
> Reflections on Johan Forn?s' book
> ?Capitalism. A Companion to Marx?s Economy Critique?. tripleC:
> Communication, Capitalism & Critique 11 (2): 294-309.
> http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/488
>
> Abstract
> This paper is a reflection on Johan Forn?s book ?Capitalism. A Companion
> to Marx?s Economy Critique? - a new introduction to all three volumes of
> Karl Marx's "Capital". It contextualizes the book with the help a
> comparison to other contemporary introductions to Marx's "Capital".
> The reflection is organized in the form of 8 sections:
> 1) Context
> 2) Method and Logic of Presentation
> 3) The Logical and the Historical in Marx?s Works
> 4) From Karl to Adolf Marx in German Marxist Theory?
> 5) Visualization
> 6) Crises
> 7) Read this Book!
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
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> End of Air-L Digest, Vol 108, Issue 8
> *************************************
>