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ConstructionistImpulsesinEthnographicFieldwork

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CHAPTER 19

Constructionist Impulsesin Ethnographic Fieldwork

• James A. HolsteinJaber F. Gubrium

Across sociology, anthropology, andother disciplines with observational tra-ditions, the common thread running

through ethnographic fieldwork is the em-pirical scrutiny of social situations in vivo.Whether sited in households, in smallgroups, on street corners, in villages, or dis-tributed within organizations and societies,the fieldworker capitalizes on being im-mersed in a social situation to study its so-cial practices (Bernard, 1998). If, for some,ethnography has become synonymous withqualitative methods (Atkinson & Hammers-ley, 1994), its traditional method of in situparticipant observation remains a distin-guishing and accepted source of empiricalmaterial and analytic inspiration throughoutthe social sciences.

A long-standing interest in the realisticrepresentation of lives and experience has

shaped ethnographic fieldwork into a pre-dominantly naturalistic endeavor, aimed atdocumenting social worlds and their subjec-tive meanings. Recently, constructionist im-pulses have captivated the enterprise, alter-ing the goal from naturalistic representationto understanding the indigenous organiza-tion of representational practices. Ques-tions arise regarding the sited “thereness” ofnaturalistic inquiry, prompting epistem-ological concerns associated with the “beingthere” assumption of traditional ethno-graphic fieldwork (Geertz, 1988). How is“there” constructed as a field of inquiry?From what does the field’s organization de-rive? What are the practices and conditionsthat shape the construction process?

The aim of this chapter is to highlight theways in which ethnographic fieldwork canbe transformed by constructionist sensibili-

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Handbook of Constructionist Research,edited by James A. Holstein and Jaber F. Gubrium. Copyright 2008 by The Guilford Press. All rights reserved.From

ties, focusing mainly on modes of conceptu-alizing the field, collecting empirical mate-rial, and analyzing data. The chapter is lessconcerned with the writing of ethnographyor ethnographic representation; that issue,by now, has had a vibrant history of debateacross the social sciences, especially in an-thropology and sociology (see, e.g., Behar,1996; Clifford & Marcus, 1986; Clough,1992; Ellis & Bochner, 1996; Fox, 1991;Geertz, 1988; Goodall, 2000; Rosaldo, 1993;Tedlock, 2000, 2004; Van Maanen, 1988,1995; see also Amit, Chapter 39; Ellingson &Ellis, Chapter 23; Faubion & Marcus, Chap-ter 4; and J. Schneider, Chapter 38, all in thisvolume). We are well aware that procedural,analytic, and representational practices areinterwoven throughout qualitative inquiry,and researchers do well to keep this mind informulating and assessing ethnography. Atthe same time, it is useful to consider field-work in its own rights in order to sort out theparticulars of the research process.

Of course, constructionist impulses playout differently in fieldwork dealing with dis-tinct settings, bound to specific disciplines,and located within particular national tradi-tions (see, e.g., Barth, Gingrich, Parkin, &Silverman, 2005). But constructionist sensi-bilities, in our view, harbor impulses thattranscend disciplinary boundaries. Thischapter draws from an ongoing program ofresearch on the social organization of every-day life to provide an orientation to the infu-sion of constructionist perspectives intofieldwork (Gubrium & Holstein, 1997). Thechapter is not a cross-disciplinary survey somuch as a presentation of a framework ofunderstanding or “analytics” for conductingfieldwork from a constructionist point ofview.

Naturalistic andConstructionist Agendas

Naturalism is arguably the predominantorientation to ethnographic fieldwork(Gubrium & Holstein, 1997). As John andLyn Lofland (1995) put it, naturalistic stud-

ies of social settings minimize presumptionsabout the empirical world while striving forclose, searching descriptions of everydaylife. The naturalistic goal in ethnography isto understand social reality on its own terms,“as it really is,” to describe what comes natu-rally, so to speak. It seeks rich descriptionsof people and interaction as these exist andunfold in their native habitats. Eschewingrepresentational concerns beyond mattersof veridical accuracy, this approach toethnographic description becomes a matterof documenting and communicating true-to-life depictions of social worlds—the morethickly described the better (Geertz, 1973).

Naturalistic ethnography is replete withprescriptions and injunctions for capturingsocial reality on its home turf and in its ownterms. One of the earliest and most impas-sioned pleas came from Robert Park, afounder of the “Chicago School” of field re-search. Reacting to what he called “armchairsociology,” Park insisted that social research-ers immerse themselves in the “real world”(Bulmer, 1984). Park encouraged research-ers to get close to the sources of their data.Insisting that his students get “their handsdirty in real research,” Park steered them to-ward firsthand observation of city streets,dance halls, hotels, and other natural areasof the city rather than the library or officialstatistics. He implored his students to finddata in the real-life settings that capturedtheir interest: “Go get the seat of your pantsdirty in real research” (McKinney, 1966,p. 71). This admonition to get involved withthe people and communities under studypermeates the ethnographic perspective tothis day (see Bulmer, 1984; Emerson, Fretz,& Shaw, 1995; Gubrium & Holstein, 1997).

Whereas naturalistic ethnography aims todelve deeply into social worlds, construc-tionist impulses promote a different per-spective. One way of describing the differ-ence is in terms of what we call what and howquestions. Whereas the naturalistic impulsein fieldwork is typically to ask “What is goingon?” with and within social reality, construc-tionist sensibilities provoke questions abouthow social realities are produced, assembled,

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and maintained. Rather than trying to get in-side social reality, the constructionist im-pulse is to step back from that reality and de-scribe how it is socially brought into being.Although still deeply interested in what is go-ing on, constructionist sensibilities also raisequestions about the processes throughwhich social realities are constructed andsustained. The analytic focus is not so muchon the dynamics within social realities as it ison the construction of social realities in thefirst place.

A constructionist agenda spurs ethnog-raphers to look at and listen to the activitiesthrough which everyday actors produce theorderly, recognizable, meaningful featuresof their social worlds. This is an explicitly ac-tion orientation, focusing intently on inter-action and discourse as productive of socialreality (see, e.g., Edwards & Potter, 1992).Whereas the naturalistic fieldworker attendsto what his or her informants say about theirlives and worlds in order to understand whatthings mean to them (the informants), con-structionist sensibilities focus the researcheron aspects of social life that reveal how socialreality and an attendant social order are for-mulated and organized through talk andinteraction. At the heart of constructionistinquiry is an abiding concern for the ordi-nary, everyday procedures that society’smembers use to make their experiences sen-sible, understandable, accountable, and or-derly.

If many constructionists retain an appre-ciation of naturalists’ desire to describe“what’s going on,” they combine such inter-est with decided emphasis on how thesewhats are sustained as realities of everydaylife. Instead of treating social facts or socialworlds either as objective parameters oras subjective perceptions, constructionistethnographers approach them as achieve-ments in their own right. Both inner livesand social worlds are epiphenomenal to theconstructive practices of everyday life (Hol-stein & Gubrium, 2003b). Constructionistresearchers are interested in the practical ac-tivities in which persons are continually en-gaged, moment by moment, to construct,

manage, and sustain the sense that their so-cial worlds exist as factual and objectively“out there,” apart from their own actions.

Given their concern with reality-constituting practices, constructionists tendto focus on the communicative processes ofeveryday life. Moving beyond naturalistic de-scription of the more or less stable experien-tial contours of everyday life, constructionistethnographers examine how these contoursare assembled through everyday talk andinteraction (Heritage, 1984). The common-place phenomena that interest the tradi-tional ethnographer remain important—indeed, vital—but take a temporary back seatto the interactional processes through whichthose phenomena are assembled and sus-tained. This requires ethnographic fieldmethods and an analytic orientation thatcenter on constructive actions more than onobjects, on reality-constituting practicesmore than on the realities themselves.

Talk and interaction are the everyday en-gines driving reality construction. All formsof discourse fuel the process, including dis-courses that coalesce into regimes and regi-mens of knowledge and understanding (seeL. Miller, Chapter 13, this volume). Becauseconstructionists are deeply concerned withwhat is done with language to construct fieldrealities, they not only watch but also espe-cially listen in order to discern how the reali-ties are produced and sustained. Taking re-ality as an interactional project (Mehan &Wood, 1975), constructionist ethnographybecomes the study of what people “do withwords.” This requires interactionally andcommunicatively reflexive fieldwork (seeGubrium, 1988; Mehan, 1979; Miller, 1994,1997b; Spencer, 1994b).

A Constructionist Analyticsfor Ethnography

The leading question of a constructionistanalytics is, How are the realities of everydaylife and their related social worlds con-structed and sustained? Closely related arethe questions, Constructed from what? and

Ethnographic Fieldwork • 375

Constructed under what circumstances?Clearly, answers to these questions implicatenaturalistic concerns. In formulating a con-structionist analytics, we have come to referto the inclusive bailiwick of the whats andhows of social reality as interpretive practice(Gubrium & Holstein, 1997, 2000; Holstein,1993; Holstein & Gubrium, 1994, 2000b).Both what and how concerns may be accom-modated by formulating constructionist eth-nography’s empirical research horizons interms of the procedures, resources, and con-ditions through which reality is appre-hended, understood, organized, and con-veyed. If a focus on interpretive practice isconstructionist in its empirical bearings, thegrounds for this focus are empirically sub-stantive. It is our view that the constructivehows of communicative practice must takeaccount of experientially real social objectslest the social conditions that bear on con-structive activity be shortchanged in our un-derstanding of the organization of everydaylife.

A constructionist analytics of interpretivepractice provides a way of addressing reality-constituting processes without blindly reify-ing, nor needlessly ignoring, the contexts,conditions, and resources of the construc-tion process. Centered on communicativeaction in context, it is an analytic frameworkeminently suited to understanding the prac-tice of everyday life. If the social construc-tion process is artful, as Harold Garfinkel(1967) put it, the analytics also hearkensback to Karl Marx’s (1956) view that partici-pants actively construct their worlds but thatthey do not do so completely on their ownterms. Put differently, a constructionist ana-lytics recognizes that reality-constituting“language games” (Wittgenstein, 1958) arefrequently institutionalized, which sets thepractical conditions for talk and interaction.The experientially real is simultaneously andreflexively constitutive of, and constitutedthrough, ongoing social relations. Construc-tionist ethnographers gaze both at and be-yond immediate discursive activity to exam-ine the ways in which broader—if still socially

constructed—circumstances, conditions, andinterpretive resources mediate the reality-construction process.

In this regard, a constructionist analyticsincorporates three enduring sociologicalpreoccupations. One is interactional andconcrete: an abiding interest in everydaydiscursive practice. A second is more experi-entially distant or transcendent: discourse-in-practice. The third concern is for the condi-tions and circumstances of interpretationthat both reflexively shape and are shapedby discursive practice and discourse-in-practice. The following sections discuss howthe three concerns bear on key objects ofconstructionist inquiry in the context ofethnographic fieldwork.

Discursive Practice

Although Peter Berger and ThomasLuckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality(1966) is often cited as the foundational in-spiration for constructionist inquiry, AlfredSchutz not only provided the impetus forBerger and Luckmann’s contribution butalso set methodological benchmarks forconstructionist fieldwork. Schutz (1962,1964, 1967, 1970) drew on EdmundHusserl’s (1928/1970) phenomenologicalphilosophy to develop an approach to em-pirical inquiry that centers on the ways thatmembers of society orient to and relate toeach other in their social worlds. Stressingthe constitutive or reflexively constructivenature of consciousness and social interac-tion, Schutz (1964) argues that the social sci-ences should focus on the ways that thelifeworld—that is, the lived world that everyperson takes for granted—is produced andexperienced. To view this world as underconstruction requires that we temporarilyset aside the experiential assumptions of the“natural attitude” (Schutz, 1970), that is, theeveryday cognitive stance that views theworld and its objects as principally “outthere” or “in here,” separate and distinctfrom acts of perception or interpretation. Inthe natural attitude, the constitutive role of

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language is overlooked as we assume thatthe life world exists independent of mem-bers’ presence and activity.

Schutz argues that we need to escape thenatural attitude in order to effectively viewand describe empirical reality. To do so, weneed to “bracket” the life world. By this, hemeans that the researcher temporarily setsaside a taken-for-granted orientation to theobjective world. The goal is to become “ag-nostic” regarding the reality of the socialworld in order to focus on how that world isconstituted as real. Bracketing allows con-structionist researchers to see, hear, and an-alyze the processes by which social reality be-comes real for its participants. This is amethodological move. The question of theultimate reality of social forms, which is on-tological, is not at issue. The constructionistresearcher thus temporarily suspends judg-ment about the nature and essence of thingsbeing studied and focuses instead on theways in which members of the life world con-stitute recognizable social structures. Thisopens to view the commonsense knowledge,everyday reasoning, and discursive practicesthat members use to construct and objectifysocial reality. Similarly, bracketing providesthe first step for constructionist ethnog-raphers in orienting to the lifeworld and itssocial forms.

Ethnomethodology shares Schutz’s orien-tation to the lifeworld but is exclusively con-cerned with the everyday hows of real-timetalk and social interaction. As DouglasMaynard and Steven Clayman (1991) ex-plain, ethnomethodology addresses theproblem of order in everyday life by combin-ing a “phenomenological sensibility” with aparamount concern for constitutive socialpractice. Garfinkel’s (1967) pioneering eth-nomethodological studies posited a modelof social order built on the contingent, em-bodied, ongoing interpretive work of ordi-nary members of society. Society’s mem-bers, he argued, possessed the practicallinguistic and interactional skills throughwhich the observable, accountable, and or-derly features of everyday reality were mean-

ingfully produced. As John Heritage (1984)puts it, social order from an ethnometho-dological point of view is virtually “talkedinto being.” Many constructionist ethnog-raphers borrow from this, explicitly or im-plicitly bringing ethnomethodological sensi-bilities to bear on constructionist projects(see Gubrium, 1988; Gubrium & Holstein,2000; Holstein & Gubrium, 2005; McHugh,1968; Mehan, 1979; Miller, 1994, 1997b;Moerman, 1974, 1988; Pollner, 1987;Spencer, 1994b; Sudnow, 1972; Turner,1974).

More than other constructionist ap-proaches, ethnomethodologically informedstudies have paid close attention to the finedetails of talk and interaction (see, e.g.,Drew, Raymond, & Weinberg, 2006). Howthis attention is focused, however, variesacross different ethnomethodological mo-dalities. Ethnographically oriented studiesemphasize the situated content of talk asconstitutive of local meaning (e.g., Wieder,1988). Other ethnomethodologically ori-ented studies emphasize the conversationalmachinery of everyday interaction (see Heri-tage, 1984; Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson,1974). Conversation analysis (CA)—which isarguably a close relative, if not an essentialcomponent, of ethnomethodology (seeAtkinson, 1988; Lynch & Bogen, 1994)—attempts to describe and explicate the so-cially constructive and collaborative prac-tices within sequences of talk that speakersuse and rely upon when they engage in so-cial interaction. Both the production of con-duct and its interpretation are viewed as ac-countable products of conversation’s turn-taking apparatus. Through this machinery,members accomplish the intelligibility oftheir social worlds.

Regardless of emphasis or specificmethod, these perspectives place discursivepractice at the forefront of empirical in-quiry. The constructionist ethnographerthus finds him- or herself squarely withinthe domain of everyday interaction, dealingwith the discursive procedures of reality con-struction. Communication in situ is scruti-

Ethnographic Fieldwork • 377

nized for the ways it works to produce, man-age, and secure locally recognizable socialstructures. Rather than concentrating on ev-eryday conduct in the world, this ethnogra-pher examines the practices of what MelvinPollner (1987) calls “worlding,” the linguis-tic actions that constitute the social worldand its forms.

This is a theoretically minimalist approachin that, as a consequence of bracketing,there is no a priori social order available totheorize. There are no preexisting socialforms in view to link analytically or to corre-late. Propositions and hypotheses concern-ing the relationship between social struc-tures, specified as variables, cannot beformulated because they have been set asidein order to make their discursive practicesvisible. Indeed, such propositions and hy-potheses must not be formulated becausethey would compromise bracketing and ana-lytic indifference. On this front, the con-structionist ethnographer’s theoretical con-cerns are typically limited to members’ ownindigenous theorizing and the ways in whichthey apply their theoretical skills to the busi-ness of making sense of everyday life. Theethnographer’s aim is to document howmembers themselves use theory in everydaytalk and interaction to construct their every-day realities.

Discourse-in-Practice

Studying how reality is constructed inevitablyleads us to questions regarding the discur-sive resources, or the whats, from whichsocial realities are produced. MichelFoucault’s historical studies of systems ofdiscourse suggest one method for discern-ing the interpretive options that are avail-able for reality construction at any particulartime or place. Broad configurations ofmeaningful action—which Foucault calleddiscourses—set the conditions of possibilityfor usage and supply ways of consideringquestions relating to the discursive re-sources with which reality is constructed.The available discourses at any particular

time and/or place set the conditions of possi-bility (Foucault, 1977) for how lives andworlds are constructed. The constructionistimpulse to examine the discursive possibili-ties of everyday life thus prevents an exclu-sive accent on discursive practice that mightoveremphasize social mechanisms and failto distinguish distinctive social realms andtheir forms.

Foucault’s constructionism was assidu-ously attuned to distinct regimes of reality.In Discipline and Punish (1977), for example,he informs us that the construct of the “self”as we know it was not in common usage be-fore the rise of panopticism. The socialstructure we now call the individualized selfwould have been literally “incredible” at atime before a discourse of individualizedsubjectivity had widespread currency. Buttoday, at a time when virtually hundreds ofsocial organizations and institutions pro-mote discussion of the personal self, the dis-cursive options for recognizably construct-ing who we are are nearly endless (Gubrium& Holstein, 2001; Holstein & Gubrium,2000b). Constructionist sensibilities directthe ethnographer to explore the availablediscursive possibilities for reality construc-tion, not just the interactional processes ofconstruction.

Another way of viewing constructionistimpulses is in terms of what LudwigWittgenstein (1958) calls socially situatedlanguage games. Occupying an analytic spacedistant from Foucault’s, Wittgenstein offersan interactional way to think about the dis-cursive resources that advance the construc-tionist interest in discursive possibilities. Hisprimary concern is how to understand themeaning of words. Arguing against a corre-spondence theory of meaning, Wittgensteincontends that meaning is always derivedfrom the context of a word’s use—fromthe practical way a word is deployed.Wittgenstein refers to different contextualconfigurations of usage as language games.These are ways of communicating that haveworking (if unspoken) “rules” that provide apractical sense for “what goes with what,” so

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to speak. Language games are systems of us-age or “forms of life” in which speakers andother participants articulate more or lessrecognizable linkages between words andthings, drawing from well-established con-nections. Put differently, language gamesvirtually constitute their own everyday reali-ties (Holstein & Gubrium, 2000b).

Existing in a different empirical registerfrom Foucault’s “discourses,” languagegames provide the basis for the interactionalconstruction of local realities. AlthoughWittgenstein appears at first glance to bemore in tune with ethnomethodologicalconcerns regarding discursive practice, hisnotion of socially situated language gamesalso provides analytic tools for understand-ing the sources and resources of discursiveconstructions. The argument that meaning-ful realities are built up within particular lan-guage games clearly resonates with Foucaul-dian arguments about the constructive roleof discourses and discursive structures. Bothperspectives suggest that discursive re-sources reflexively constitute the realitiesthat words are commonsensically thought tomerely describe. To engage a discourse orlanguage game is not simply a matter of rep-resenting reality; it simultaneously consti-tutes that reality as it is meaningfully embed-ded in the discourse itself.

The procedural point that construction-ists can glean from Foucault and Wittgen-stein is that ethnographic attention shouldattend to the discursive environments(Gubrium & Holstein, 2001) of talk andinteraction. The objective would be to de-scribe the communicative resources (e.g.,discourses, language games) available at anyparticular time and place. The construction-ist ethnographer would therefore placediscourse-in-practice squarely within thefield of inquiry.

A concern for discourse-in-practice clearlycomplements the study of discursive prac-tice, but it focuses more on historical, insti-tutional, or cultural resources than on thepresent-time actions of social construction.At times, this focus may be somewhat distant

from face–to-face interaction. Still, if the aimis more abstract, it remains theoreticallyminimalist. An analytics of discourse-in-practice does not—indeed, should not—seekto formulate causal or determinate relationsbetween discourses and/or language gamesand local processes of reality construction. Itdoes not strive for a priori definitions of so-cial structure, nor to theorize social struc-ture’s associations or effects. Instead, thegoal is to describe how systems of dis-course mediate the social construction pro-cess, providing the practical, substantivegroundings of everyday life.

Conditions of Construction

A focus on discourse-in-practice draws theconditions of social construction explicitlyinto ethnographic purview. It raises ques-tions about the material, social, and culturallimits of discursive practice. The conditionsof interpretation—some clearly visible andothers somewhat nebulous in practice—arealready “there” in the sense that people takethem more or less for granted. These condi-tions and circumstances provide workinggroundings, borders, themes, and materialsfor constructing realities. Reality construc-tion always takes place somewhere, undersome conditions. Their discernible presenceprompts questions such as why discursivepractice moves in particular directions andwhat the consequences might be for the livesof those under consideration.

This impulse turns us to the varied work-ing “contexts” that shape reality construc-tion. Although the social construction pro-cess may be discursively artful and agentic, itis also subject to both local and more distalinfluences. It is always substantively medi-ated by the interpretive resources and cir-cumstances at hand. As Emile Durkheim(1961) might have put it, everyday interpre-tation is inevitably conditioned by practicalexigencies, relying on existing cultural cate-gories or “collective representations” thatare diversely articulated with the particularsof social construction.

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Local culture, organizational settings, andinstitutional structures all mediate talk andinteraction. They shape the ways individualsunderstand and represent local realities.They should not be viewed as prescriptions,rules, or norms for the social constructionprocesses but rather seen as offering moreor less regularized, localized ways of assign-ing meaning and responding to things. Theyprovide discernible frames of interpretationand standards of accountability to whichmembers orient as they engage in construc-tive activities. The ordinary, situated particu-lars of everyday interaction—local aspects ofdiscursive environments—are constantlytaken into account and used to constructmeaningful objects of experience (seeGubrium & Holstein, 1997, 2000, 2001; Hol-stein & Gubrium, 2000b).

This is a constructionist’s way of orientingto discursive process as more or less institu-tionalized, a process that is shaped by its lo-cation in relation to shared concerns (seeBerger & Luckmann, 1966). Social life is re-plete with what Everett Hughes (1942/1984)referred to as “going concerns.” For him, go-ing concerns could be as expansive as bu-reaucracies or as limited as families, as insu-lar and insidious as terrorist cells or asloosely organized and innocuous as tod-dlers’ play groups. Hughes was always care-ful not to reify the patterns of interactionthat constitute institutions. Such patternswere established through concerted activityand were subject to variable contingencies.For Hughes, going concerns were alwaysemergent, continually in process.

On this front, constructionist sensibilitiessituate the social construction process with-in the context of local culture, organiza-tional structure, going concerns, and anynumber of other socially organized circum-stances. Accordingly, the constructionistethnographer balances interactional with in-stitutional or contextual analysis. Criticalquestions emerge: What are the culturalcodes and resources available for constitut-ing local realities? How are they locally ap-plied? What regulates the use of particular

accounts and vocabularies of motive? Theseand similar questions direct ethnographicinquiry to the meaningful conditions of ev-eryday life, conditions that influence realityconstruction. They direct attention to ongo-ing talk and interaction as it unfolds in dis-tinct circumstances, giving as much atten-tion to circumstances as it does to discursivepractice in its own right.

An orientation to socially situated realityconstruction takes us into complex territory.As Foucault notes, discourse is not owned byanyone in particular, nor is it centered informal authority. The same might be said oflanguage games. Rather, power/knowledgeand influence are brought to bear throughsocially conditioned discursive practice. Dis-course works locally and contingently. Dis-courses are not fixed templates to be auto-matically employed. The categories ofavailable discourses are articulated in prac-tice, using available interpretive resources,fueling the work of reality construction.

Reorienting to the Field

Ethnography’s naturalistic data-gatheringpractices and analytic conventions requireretooling to accommodate constructionistimpulses. Naturalistic ethnography typicallydraws on indigenous materials collectedthrough observation and interviewing. Itsaim, most generally, is to collect data that aidin the description, reconstruction, and/orexplanation of subjects’ social worlds orworldviews from the subjects’ perspectives.In this approach, indigenous talk and otherforms of discourse—language use ingeneral—are viewed as resources that re-searchers themselves draw on, a meansthrough which indigenous actors convey in-formation that researchers seek to summa-rize, systematize, and generalize. Bringingconstructionist sensibilities to bear on eth-nography transforms the appreciation oflanguage use. It is reconceptualized as aform of social action through which socialworlds and regularities are constructed. As

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such, it becomes the research topic in its ownright, not merely a means for formulating in-formation about a topic. Although thistopic–resource distinction has been centralto ethnomethodological inquiry from thebeginning (see Cicourel, 1964; Garfinkel,1967; Zimmerman & Pollner, 1970), it isequally pertinent to the constructionist pro-ject as well.

Following from the analytics previouslypresented, constructionist ethnographytakes situated language use as its field of in-quiry, paying close, detailed attention to lin-guistic activity in situ. Whereas naturalisticethnography moves relatively quickly fromthe words of research subjects to research-ers’ formulations and summaries, construc-tionist impulses lead the ethnographer toexamine practices, structures, and circum-stances of language use, asking, most gener-ally, what people are doing with their talk ordiscourse. The aim is to describe and analyzetalk and discourse in terms of their construc-tive contributions instead of treating themas mere conveyances of what is going on.

Orienting to Discursive Practice

The constructionist impulse directs ethno-graphic interest toward the production of so-cial forms and structure. For example, a nat-uralistic ethnographer might approach asocial setting and begin to consider the vari-ous ways that standard analytic constructs orvariables might relate to one another withinthe setting. The researcher might scrutinizea setting for ways in which members’ genderrelates to differential outcomes in (or be-yond) that setting. Such was the case in a se-ries of studies of the effects of candidate pa-tients’ gender on involuntary commitmentdecisions (see Holstein, 1987). These re-search reports produced equivocal results,and even Carol Warren’s (1982) richly de-scriptive naturalistic ethnography of a men-tal health court was inconclusive about therelationship between candidate patients’gender and the likelihood of their commit-ment. Although they vary in their approach

and focus, these studies held in common thenaturalistic assumption that gender was afixed characteristic (variable) of candidatepatients, one that might influence court-room outcomes.

Bringing constructionist sensibilities tothis line of inquiry, however, orients us to adifferent field of action. Instead of asking,How does gender affect commitment hear-ing outcomes? a constructionist impulseraises this question: How is gender (talk)used to affect hearing outcomes? This ques-tion leads us directly to discursive practiceand the reality-structuring work accom-plished by courtroom talk. Rather than treat-ing gender as a fixed element of the scene, aconstructionist project would attend to thesituated construction of gender and its ef-fects.

This was the orientation to talk and inter-action of James Holstein’s (1987, 1993) eth-nography of involuntary commitment pro-ceedings. The study showed that courtroomparticipants typically argued cases in termsof the “tenability” of the proposed fit be-tween mentally ill candidate patients andcommunity living situations putatively avail-able to them (Holstein, 1984, 1987, 1993).Candidate patients’ vulnerability and man-ageability were key dimensions of these ar-guments. A mentally ill person viewed as es-pecially vulnerable to life’s unpredictableexigencies would be a poor candidate forcommunity release and thus would likely becommitted. Conversely, a candidate patientwho was viewed as easily manageable in acommunity setting was more likely to be re-leased. In the course of such commitmentarguments, gender was frequently—butvariably—brought to the discursive fore-front.

For example, Kathleen Wells, a 32-year-old white female, became a candidate forcommitment when she was found living in alarge cardboard box beneath a railroad over-pass. At her hearing, the viability of this shel-ter was the focus of concern. In presentingarguments for commitment, the district at-torney referred to the deficiencies of this

Ethnographic Fieldwork • 381

dwelling and then used the candidate pa-tient’s gender as a lens for viewing this ar-rangement as especially untenable:

Now I know Miss Wells claims that this [thecardboard box] is as good as the subsidizedpublic housing programs the DSS [Depart-ment of Social Services] has suggested she lookinto, but we have to consider more than itsconstruction aspects. . . . You can’t allow awoman to be exposed to all the other thingsthat go on out there under the [railroad]tracks. Many of those men have lived like thatfor years, but we’re talking about a womanhere. A sick and confused woman who doesn’trealize the trouble she’s asking for. She simplycannot live like that. That’s no place for awoman, especially after dark. . . . She’s not tak-ing it [being a woman in the midst of men] intoaccount. She doesn’t realize how dangerous itis for her. It’s up to the court to protect her.(Holstein, 1987, pp. 146–147)

In analyzing this case, Holstein (1987,p. 147) noted that the district attorney im-plied that the proposed living arrangementmight have been tolerable, if not entirely ac-ceptable, for men, but it was unequivocallyunacceptable for a woman. The tenability ofthe living circumstance depended on theversion of the candidate patient’s genderthat was rhetorically summoned on this oc-casion. Not only was gender situationally in-voked as an important concern, but itsmeaning was also circumstantially crafted asan interpretive framework for understand-ing the situation at hand. Gender and itsmeaning were made relevant as they were lo-cally constructed. The use of “gender talk”was thus a key rhetorical action leading to adecision to commit.

To illustrate that gender talk is highlycircumstantial and artful, Holstein juxta-posed a similar commitment hearing. Inthe second instance, Sharlene Fox, a 27-year-old African American female, was re-leased into the care of her mother andaunt instead of being involuntarily com-mitted. The judge in the case offered thefollowing explanation:

I’m releasing this woman if she’ll go and staywith her family, her mother and her aunt.They’ll take her in . . . and give her a goodplace to stay. [To Ms. Fox: But you gotta dowhat they say or you’ll be right back in here.]Her mother should be able to deal with her thistime. Her [Sharlene’s] husband’s not around[he had been portrayed as an irresponsibletroublemaker] and she should be able to takecare of her daughter all right Her symptomsseem to be under control and I think that be-tween the two of them they can manage her.It’s not like she’s some 200 pound guy whothey’d have to put in a straight jacket if he gotoff his medication. . . . We’re talking about awoman here who isn’t going to be able to causemuch trouble. (Holstein, 1987, p. 147)

In this case, the analysis (p. 147) focusedon how gender was invoked as a componentof Ms. Fox’s manageability. The judge ex-plicitly contrasted how a woman, as opposedto a man, could be appropriately housed inthe available circumstances. Gender wasused to portray the candidate patient as eas-ily managed and her living arrangements astenable, under the circumstances. Thelarger point to be gleaned is that it was dis-cursive work that produced a “gender ef-fect,” and this effect is visible only by payingclose attention to reality-constituting prac-tices.

A wide variety of ethnographic studiesevince this constructionist appreciation fordiscursive practice. Hugh Mehan’s (1979)“constitutive ethnography” of schools andclassrooms examines the social structuringactivities that assembled everyday realities ineducational settings. Grounded in ethno-methodological and CA traditions, LearningLessons (Mehan, 1979) pays extremely closeattention to the details of talk-in-school-interactions. Also displaying ethnometho-dological sensibilities, David Buckholdt andJaber Gubrium’s (1979) Caretakers eth-nographically examined the discursive con-struction of emotional disturbance and itstreatment. Paralleling Mehan in their orien-tation to discursive practice, Buckholdt andGubrium, however, are less concerned with

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the sequential conversational constructionof local realities as they are with narrative ac-counting practices. Holstein’s ethnographyof involuntary commitment proceedings(1993) falls somewhere in the middle, look-ing at both sequential and narrative produc-tion. Nonetheless, all of these ethnographiesshare an explicit focus on how talk is used toproduce the local realities of concern. Theyrepresent only the tip of the iceberg of con-structionist ethnographies. Studies of “clientwork” (Spencer, 1994a) and “person pro-duction” (Holstein, 1992) illustrate how in-dividuals are differentially constructed associal objects, either institutionally or other-wise. Constructionist ethnography also hasexamined the discursive practices throughwhich a wide variety of social forms are con-structed, including family (Gubrium, 1992;Gubrium & Holstein, 1990), the life course(Holstein & Gubrium, 2000a), homelessness(Marvasti, 2003), and insanity and addiction(Weinberg, 2005).

Orienting to Discourse-in-Practice

If studies of discursive practice tend to em-phasize talk and interaction or other formsof discursive exchange, ethnographies ofdiscourse-in-practice use historical, cultural,or textual material and field observations todocument the production of systems of dis-course. Foucault’s groundbreaking work isillustrative. Foucault provides compellinghistorical examinations of the emergenceof regimes of power/knowledge throughwhich reality is produced and apprehended.He describes discourses that constitute so-cial forms as widely varied as the self (1977,1988), medicine and the clinic (1975), sexu-ality (1978), and madness, insanity, and psy-chiatry (1965). Traces of Foucault’s ap-proach and procedures can be found inmore contemporary ethnographic applica-tions (see Kendall & Wickham, 1999)

If not expressly Foucauldian, other con-temporary examinations of discourse-in-practice have ethnographic componentsthat focus on social problems. These include

studies of the emergence of discourses of so-cial problems (Holstein & Miller, 1993,2003a; Spector & Kitsuse, 1977), homeless-ness (Spencer, 1996), hate crime (Jenness &Broad, 1997; Jenness & Grattet, 2004), rape(Martin, 2005), fatness and thinness (Sobal& Maurer, 1999), domestic violence (Berns,2004), and marital equality and inequality(Harris, 2006), among many others. Many ofthese and similar studies are descriptions ofsocial movements, involving significantethnographic examinations of the dynamicsof organizational action, as well as resourceand media mobilization, and inter- andintragroup contentiousness (see Benford &Hunt, 2003), all of which deal with dis-courses of various kinds.

Working in a related vein, Gale Miller(1997a) has conducted an exemplary “eth-nography of institutional discourse” (1994,p. 280) that documents the emergence anduse of discursive resources in organizing thetherapeutic work of a therapy agency.Miller’s study is especially instructive be-cause it is an ethnography of the discoursestructures and discursive resources thatcharacterized the same agency in two differ-ent historical periods. This 12-year study ofNorthland Clinic, an internationally promi-nent center of brief therapy, describes amarked shift in the discourse of client sub-jectivity that accompanied a conscious alter-ation of treatment philosophy. When Millerbegan his fieldwork, Northland employedecosystemic brief therapy, which empha-sized the social contexts of clients’ lives andproblems. In this therapeutic environment,clients’ subjectivity was linked with the sys-tems of social relationships that were takento form and fuel their problems. The ap-proach required the staff to discern and dis-cuss the state of these systems and to inter-vene so as to alter their dynamics andthereby effect change. Miller notes that thisapproach was informed by the modern dis-course of real psychological and relationalproblems.

Several years after Miller’s fieldwork be-gan, Northland shifted to a more postmod-

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ern discourse, which articulated interven-tion in a solution- (as opposed to problem-)oriented, constructivist discourse. Thera-pists began to practice solution-focusedbrief therapy, which meant viewing troublesas distinctive ways of talking about everydaylife. This prompted the staff to orient to thetherapy process as a set of language games,consciously appropriating Wittgenstein’ssense of the term. The idea was that troubleswere as much constructions—ways of talkingor forms of life—as they were real difficultiesfor the clients in question. This conceptiontransformed clients’ institutional subjectiv-ity from that of being relatively passiveagents of systems of personal troubles andnegative stories to a conception of them asactive problem constructors and solvers withthe potential to formulate positive storiesabout themselves and design helpful solu-tions. An everyday language of solutions,not a discourse of problems, became the ba-sis of intervention. Changes in the ther-apy agency clearly displayed the alternatediscourses-in-practice, which, in turn, weremobilized in talk and interaction. This re-sulted in the construction of distinctly differ-ent “clients” and “problems” (subsequently“solutions”). Miller’s (1997a) study vividlyhighlights the emergence and use of con-trasting discursive resources, as well as theconstraints that the discourses entail.

Attending to Discursive Conditions

The work of Erving Goffman provides apoint of departure for attending to the cir-cumstances that shape the construction pro-cess. In The Presentation of Self in EverydayLife (1959), for example, he portrays interac-tion in highly active, creative, agentic terms.But he also attends to the conditions ofinteraction, most importantly those thatbear on the construction of moral order. Ac-cording to Randal Collins (1980, p. 200),Goffman stresses the “hard external con-straints of society upon what individuals canafford to do and believe,” but he also allows

for considerable flexibility. For Goffman,ever-changing situational demands produceinterpretive variability.

Goffman’s concern for the productionand management of the moral order leads tohis interest in the situational contours of so-cial life: “My perspective is situational, mean-ing here a concern for what one individualcan be alive to at a particular moment, thisoften involving a few other particular indi-viduals and not necessarily restricted to themutually monitored arena of face-to-facegatherings” (Goffman, 1974, p. 8). ForGoffman (1964, p. 134), “Social situations atleast in our society constitute a reality suigeneris as he [Durkheim] used to say, andtherefore need and warrant analysis in theirown right, much like that accorded other ba-sic forms of social organization.” “Socialsituatedness” thus assumes a commandingrole in Goffman’s ethnography. His analyticvocabulary of situated action directs empiri-cal attention to the contours of the “interac-tion order” (1983) within which people con-duct their everyday lives, conveying theartfulness of reality-defining action.

Studies of the circumstances of social con-struction may take into consideration theworking objectives motivating reality con-struction, the audiences who are involvedwith these realities, the accountability struc-tures that operate in particular circum-stances, and the interpretive resources thatare locally available (Gubrium & Holstein,1997). In addition, Goffman would not letthe constructionist ethnographer forget thephysical features of a setting as they relate totalk and interaction. Some of the most im-portant contingencies of reality construc-tion are such material features of a social set-ting as bodies, rooms and doors, furniturearrangements, and lighting. Consider, forexample, how Gubrium attended to the roleof an ordinary physical object—a tickingclock—as it was used to represent the self inthe midst of an Alzheimer’s disease supportgroup meeting (Gubrium & Holstein, 1995,pp. 709–710). During a discussion of the

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burdens of home care, the wife of a demen-tia sufferer described the challenge of decid-ing whether or not to place her husband in anursing home. Pointing to a ticking clock ona nearby shelf, she remarked, “That thereclock’s me. It’ll keep ticking away until it’stime [to decide] and won’t stop for a minute,until it winds down, I guess.” Focusing onthe discursive use of the clock, Gubriumshows the reader how, for the wife and oth-ers, “winding down” signifies the gradual de-cline of the caregiving wife. She needlesslywastes away, martyring herself for someonewho has become the “mere shell” of a for-mer self.

In the preceding analysis, the clock is aculturally recognizable symbol conscriptedfor self-construction. Its familiar characteris-tics are used metaphorically, but its con-crete, physical presence is also crucial incommunicating the dilemma at hand. Con-crete references to the clock visibly repre-sent a self whose incessant temporal pro-gression into ill health might not be readilycommunicated on its own. The clock, ac-cording to Gubrium, is taken on board rhe-torically to concretize the experience inquestion. A virtual cultural cliché, presum-ably recognizable to other competent mem-bers of society and certainly familiar to thosewho have participated in the Alzheimer’sdisease movement (Gubrium, 1986), it be-comes a device for shared understanding. Itis crucial to this setting and the social con-struction process because it serves to materi-ally mediate the transmission of culturalmeaning. The material setting—the concretephysical circumstances of interaction—thusbecome important parameters of theethnographic field. We see this even moreprominently in Gubrium’s comparative eth-nography of family therapy agencies (1992),which underscores the importance of engag-ing the sheer scenic presence of reality-constructing material. This study shows viv-idly how tissue boxes, teddy bears, waitingrooms, and clients’ chairs, among manyother physical objects, are used to mediate

and convey personal meaning in the therapyenvironment.

Procedural Adaptations

Bringing constructionist sensibilities to eth-nographic fieldwork also involves proce-dural adaptations to traditional field meth-ods and analytic strategies. It does notrequire reinventing the wheel, but it doesdemand that research techniques explicitlyattend to the social construction process.Naturalistic ethnography, of course, dealsexplicitly with interaction. In their superblydetailed guide to Writing EthnographicFieldnotes, Robert Emerson, Rachel Fretz,and Linda Shaw (1995, p. 14) urge research-ers to “value close, detailed reports of inter-action.” Although this suggestion is aimedprimarily at a naturalistic audience, it is trueeven more so for the constructionist ethnog-rapher. For the constructionist ethnogra-pher, however, the focus is as much on thehows as the whats of everyday life.

Fieldnotes, Recordings, and Transcripts

In light of their deep concern for socially sit-uated discourse, constructionist ethno-graphers collect documents of discourseand discursive environments. Data collec-tion focuses on capturing the communica-tive, as well as the interactive, details ofsettings of interest. The constructionist eth-nographer is drawn to settings as scenes inwhich reality-construction work is takingplace. There has long been debate concern-ing the relative advantages and disadvan-tages of “natural” versus “contrived” or“provoked” data (e.g., observation vs. inter-viewing and intentionally elicited or experi-mentally induced conversation and actions—see Atkinson & Coffey, 2002; Becker &Geer, 1957; Lynch, 2002; Potter, 2002;Speer, 2002). Although naturally occurringtalk and interaction may be widely pre-ferred, in principle there is no reason to ex-

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clude “provoked” communication—as longas analysis focuses on the discursive work be-ing done in the talk that has been elicited inone way or another.

Beyond capturing the details of settingsand their events, the constructionist ethnog-rapher is especially concerned with record-ing discursive data. Most standard ethno-graphic data collection techniques remainuseful but require modification (see Emer-son et al., 1995; Jackson, 1995; Sanjek,1990). Fieldnotes, for example, include asmuch indigenous discursive detail as possi-ble. A higher degree of attention to the ac-tual talk in interaction generally character-izes constructionist ethnography.

All fieldnotes are inscriptions—not literalreproductions—of field realities (Emerson etal., 1995; Geertz, 1973). They unavoidablytransform witnessed events and scenesaccording to preconceptions, conventions,framing, and other forms of selectivity.Whereas naturalistic fieldnotes strive forrich snapshots of the field, which can beused to describe and summarize thosescenes, constructionist ethnography is moreconcerned with what members do withwords. Although selectivity is imposed inchoosing what to record or inscribe, the con-structionist fieldworker typically strives tocapture as much in situ verbatim detail aspossible, preserving the opportunity to later“unpack” talk-in-interaction for the con-structive work entailed. Sometimes thisamounts to close-to-verbatim records of keyspates of talk, noted as much as possible inspeakers’ own words. Sometimes construc-tionist projects require greater detail interms of conversational sequencing andstructure.

Audio- (or video-) tape recordings of inter-actions can be advantageous, as they allowfor a more detailed reconstruction of whathas discursively transpired. Of course, atranscribed tape recording cannot fully sub-stitute for an actually observed interaction,especially in terms of context and scenicpresence, but it does provide the opportu-

nity to repeatedly consult the data touncover patterns that might not have beeninitially apparent. Candace West (1996) hasargued persuasively that if ethnographers’analyses focus on talk, there is much to begained from the use of detailed transcrip-tions and/or the detailed preparation offieldnotes that approximate verbatim re-cords (so-called do-it-yourself transcripts;Atkinson & Drew, 1979).

Of course tape recording is often impossi-ble in field settings, and do-it-yourself tran-scripts are possible only under specialconditions—often highly regimented institu-tional circumstances such as court hearingsin which turns at talk are preallocated (seeHolstein, 1993, Appendix; West, 1996). Nev-ertheless, if one’s aim is to show precisely, intalk-in-interaction, how social order andmeaning are talked into being, then lessthan perfect, do-it-yourself transcripts canbe valuable despite their imperfections.

Consider another example from Hol-stein’s (1993) involuntary commitmentstudy. One analytic point of his research re-port related to the collaborative productionof “crazy talk” during the hearings. Holsteinargued that talk that was ostensibly andcommonsensically considered evidence ofmental illness and interactional incompe-tence in the hearings was empirically the re-sult of competent collaboration in conversa-tional practice.

The following extract is a segment of thedistrict attorney’s cross-examination ofHenry Johnson that a judge cited in his ac-count for hospitalizing Mr. Johnson. Amongother things, the judge noted that Johnson’stestimony was “confused and jumbled.” Ashe put it, “He [Johnson] didn’t know what tosay. He was stopping and starting, jumpingfrom one thing to another. You can see thathe can’t focus on one thing at a time” (Hol-stein, 1993, p. 108).

1. DA: How you been feeling lately?2. HJ: OK3. ((Silence))

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4. HJ: I been feeling pretty good.5. ((Silence))6. DA: Uh huh7. ((Silence))8. HJ: Pretty good, ummm all right9. ((Silence))

10. HJ: Got a job with (several words inaudible)11. ((Silence))12. HJ: Pays OK, not bad.13. ((Silence 4 seconds))14. HJ: My car got hit, an accident, really messed

it up15. ((Silence))16. HJ: Got to get it on the street17. ((Silence 5 seconds))18. HJ: They gonna let us go to the truck out

front?19. DA: When you’re all done here they might.

In his analysis, Holstein (1993, pp. 108–110) notes that this stretch of talk is discon-tinuous and multifocused. It is a speech envi-ronment characterized by failed speakertransition and recurrent silence. In court,the talk was heard as Mr. Johnson’s own do-ing, interpreted as symptomatic or pro-bative of Johnson’s interactional incompe-tence. But, Holstein argued, it is possible toconsider this halting, disjointed movementfrom one line of talk to another as a collabo-rative phenomenon. If one frames discontin-uous utterances as proffered solutions to theproblems that witnesses confront as they at-tempt to produce responsive testimony in anonresponsive environment, one can inter-pret Mr. Johnson’s testimony in an entirelydifferent light. The detailed transcription ofthe talk, including the notation and place-ment of silences, provides the basis forclaiming that silences and topic shifts re-sulted from the DA’s refusal to assume aturn at talk at appropriate or expected junc-tures or to minimally acknowledge that Mr.Johnson had satisfactorily completed an ut-terance in his turn at talk. Arguing that si-lences and topic changes often result fromfailures at speakership transition, Holsteinwas able to demonstrate empirically that thedisjointed talk was explainable in CA terms,

suggesting that Mr. Johnson’s “jumbled”speech resulted from his competent attemptto sustain conversation in a speech environ-ment in which his conversational partner(the DA) was not fulfilling his turn-taking re-sponsibilities. Such an analysis would not bepossible without transcriptions written withthe requisite level of detail.

West (1996) enumerates several ways inwhich recording and transcription of talk infield settings benefits the ethnographic en-terprise. But she also notes both practicaland analytic limitations. There are two cru-cial points that constructionists should takefrom West’s thoughtful assessment of theutility of transcription in field research.First, it is imperative to collect data at thelevel of detail necessary and appropriate tothe goals of analysis. Second, the researchershould be careful not to make analyticclaims that cannot be supported by the levelof detail available in the recorded data.

Maynard (2003) also considers the rela-tionship between ethnography and the fine-grained, sequential analysis of talk-in-interaction that characterizes CA. He drawsan important distinction between collectingdata to analyze an activity (which is the aimof CA) and collecting data to describe a set-ting (which is major goal of naturalistic eth-nography). Calling for mutual appreciationbetween CA and ethnography, Maynard(2003) specifies two approaches to theirjoint use in research projects: “mutual affin-ity” and “limited affinity.” At the risk of over-simplifying, the former approach is likelyto begin from a more naturalistic, ethno-graphic standpoint. The focus would be onwhat might be transpiring in a setting, andanalysis would work toward explication ofhow local realities might come about, per-haps using discourse and CA techniques inthe process. Working from a standpoint oflimited affinity, however, the researcherwould be more cautious about the un-explicated use of contextual material at theexpense of shortchanging the sequentiallyemergent context of interaction within

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which all speech acts are embedded. Thetendency would be to work more closelywith carefully recorded and transcribedspates of talk, mining them for the proper-ties of social organization displayed within.

Anthropologists Michel Moerman (1988)also has proposed a more symbiotic relation-ship between ethnographic fieldwork andCA. In Talking Culture, he suggests thatethnographic studies of how people makesense of their lives should try to find out howthe organization of talk influences thesensemaking process. This call has been ech-oed in several other proposals for more con-versationally sensitive ethnographic ap-proaches (e.g., Gubrium & Holstein, 1997;Miller, 1994, 1997b; Spencer, 1994b). Al-though Moerman’s companion suggestionthat CA be more sensitive to surroundingcontext has not been warmly embracedacross the CA community, West (1996) ar-gues that a number of fruitful developmentsin CA have stemmed from debates overMoerman’s proposal.

Interviews

Interviews are a staple of ethnographic field-work. There are, however, important differ-ences in how they are used and analyzed aspart of a constructionist project. Harboringboth what and how concerns, constructionistethnographers engaged in interviewingneed to keep in mind the distinction be-tween collecting data in order to analyze dis-cursive activity and collecting data to de-scribe a setting.

Traditional approaches to interviewingtend to see the interview as a medium for thetransmission of information (Holstein &Gubrium, 1995; Kvale, 1996; Wooffitt &Widdicombe, 2006). The informant or re-spondent is treated as a vessel of answersabout his or her social world, and the inter-view is viewed as a means of extracting, in anuncontaminated fashion, that informationthat naturally lies within (Holstein &Gubrium, 1995). From a constructionist per-spective, however, the interview should be

conceived as more active. It is the site of so-cial interaction from which meaningfulaccounts of social life are assembled andconveyed. The knowledge or informationproduced is therefore both collaborativelyproduced and continually under construc-tion (Holstein & Gubrium, 1995).

Following this perspective, ethnographicinterviewing guided by constructionist im-pulses proceeds much like the many variantsof traditional naturalistic interviewing (seeGubrium & Holstein, 2002). Although theconstructionist would be more aware of theunavoidably collaborative nature of inter-viewing, he or she would nevertheless ob-serve many of the conventional guidelinesand strictures governing the interview pro-cess. Although the interview process itselfmight be indistinguishable from conven-tional, informal interviewing, there wouldbe analytic justification for more active ex-changes between all participants, if desired.Constructionist impulses, however, wouldbe clearly evident in the analysis of interviewdata, which, as the following section shows,orients to interview data more as social ac-tion than as retrieved information.

Data Analysis

Ethnographic data analysis guided by con-structionist concerns orients to the consti-tutive work done by interaction, discourses-in-practice, and their mediating circumstances.Several descriptions of constructionist dis-course analyses are included in this Hand-book (see L. Miller, Chapter 13; Potter &Hepburn, Chapter 14; and Nikander, Chap-ter 21, this volume). Other forms of analysisare more narratively oriented and more orless ethnographic (e.g., Chase, 2005;Gubrium & Holstein, in press; Riessman,1993). CA and ethnomethodological ap-proaches and techniques may also be infor-mative (see Drew et al., 2006; Garfinkel,1967; Heritage, 1984; Holstein, 1993;Maynard, 2003; Mehan, 1979; Mehan &Wood, 1975; Silverman, 2004, 2006; tenHave, 1999; West, 1996; Wieder, 1988).

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Long-standing guides to data analysishave been adapted to the constructionist en-terprise, including the grounded theory ap-proach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). In Chapter20 of this volume, Kathy Charmaz suggeststhat grounded theory strategies can fruit-fully be used to create and interrogate con-structionist data. The familiar procedures ofcoding, categorization, and comparison canbe applied to constructionist data whenproper attention is paid to the work of con-structing social forms. The distinguishingfeature of a constructionist applicationwould be the emphasis on describing reality-constructing social processes in the data.

Another feature distinguishing construc-tionist studies is their analytic vocabulary.Constructionist vocabulary is replete withcategories of action; its terminology and idi-oms virtually constitute empirical horizonsof discursive activity. At the risk of over-simplifying, constructionist ethnography ischaracterized by key analytic terms that re-fer to members’ reality work. These termstypically take the form of gerunds—wordingderived from verbs but functioning asnouns, as in “producing reality” or “accom-plishing social order.” These verbs are giventhe form of nouns in order to name types ofconstructive activity. Other common fea-tures of the vocabulary include expressionsof “practices,” such as in descriptive practiceand narrative practice, or types of “work,”such as biographical work (Holstein &Gubrium, 2000a), identity work (Gubrium &Holstein, 2001), and social problems work(Holstein & Miller, 2003b). The unifyingthread of this vocabulary is its utility in high-lighting reality-constituting activity.

The analysis of ethnographic interviewdata nicely illustrates other differences be-tween constructionist and naturalistic analy-sis. In naturalistic analyses, interview dataare copiously presented as evidence of infor-mants’ experience and point of view. Theirdescriptions, accounts, and narratives aretaken as representative of the key variables,themes, and frameworks of meaning thatmembers of settings recognize and appreci-

ate. The analyst scours the corpus ofinterview data to extract generalizable obser-vations and analyses from what informantshave said, then offers exemplary interviewextracts to corroborate or illustrate orient-ing hypotheses, themes emerging from theanalysis, and generalizations about the fieldin question (Mehan, 1979; Zimmerman &Pollner, 1970). Data extracts tend to be usedillustratively but are not analyzed per se.

Consider, for example, the naturalisticuse of interview data in Robert Prus’s andStyllianoss Irini’s (1980) study of a hotelcommunity, Hookers, Rounders, and DeskClerks. One would be hard pressed to find anethnography that contained more excerptsof informants’ interview talk; a conservativeestimate suggests that well over 50% of the266 pages of core text are devoted to infor-mants’ talk. Typically, the authors describe afeature of community life, offer an extrapo-lated generalization, then proffer extendedinterview extracts in illustration, often pref-aced with the following sort of explication:“The following extracts indicate both thesorts of concerns the girls have and the sortsof approaches they encounter” (p. 12). Fol-lowing the extracts, the text typically movesto a new topic, with further illustration ofthe new topic. Interview data used in thisfashion offer insights—in the “authentic”voices of the informants themselves—intowhat informants think is going on. There is,however, little analysis on the part of the re-searcher. Instead, the interview talk is left to“speak for itself.” As descriptively interest-ing as such a report might be in terms ofwhat is going on from the informant’s pointof view, the researchers say little about howsocial worlds and meanings are created andsustained.

In contrast, constructionist sensibilitieslead the analyst to look for what informantsare “doing with words” in the interview. Theanalyst would typically present a data ex-tract, then analyze, in considerable detail,what is going on in the extract—that is, whatdiscursive work is being done by the spate oftalk. The analysis might proceed in terms of

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narrative analysis (see, e.g., Chase, 1995;Holstein & Gubrium, 1995; Marvasti, 2003),discourse analysis (e.g., Wooffitt &Widdicombe, 2006), ethnomethodology(e.g., Baker, 2002), or CA (e.g., Maynard,Houtkoop-Steenstra, Schaeffer, & van derZouwen, 2002), just to name a few possibili-ties. All these approaches would attempt tounpack the constitutive practices imbeddedin the talk. The interview data would not beleft to speak for themselves.

For example, in his interview study ofnursing home narratives, Speaking of Life(1993), Gubrium uses nursing home resi-dents’ own words and voices to convey as-pects of life in the nursing home. But thestudy’s constructionist impulses yield an an-alytic vocabulary of “biographical work,”“horizons of meaning,” and “narrative link-age” that help the analyst (and reader) un-derstand how residents produce and struc-ture the meaning of life and death, aging,health, illness, family, God, and the past,present, and future. The study focuses onhow, in “speaking of life,” nursing home res-idents construct the lives in question. Thestudy is as much about how life is spoken as itis about what is said. We find similar analyticdevelopments in many other constructionistinterview studies. For example, we can seethe social construction of various socialforms in studies of the production of home-lessness (Marvasti, 2003), equality and in-equality (Harris, 2006), sexual identity(Chase, 2001), and divorce (Hopper, 2001),just to mention a very few constructionist in-terview studies.

Analytic Bracketing

As is evident in the preceding sections, dis-cursive practice, discourse-in-practice, anddiscursive conditions are intimately inter-twined and mutually constitutive. Dealingwith the interplay poses procedural chal-lenges. Constructionists need a way to con-sider discursive practice without depicting itas unconditionally artful and unconstrainedby resources and circumstances, but with-

out, in turn, letting practice be overwhelmedby the resources and circumstances in whichit is embedded. At the same time, they needto highlight the resources available to dis-cursive practice without simply casting dis-courses as mere artifacts of situated interac-tion. And there is the need to considerconditions of interpretation without reifyingdiscursive context in order to document theconstructed grounds of everyday life.

Phenomenological bracketing can openthe construction process to view, but it doeslittle to help us take account of the prevail-ing discourses and conditions of social life.As a stride in this direction, we suggest ananalytic practice located at the crossroads ofsocial interaction, discursive environments,local culture, and material circumstance.This practice might purposefully “misread”strictures from naturalistic, Foucauldian,and ethnomethodological traditions, coopt-ing useful insights in order to appreciate thepossible complementarity of different ana-lytic idioms. It centers on the interplay, notthe synthesis, of situated discursive practice,discourse-in-practice, and discursive condi-tions.

To achieve analytic footing for viewingboth the hows and whats of interpretive prac-tice, we refer to a procedural imperative wehave called analytic bracketing (Gubrium &Holstein, 1997, 2000; Holstein & Gubrium,2000b, 2003a, 2005). Analytic bracketing issimilar in some respects to the a priori brack-eting employed in phenomenology andethnomethodology. It differs in that it em-ploys an alternating or oscillating indiffer-ence to the realities of everyday life, allowingthe analyst to momentarily focus on the howsand whats of the construction process.

This is a methodological move, not an on-tological one. The more phenomenologicalor ethnomethodological versions of bracket-ing begin analysis by setting aside all as-sumptions about forms of social organiza-tion and structure in order to view theeveryday practices by which subjects, ob-jects, and events come to have an account-able sense of being observable, rational, and

390 • STRATEGIES AND TECHNIQUES

orderly. The analytic project advances fromthere, documenting how discursive prac-tices constitute the realities in question. Theaim is to make visible how language is usedto construct the objects it is otherwiseviewed as principally describing.

Analytic bracketing operates somewhatdifferently. It is applied throughout analysis,not just at the start. As analysis proceeds, theinvestigator intermittently orients to every-day realities as both the products of mem-bers’ reality-constructing procedures and asresources from which realities are consti-tuted. At one stage, the research may be in-different to the structures, conditions, andavailable discourses of everyday life in orderto document their production through dis-cursive practice. In the next analytic move,the analyst brackets discursive practice in or-der to assess the local availability, distribu-tion, and/or regulation of resources andconditions of reality construction. This leadsto alternating considerations of locally fine-grained discursive practices at one juncture,of discourse-in-practice at another, and ofthe conditions of construction at still otherpoints in the analysis. The objective is tomove back and forth between discursivepractice, discourse-in-practice, and discur-sive conditions, documenting each in turnand making informative references to theothers in the process.

The emphasis on the interplay betweenthe hows and whats of the construction pro-cess is paramount in analytic bracketing.The technique carefully avoids analyticallyemphasizing discursive practice, discourse-in-practice, or discursive conditions at theexpense of the others. The aim is to docu-ment the interchange between the interac-tional, discursive artfulness entailed in as-sembling everyday reality, on one hand, andthe cultural, institutional, and contextual cir-cumstances, resources, and discourses thatmediate discursive practice on the other. Be-cause these are viewed as mutually constitu-tive, one cannot argue that analysis shouldnecessarily begin or end with any particularaspect. Wherever one chooses to focus, nei-

ther the cultural, institutional, or materialfoundations of discourse nor the construc-tive dynamics of interaction predeterminesthe other. If we set aside the need to for-mally resolve the question of which comesfirst or last or has priority, we can designatea reasonable starting point from which to be-gin and proceed from there, so long as wekeep firmly in mind that the interplay re-quires that we move back and forth analyti-cally. Of course, researchers of differentstripe may be inclined to start at differentplaces and that, no doubt, will shape howanalysis proceeds.

The back-and-forth movement of analyticbracketing is far from arbitrary; it is keyed toemergent analytic needs. As the researcherdocuments constructive activities, questionsregarding what is being constructed, whatresources are used, and what conditionsshape the process provoke a shift in analyticstance—a change in analytic brackets that isnecessary to address such questions. Subse-quently, the analyst’s attention to the whatsunder consideration will, in turn, promptthe researcher to ask how these features oflived experience came to be regarded asreal, inducing yet another shift in brackets.

It is unlikely, if not improbable, that anysingle study will become a full-scale exercisein analytic bracketing. Social scientists tendto work in units corresponding to bookchapters or journal articles. As a practicalmatter, most constructionist ethnographieswill be presented incrementally, focusing onone component of the social constructionprocess, then taking up another aspect at alater time. There are occasions, however, onwhich the various aspects of the construc-tion process may be alternatively bracketedand described within the same report. Thiswas the case when Gubrium undertook anethnographic study of the Alzheimer’s dis-ease experience in the 1980s (Gubrium,1986). In this study, Gubrium alternately fo-cused on what people knew Alzheimer’s dis-ease to be and how it was descriptively consti-tuted. The study maintained several analyticfocal points. One part of the study bracketed

Ethnographic Fieldwork • 391

the organic components of the condition inorder to look at how the discourse of “thedisease” was publicly formulated and tookcurrency. This part of the analysisdrew mostly on documents and publicstatements—publicity directed at constitut-ing Alzheimer’s disease as a new sort of dis-ease entity.

A second aspect of the study focused onthe “public culture” of Alzheimer’s disease.This involved a series of bracketingmoves that allowed the analyst to describediscourses-in-practice as resources for inter-preting a newly emergent “disease.” Then,the focus would shift again as analysisturned to the ways in which the publicculture was expressed and communicatedthrough mass media and other forms of pub-licity.

Once again shifting brackets, the studythen turned to the discursive practices bywhich the new experience of Alzheimer’sdisease was articulated in the daily lives ofpersons serving as caregivers to Alzhei-mer’s sufferers. The focus here was on dis-cursive practice, highlighting the ways inwhich participants in the growing publicculture of the disease interactionally con-stituted it and its ill effects as a practicalfeature of their everyday lives. This por-tion of the study examined the way a newdiscourse literally was put into experientialpractice in face-to-face interaction. Ofcourse, the description of interactionalpractice also led, in turn, to discussions ofhow local circumstances conditioned thenew discourse in place.

Over the course of this study, the analyticfocus shifts repeatedly from the whats tothe hows of interpretive practice, fromdiscourse-in-practice to discursive practice,to conditions of interpretation, and backagain. In doing so, it becomes evident thatcontinual analytic bracketing is required inorder to gain access to—if not fully capture—the reflexive and emergent relation betweensocial action and its varied contexts and re-sources.

Conclusion

Bringing constructionist impulses to eth-nographic fieldwork invites assumptions, ananalytic vocabulary, and procedural guide-lines that differ from those of naturalistic in-quiry. At the same time, it is our view, as con-structionist ethnographers, that naturalisticinquiry draws attention to “realities” of thesocial world that must be taken into accountlest social reality be conveyed as a mere swirlof communicative moves. Thus we have of-fered a view of constructionist impulses in-fused with considerable naturalistic senti-ments. This demands an appreciation forthe continually emergent contexts that bearon the construction of social realities. Theconstructionist ethnographer portrayedhere is not likely to be satisfied with descrip-tions of local constitutive practices but alsomust describe how resources from beyondthe interaction at hand mediate these prac-tices.

It bears repeating that the constructionistimpulse in ethnographic fieldwork does notevoke a theory of social life. Rather, it callsforth a minimalist analytics to sensitize re-searchers to the myriad elements of realityconstruction. Although this may not appealto researchers seeking definitive descrip-tions of social settings or causal explana-tions, it does provide the basis for docu-menting and understanding social worldsand structures that operate in circumstancescontinually under construction.

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