The art of listening to what people say and do about racism in small towns : interpreting ethnography and interviews / Karin Krifors.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Krifors, Karin, author.

Series:

SAGE Research methods: diversifying and decolonizing research.

SAGE Research methods: diversifying and decolonizing research

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Racism--Social aspects.

Racism.

Small cities.

Racism--Research.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

London : SAGE Publications Ltd, 2024.

Summary:

This case study describes challenges to qualitative sociological studies of racism and antiracism in a social context where words and concepts associated to race, culture, and inequality are understood by people in very different, and heavily polarized, ways. I describe how ethical considerations are productive to the outcomes of ethnographic research, following Les Back (2007), who has illustrated how sociology can be an art of listening that pays "attention to the fragments, the voices and stories that are otherwise passed over" (p. 1).Although access to a field is sometimes easy, in this case for activists and small-town community groups that strive for local convivial cultures of multiculturalism, careful analyses are necessary to avoid reproducing narratives that may be closest at hand. Methodologically, the case elaborates on a conversation between ethnographic observations of everyday encounters and how a researcher can interpret what people say about these. I draw on insights gained from how Dorothy Smith (1987, 2005) emphasizes the everyday world as a problem worth studying, because it tells us about the relations and discourses that structure these problems. I am also inspired by the work by Margaret Wetherell and Jonathan Potter (1992) as they describe how people have a series of repertoires to choose from when they speak about certain phenomena. This allows for a transparency in terms of how we can analyze a multifaceted material in a well-researched ideological landscape, such as that of race, racism, and social change.

Notes:

Description based on XML content.

ISBN:

1-5296-8542-7

9781529685428

OCLC:

1428169066