-phic, -pher, -phy: on wearing hats and staying dressed

So, Carolin made an excellent point on my last post and it made me think a little harder about what I was saying. I realised that I am not really doing an ethnography, but rather I am using ethnographic methods (observation, shadowing, archival and document analysis, etc.) to draw out and develop an understanding of what I see happening. [Does this point up the difference between method and methodology?]

This fits well with the practice-based perspective on knowledge that I have been pursuing for some time now and also means that I do not need to exile myself any further. This practice perspective means that I can acknowledge that I interpret new experiences (including my research findings) through the lens(es) of my previous experiences and understandings of the world, rather than disregarding (or trying to discount) my conceptual underpinnings.

I still get to wear my hat but I wear it to set me apart from everyone else, so it's really not an ethnographer's hat. The up-side of all this is that I don't have to "strip down", which I'm sure is a great relief to everyone! (Especially me... it gets very cold here in winter!)