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REVISITS 645 Revisits:Anoutlineofatheory Ofreflexiveethnography REVISITS 645 Revisits:AnOutlineofaTheory ofReflexiveEthnography MichaelBurawoy University of California, Berkeley This paper explores the ethnographic technique of the focused revisit—rare in soci- ology but common in anthropology—when an ethnographer returns to the site of a previous study. Discrepancies between earlier and later accounts can be attributed to differences in: (1) the relation of observer to participant, (2) theory brought to the field by the ethnographer, (3) internal processes within the field site itself, or (4) forces external to the field site. Focused revisits tend to settle on one or another of these four explanations, giving rise to four types of focused revisits. Using examples, the limits of each type of focused revisit are explored with a view to developing a reflexive ethnography that combines all four approaches. The principles of the fo- cused revisit are then extended to rolling, punctuated, heuristic, archeological, and valedictory revisits. In centering attention on ethnography-as-revisit sociologists directly confront the dilemmas of participating in the world they study—a world that undergoes (real) historical change that can only be grasped using a (constructed) theoretical lens. ackingbackwardand forward cipline of anthropology. After four decades through 40 years of field work, Clifford of expansion, starting in the 1950s, there are Geertz (1995) describes how changes in the now many more anthropologists swarming two towns he studied, Pare in Indonesia and over the globe. They come not only from Sefrou in Morocco, cannot be separated from Western centers but also from ex-colonies. their nation states—the one beleaguered by a They are ever more skeptical of positive sci- succession of political contestations and the ence, and embrace the interpretive turn, it- other the product of dissolving structures. self pioneered by Geertz, that gives pride of These two states, in turn, cannot be separated place to culture as narrative and text. “When from competing and transmogrifying world everything changes, from the small and im- hegemonies that entangle anthropologists as mediate to the vast and abstract—the object well as their subjects. Just as Geertz’s field of study, the world immediately around it, the sites have been reconfigured, so has the dis- student, the world immediately around him, and the wider world around them both— Direct all correspondence to Michael there seems to be no place to stand so as to Burawoy, Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720 (burawoy@ Hanks, Gail Kligman, Louise Lamphere, Steve socrates.berkeley.edu). This paper was launched Lopez, Ruth Milkman, Sabina Neem, Sherry in a dissertation seminar where it received spir- Ortner, Mary Pattillo, Melvin Pollner, Leslie ited criticism from Bill Hayes, Linus Huang, Salzinger, Ida Susser, Joan Vincent, Loïc Rachel Sherman, and Michelle Williams. Since Wacquant, Ron Weitzer, and Erik Wright. I also then I have taken it on the road and picked up thank the four ASR reviewers, in particular Diane comments and suggestions from many, including Vaughan, whose inspired commentary led to ma- Julia Adams, Philip Bock, Patricia Clough, jor revisions, and Reviewer D, whose persistent Mitchell Duneier, Steve Epstein, Jim Ferguson, critical interventions kept my argument on an María Patricia Fernández-Kelly, Marion even keel. This venture was made possible by a Fourcade-Gourinchas, Herb Gans, Tom Gieryn, year at Academy’s Arcadia, the Russell Sage Teresa Gowan, Richard Grinker, Lynne Haney, Foundation, to which revisits are rightly, but Gillian Hart, Mike Hout, Jennifer Johnson- sadly, barred. AmericanSociological Review,2003,Vol.68(October:645Ð679) 645 646 AMERICANSOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW locate just what has altered and how” (Geertz terrogation of an already existing ethnogra- 1995:2). This is the challenge of the ethno- phy without any further field work. graphic revisit: to disentangle movements of Colignon’s (1996) critical reexamination and the external world from the researcher’s own reinterpretation of Selznick’s (1949) TVA shifting involvement with that same world, and the Grassroots or Franke and Kaul’s all the while recognizing that the two are not (1978) reexamination of the Hawthorne independent. studies are both examples of reanalyses. A With their detailed ethnographic revisits to revisit must also be distinguished from an classic sites, the earlier anthropologists ethnographic update , which brings an earlier tended toward realism, focusing on the dy- study up to the present but does not reengage namic properties of the world they studied, it. Hollingshead’s (1975) empirical account whereas more recently they have increas- of changes in Elmstown is an update because ingly veered in a constructivist direction in it does not seriously engage with the origi- which the ethnographer becomes the central nal study. Gans (1982) updates The Urban figure. They have found it hard to steer a Villagers, not so much by adding new field balanced course. On the other hand, sociolo- data as by addressing new literatures on gist-ethnographers, grounded theorists in class and poverty. These are not hard and particular, have simply ducked the challenge fast distinctions, but they nonetheless guide altogether. Too often they remain trapped in my choice of the ethnographic revisits I ex- the contemporary, riveted to and contained amine in this paper. in their sites, from where they bracket ques- There is one final but fundamental distinc- tions of historical change, social process, tion—that between revisit and replication . wider contexts, theoretical traditions, as well Ethnographers perennially face the criticism as their own relation to the people they that their research is not trans-personally rep- study. While sociology in general has taken licable—that one ethnographer will view the a historical turn—whether as a deprovincial- field differently from another. 2 To strive for izing aid to social theory or as an analytical replicability in this constructivist sense is to comparative history with its own mission, strip ourselves of our prejudices, biases, whether as historical demography or longi- theories, and so on before entering the field tudinal survey research—ethno graphy has and to minimize the impact of our presence been slow to emancipate itself from the eter- once we are in the field. Rather than dive into nal present. My purpose here is to encour- the pool fully clothed, we stand naked on the age and consolidate what historical interest side. With the revisit we believe the contrary: there exists within sociology-as-ethnogra- There is no way of seeing clearly without a phy, transporting it from its unconscious past theoretical lens, just as there is no passive, into a historicized world by elaborating the notion of ethnography-as-revisit. This, in 2 Or even worse, the same ethnographer will turn, lays the foundations for a reflexive eth- have divergent interpretations of the “same” nography.1 events. Thus, Van Maanen (1988) describes his Let me define my terms. An ethnographic field work among police on patrol successively as a “realist” tale that strives for the “native point revisit occurs when an ethnographer under- of view,” as a “confessional” tale that is preoc- takes participant observation, that is, study- cupied with the field worker’s own experiences, ing others in their space and time, with a and as an “impressionistic” (from the painting view to comparing his or her site with the genre of Impressionism) tale that brings the field same one studied at an earlier point in time, worker and subject into a dynamic relationship. whether by him or herself or by someone Wolf (1992) similarly presents her field work on else. This is to be distinguished from an eth- shamans in Taiwan in three different ways: as nographic reanalysis, which involves the in- field notes, as fictional account, and as profes- sional article. While recognizing the importance 1 A reflexive ethnography can also be devel- of experimental writing and the contributions of oped through synchronic comparisons—compar- the postmodern criticism of ethnography, Wolf ing two factories, communities, schools, and so ends up defending the professional article with on—in different spatial contexts, as well as its rules of evidence and interpretation. Such po- through the diachronic comparisons of the tem- lyphony calls for a vocabulary and framework poral revisit that form the basis of this paper. beyond “replication.” REVISITS 647 neutral position. The revisit demands that we stand up to scrutiny, though, as sociologists be self-conscious and deliberate about the have been doing systematic field work al- theories we employ and that we capitalize on most as long as anthropologists. Franz Boas the effects of our interventions. There is also, began his first field work among the however, a second meaning of replication Kwakiutl in 1886, only a little more than a that concerns not controlling conditions of decade before Du Bois ([1899] 1996) worked research, but testing the robustness of find- on The Philadelphia Negro . Bronislaw ings. We replicate a study in order to show Malinowski first set out for the Trobriand Is- that the findings hold across the widest vari- lands in 1915, and at the same time Thomas ety of cases, that —to use one of Hughes’s and Znaniecki (1918–1920) were collecting (1958) examples—the need to deal with dirty data for their The Polish Peasant in Europe work applies as much to physicians as jani- and America . tors. Replication means searching for simi- A second hypothesis might turn the ana- larity across difference. When we revisit, lytic eye to the present. Anthropologists, hav- however, our purpose is not to seek con- ing conquered the world, can now only re- stancy across two encounters but to under- visit old sites (or study themselves). As in stand and explain variation, in particular to the case of archeologists there are only so comprehend difference over time. many sites to excavate. Sociologists, on the In short, the ethnographic revisit champi- other hand, have so many unexplored sites to ons what replication strives, in vain, to re- cultivate, even in their own backyards, that press.
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