INTRODUCTION

This paper returns to a central question for applied ethnographers, namely, what is the role of theory in applied ethnographic practice? Past EPIC papers have expressed concern over both how to engage with pre-existing theory and how to deliver theory (Cefkin 2010). We are focused here on the former more so than the later, but in our view it is invaluable to engage with theory (regardless of where it comes from), and do so in a productive manner, to deliver theory. The point of this paper is to justify and show how theory can be used in an accessible and practical manner when framing research and analyzing experience in the field. Our hope is that we will contribute to the ongoing discussion of ethnographic practice in industry, working towards practitioners being better equipped to deliver insights into the world with predictive and pragmatic potential.

Our aim as ethnographers in industry is to provide our clients with insights about the world that are predictive, practical, and powerful. However rich and insightful a good description of the world is, it is insufficient for our clients. They need the description to be translated: how is it relevant to their business, what does it predict about the world and how will they take meaningful and practical steps in light of this insight. In our ethnographic process, pre-existing theory provides valuable assistance when transforming an insight about the world into an idea with explanatory and predictive potential. Drawing upon theory allows us to elevate an interesting description of the world into actionable insights with theoretical muscle.

It is difficult to find a middle ground between over-prioritizing and under-utilizing theory. This is a middle ground between a deductive and inductive approach to theory. Too often the ethnographer may be left with the sense that their choice is binary: either ethnographic practice is about validating existing theories, often rigidly following that theory as a framework for examining the phenomena, or it is about discovery in the field, trying to enter the field with few potentially contaminating theoretical commitments and allowing theory to develop in light of interaction with the phenomena (e.g. Grounded Theory). We contend that neither of these approaches is conducive to developing insights that are pragmatically valuable for clients. Following a strictly deductive approach is valuable when seeking to confirm, deny, or add nuance to an existing theory. However, by design it can do no more than this unless the ethnographer begins to work inductively. An inductive approach encourages theoretical dismissiveness and often leads to results that lack long-lasting pragmatic value. Moreover, as we shall see it is questionable whether we can ever achieve a purely deductive or inductive approach. We must both accept and seek a middle ground where theory is respected but also put to work in a practical and accessible manner.

This middle ground is justified by a hermeneutic view of ethnography. Hermeneutics analyses and describes how we achieve understanding. For our purposes here, the key point from this position is that any understanding we have can never be exactly identical or correspondent with objective external reality. The knowledge we develop through fieldwork (or any science) will never be complete and final, even if the world and human nature were an unchanging, static phenomenon. As Nafus & Anderson explored at the Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference (EPIC) 2006, ethnography has been positioned as a method for revealing “the real,” specifically what real people do and want. This is a brand statement for ethnography that we applied ethnographers are all likely guilty of playing up to at times. While it is useful for explaining to outsiders what we do, it is flawed. Firstly, it is flawed because following hermeneutics we are skeptical that this is in fact what ethnography, or any science, does. Secondly, if ethnography as a methodology reveals the world as it objectively is then there is no need for guiding our clients with careful interpretation. This positivist position negates the value we provide our clients in carefully analyzing data and bringing to bare a familiarity with a breadth of human sciences research that enhances our interpretation. If the data contains a description of objective reality why would it need interpretation? This brand statement, in fact, provides an intellectual foundation for the de-skilling of ethnographic practice that Lombardi (2009) describes. As Lombardi reports, he is under pressure to serve up the research participants’ worlds without a mediating layer of ethnographic interpretation:

[I]nstead of helping clients interpret complex data about complex situations, I am increasingly asked to produce an experience of getting to know consumers and end-users on a pre-analytic level that looks and feels new, but which must […] dovetail as much as possible with existing ways of conceptualizing those consumers. (Lombardi 2009)

The hermeneutic position is not a novel framework for understanding ethnography. In fact hermeneutic ethnography was described over 30 years ago (Rabinow & Sullivan, 1979) and it was briefly explored at last year’s EPIC (Mendonca, 2015). It is relevant today because it provides a useful position for understanding what it is that we do as ethnographers and what role theory does and should play in our work. Those trained in positivist qualitative science may hesitate at the thought of employing the pragmatic approach to using theory that we endorse. In our view it is logically justified by hermeneutic ethnography.

Rick Robinson acknowledged in the inaugural EPIC (2005) that, “Building a definition of what theory is and does for us must be a long arc of conversation and in some senses, it will be a yardstick of disciplinary maturity.” This is an important issue to continue returning to so that we may further refine the methodologies and approaches of ethnographers in industry. It is not a distant memory that there were accusations of an “unwarranted empiricist disjunction of ethnography from theory” (Waquant 2002). Moreover, with the increased adoption of ethnography in market research, R&D, and business strategy, it is useful if we can articulate the value that human sciences can bring to such work.

In this paper we will briefly outline the middle ground for using theory and its hermeneutical justification. We will then provide two approaches for using theory that we have found to be beneficial in applied ethnography: Low Fidelity and Bricolage. Low Fidelity involves employing aspects of a pre-existing theory, paradigm, or discipline without rigidly following or wholesale adopting the theory in research framing, design, and analysis. The second approach, Bricolage, highlights the mixing and matching of theories: combining seemingly unrelated theories from disparate disciplines to make sense of the project’s phenomenon of study. We will discuss how these approaches influenced two case example projects and how they contributed to the results of those projects. We will then discuss how theory can be applied at different stages of a project and outline some practical considerations for applying theory.

A PRAGMATIC AND HERMENEUTIC ETHNOGRAPHY

In his seminal essay “Towards an interpretive theory of culture,” Geertz (1973) describes the nature of man as, above all else, varied. In his view it is in understanding that variousness that, “we shall come to construct a concept of human nature that [..] has both substance and truth.” His familiar claim is that the individuality and distinctiveness of humans is not considered a legitimate object of study for enlightenment science. Consequently, such science’s explanatory power is muted, their theories sterile. Thick ethnographic description is the solution for Geertz. How does the ethnographer, looking to advance theory, preserve the individual and particular of ethnographic description in the developed theory, when theory is inherently generalized?

Hermeneutics reframes this issue, relieving us of the concern of preserving the individual in theory. It states that we can only understand the whole with reference to the individual. Whole here is the context of the individual, whether that be narrative context, physical context, or theoretical context. Our understanding of a book is the synthesis of our understanding of the individual sentences of the book. Similarly a theory about the nature of humans will be understood only in light of particular aspects of our nature. Interestingly, the argument goes further, stating that we can only understand the individual with reference to a whole. Thus understanding becomes circular in nature.

If we accept this Hermeneutic circle, we accept that we can never arrive at a complete and final truth. We are caught in an infinite cycle of interpretation (although one from which we as applied ethnographers we must extract actionable recommendations). As our interpretation of the individual develops so too will our interpretation of the whole. Equally, as our interpretation of the whole develops so too will our interpretation of the individual. This Hermeneutic circle is an observation that we must bring a framework of understanding with us to begin to understand anything.

In the words of Heidegger (1962) an “interpretation is never a pre-suppositionless apprehending of something presented to us.” We always already have some understanding of our world, which is in fact crucial to developing new understanding. Without such pre-suppositions we could not begin to understand the object. In response to a question about why magnets repel, the physicist, Richard Feynman (2015), observed that, “you have to be in some framework that allows something to be true. Otherwise you are perpetually asking why.” He could explain that magnets repel because of an electric force or because of the laws of physics. Without pre-supposing some level of his explanation we will not be satisfied with his explanation and we are left, as he observes, perpetually asking why (“Why are the laws of physics the way they are?” “Why…?”). This again is the idea that a person can never develop an understanding of the world that is complete and wholly identical with the external reality of the person attempting to understand the world. The intellectual challenge we face is to remember this nature of understanding and respond accordingly. To recognize that we always bring with us a framework of understanding into the field and that our experience in the field is shaped at least partially by that framework of understanding. Equally, to recognize that when we set out to understand a theory through ethnographic fieldwork, our understanding of that theory is always influenced by our interpretation of particular experiences in the field.

Accepting a hermeneutic view of ethnography means accepting there can be no pure deductive or inductive approach to incorporating theory in ethnography. Wacquant (2002) denies the possibility of theory (solely) developing in the field, which he describes as the “fairy tale of ‘grounded theory’.” In doing so he underplays the potential for the ethnographers’ understanding of a theory to be changed and clarified in its interaction with practice during research. Accusing Wacquant of an overly deductive approach, Duneier (2002) protests that the “ethnographer who allows theory to dominate data […] makes a farce out of otherwise careful work.” We should, however, be careful not to forget that there can be no understanding of ethnographic data without presuppositions, which may be either folk theories or academic ones. Duneier describes his approach as neither “strictly inductive or deductive: I engage a variety of theoretical/sociological questions, some of which I brought to the site from the beginning, some of which I discovered through various routes as I worked in the site.” This, we believe, is a roughly accurate description of ethnographic work.

Hermeneutic ethnographic practice strives to recognize those theories and beliefs that are otherwise unconsciously brought into the field, and that inform and influence our experiences. Such efforts facilitate a greater openness to altering and reframing presuppositions in light of the data. They also enable greater sensitivity to how we come to understand and interpret the data. Furthermore, it is recognized that the practitioner does and must draw their own interpretation of the pre-existing theories that are deductively tested or used as an analytical aid in a research project. If we accept this position we are, in a real sense, liberated from some of the rigidity of academic standards for using theory.

Accepting that our understanding of pre-existing theory is an interpretation of the original author’s intent allows room for felt inconsistencies between what makes the most sense to us and what we read on the page. We should be compelled to return to and re-examine those inconsistencies and to make the best possible interpretation. However, we can accept the presence of inconsistency and need not abandon useful content from the theories.

We can see an ethnographic project as an act of attempting to achieve understanding, where there is and must be a dialogue between the individual and whole, the research participant and the theory. As such, rather than characterizing theory as solely an input or output to the research process, theory is allowed to play an active and interactive role throughout the entire project. The ethnographer may embrace the influence of their understanding of pre-exiting theory upon their interpretation of experiences in the field and vice versa. They may bring in theory when relevant and abandon it when it ceases to add value, just as quickly. In the case examples provided in the following we outline what this looks like in practice.

In sum, we believe there are important lessons to learn and be reminded of from authors such as Heidegger (1927) and Gadamer (1976, 1982) who emphasize the interpretive nature of understanding. Hermeneutics is highly valuable to return to when evaluating ethnographic methodology. As a tradition it provides a powerful framework for evaluating those methodological concerns and better understanding what it is that we do as applied ethnographers. It is also in a Hermeneutic perspective that our approaches for using theory are grounded. In the following we explore two such approaches.