The expression concatenated exploration refers at once to a longitudinal research process and the resulting set of field studies that are linked together, as it were, in a chain leading to cumulative, often formal, grounded theory. Concatenated exploratory research is rare in the social sciences (though least so in anthropology), which helps explain why the problem of poor ethno-graphic memory exists. The goal of this article is to describe the nature of this special kind of continuous research effort, discuss its crucial role in the development of grounded theory, and link it to the problem of memory in ethno-graphic research.
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