Participant Observation in the Era of “Ethnography”

WHEN EVERETT HUGHES TAUGHT ME at the University of Chicago in the late 1940s, we were trained in Participant Observation (PO), although we also called it fieldwork. We were already aware, however, that PO was an umbrella word covering several combinations of participation and observation and that different combinations were relevant for different studies and study sites. I was attracted to PO because I saw it as a method I could use to understand parts of American society other than the little bit in which I was personally involved. Later, I realized that it was particularly useful for elaborating, explaining, and even debunking the findings of the quick-and-dirty legwork on which journalists must base their feature stories about American society. Perhaps even more important, PO could supply empirical findings about little known or stereotyped populations, particularly those outside the mainstream. Partly because of these virtues, the books and articles using PO are often about topics of general as well as sociological interest. When they are also well written, they are sometimes read by the general public. When favorably received and widely read, they are immensely helpful to sociology’s reputation, which in turn helps us obtain the resources without which we cannot long survive as teachers or researchers. PO is still my preferred method. I also consider it the most scientific, because it is the only one that gets close to people. In addition, it allows researchers to observe what people do, while all the other empirical methods are limited to reporting what people say about what they do.