In a blog on autoethnography I set some parameters. It should (a) be informed by theory (or at least be ‘theory-literate’); (b) be consonant with substantive research findings; (c) not merely report personal experience; and (d) focus on innovation, theoretical or conceptual. But what about another possible offspring of ethnography which might be called fictional ethnography? Sociologists have long drawn on novelists in particular, but also poets, as well as, more recently, the visual arts (methodological scripts and recipes have ensued). All this raises a family of queries.
Consider authenticity. Surely real data – that is, the stuff of non-fiction – outweigh fictional rivals? The former is authentic, the latter worryingly, misleadingly, even scandalously, inauthentic. But what are ‘data’ here? Data afford a point of access to the social world, provide us with reliable resources for understanding how things are and explaining why. In this context, are ethnographic case studies reported by anthropologists or sociologists more authentic, qua data, than portraits from a contemporary novel?
It was Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath that long ago re-oriented my sociology and my politics, but is that relevant?
In Sociology, Health and the Fractured Society I deployed a few fictional case studies (to illustrate my notion of asset flows pertinent to health and longevity). I could have committed hours, or more likely days, scouring sociology’s ethnographic or qualitative output to come up expedient alternatives. Would these have been more authentic? I suspect not. Why? Because my fictional case studies met the criteria (a) to (d) I earlier outlined for credible autoethnographic projects.
Society is an open system. Sociology doesn’t, can’t, wrap up even the social phenomena that it alights on to investigate (then there’s the ongoing input of biological and psychological mechanisms to factor in, plus chance and just a hint of individual decision-making).
Musn’t get hung up on overly pure or exacting notions of authenticity.
Sociology must hit social phenomena with anything and everything it can get its hands on, from personal experience to fictional profiling to photographs. But within parameters, like (a) to (b) above.
Those who grow anxious about ethnography/qualitative research per se, need to reflect on many of the processes – operationalising, scaling and so on – that deliver variables for quantitative analyses. ‘Optimal’ (because best available) quantitative analyses using (multiple) variables like ‘number of people spoken to last week = extent of social capital’ can easily lend themselves to pseudo-scientific pursuits even as they take on the appearance of sophisticated or ‘hard’ social science.
But sociology lives or dies as a science. No contradiction here: it’s just a messy, complex and dynamic – that is, changing – social world it’s our lot to get a handle on. Sociology only exceptionally secures experimental closures.
Sociology’s respectability is inversely related to its integrity.