Interpretive reflexivity in ethnography

Abstract

Many would argue that ethnographic knowledge claims are partial. Many say this predicament demands the researcher’s self-reflexivity about ethnographic claims. Commonly, ethnographers perform reflexivity by discussing how their research may reflect interests or biases that accompany their positions in hierarchies of domination. Positional reflexivity uneasily straddles a realism that claims to know which position(s) affected the research, and a normativism that aims to demystify what we claim to know. Both stances suppress the interpretive work that researchers and researched constantly are doing. In a more interpretive practice of reflexivity, ethnographers explore how they figured out other people’s meanings in the field, instead of focusing on correlations between their claims and their social position. Interpretive reflexivity considers social positions within ongoing circuits of communication between researcher and researched. Since interpretations are part of explanation in much ethnography, interpretive reflexivity widens our ability to assess causal as well as interpretive claims.