The Reflexive Turn: The Rise of First-Person Ethnography

In the early to mid-20th century, ethnographic research enjoyed an exalted position within sociology. Fieldwork and direct engagement of researchers with their objects of study was the dominant modality through which theory was organized, data were amassed, and concepts were refined. In the late 1960s, as sociology embraced scientific protocols, distinguishing itself from humanistic and anthropological modes of producing knowledge, ethnography (and ethnographers) grew less influential. Participant observation with a small sample—of people, neighborhoods, groups, or organizations—was overshadowed by large-scale studies that were amenable to quantitative analysis. By no means did fieldwork-based case studies and participant observation disappear, but the most significant disciplinary initiatives were no longer directed by ethnographers; leadership came from organizational analysts, demographers, specialists of immigration, selfdescribed “theoreticians,” economic sociologists, institutional analysts, and mathematical modelers. In fact, even within its traditional home, urban studies, ethnographers assumed a backstage role. There were many reasons for this shift, and none has necessarily been proven in any systematic way, but an important one seems to be the shifting public tastes for sociological studies. Sociological research became invaluable for understanding mass behavior—public opinion, consumer tastes, industrial organization—and so sociologists employing methods that could shed light on such patterns were in great demand. Various national social surveys that are now commonplace were put into place, enabling systematic documentation of major American trends, including shifts in immigration, family formation, and education and work. In the last decade, sociology has seen a resurgence in ethnographic research, for reasons that are also not altogether easy to establish (c.f., Lewis and Russell 2011. Across many subfields of sociology, scholars are returning to direct fieldwork. But, some novel developments have taken root in this process. The rise of so-called “mixed methods” has placed ethnographers in conversation with a wide range of scholars, from survey researchers to demographers, thereby enabling all researchers to break free from a simple (and mostly inaccurate) stereotype: Ethnographers study “qualitative” data, while survey researchers use “quantitative” data. In these studies, the presence of numerical information has become an insufficient criterion for determining whether a scholar is “ethnographic” (or not). Ethnography becomes one tool in the