The Ethnographic Choice: Why Ethnographers Do Ethnography

How do we reconcile the complex and subjective dimensions of ethnographic research as they pertain to ethnographers themselves? What is to be made of the compelling draw the ethnographic process tends to have on its researchers? This article uses hermeneutic phenomenology to examine how ethnographers’ lifeworlds make possible the doing of ethnographic research. I draw on moments from past research to argue for an inexorable link between lifeworlds and ethnography, which results in ethnographers being definitively, yet uniquely and contingently, “chosen” to live as ethnographers. This multilayered snapshot of ethnographic subjectivity seeks to embolden the reflective space necessary for promoting a fuller sense of accountability by ethnographers, a fuller understanding and awareness of the complexities inherent to ours and others’ ethnographic stories.