Real ethnography seems like a daunting, yet interesting method in practice, and I enjoyed the accounts given in this week's readings. My own prior experience is with contextual interviews - a kind of "psuedo-ethnography" existing somewhere between ethnography and interviews. In Stebbins' terms the difference might be that I was involved in learning, but less so in participation, which I think made it easier to navigate the boundary between researcher and subject (though perhaps less rich an understanding as a result, but nevertheless it seemed "good enough" for my purposes and time-frame).
Nevertheless, I found Shaffir and Stebbins' accounts fascinating. I enjoyed Shaffir's allegory of the man lost in the forest. It seems difficult to give hard and fast rules on how to proceed for this kind of research, after all we are people trying to study other people and everyone is up to their eyeballs in ideology and personal baggage. But hearing about the kinds of issues others have encountered in their research is valuable. As Shaffir notes "even the most seasoned field researcher, if given the chance to start over, might approach the setting and individuals differently…" - I think rather than invalidating the work, this shows that there is indeed some clearer understanding gained by doing it.
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