Can J Adm Sci
Copyright © 2010 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 335 27(4), 335–347 (2010)
Narratives of Irony and Failure in
Ethnographic Work
Dariusz Jemielniak*
Kozminski University
Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences
Revue canadienne des sciences de l’administration
27: 335–347 (2010)
Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/CJAS.177
The authors are very grateful to the anonymous reviewers, who provided
most useful feedback and advice, as well as to the CMS Division Editor
Albert J. Mills, whose guidance in working on this paper was extremely
helpful, and to the Managing Editor Melissa Corey, who professionally led
us through all stages of the publication process. We are also indebted to
Carole Caulier Gustavsson for her indispensable help with the lovely
French language.
*Please address correspondence to: Dariusz Jemielniak, Kozminski Uni-
versity, ul. Jagiellon´ska 59, 03-301 Warszawa, Poland. Email: darekj@
kozminski.edu.pl
Abstract
Organizational ethnography is one of the most valued
approaches to qualitative studies of organizations. Much
attention has been given to the development of the research
process, of which the researcher’s identity is an integral
part. However, we believe that the analysis of research fail-
ures has been much less developed in the discourse of ethno-
graphic methods for the study of organizations. Therefore,
we have explored some of the “slips” in ethnographic work,
as described in accounts of fellow organizational anthro-
pologists. As the study is qualitative, we have adopted a
narrative research method. We have divided the “slips”
(i.e., errors) into four categories important for the ethnog-
rapher’s identity: (a) one’s role; (b) one’s project, (c) one’s
relation to “the Other”; and (d) the social context of the
slip. Copyright © 2010 ASAC. Published by John Wiley &
Sons, Ltd.
JEL Classifi cation: M14
Keywords: organizational ethnography, qualitative
methods, methodological mistakes, anthropological
methods, academic archetypes
Résumé
Dans les études qualitatives des organisations, l’ethnogra-
phie organisationnelle est l’une des approches les plus
préconisées. Jusqu’ici, une grande attention a été accordée
à l’élaboration du processus de recherche qui comprend
l’identité du chercheur. L’analyse des échecs de la recherche
a été, pour ainsi dire, négligée dans les discours portant
sur les méthodes ethnographiques d’étude organisation-
nelle. Dans cet article, nous examinons quelques-uns des
«ratés» dans la recherche ethnographique tels que présen-
tés dans les comptes-rendus des anthropologues organisa-
tionnels. La recherche étant qualitative, la méthode adoptée
est narrative. Les «ratés» (c’est-à-dire les erreurs) sont
divisés en quatre catégories importantes pour l’identité
de l’ethnographe. Il s’agit de: (a) son rôle; (b) son projet;
(c) ses relations avec «l’Autre»; et (d) le contexte social.
Copyright © 2010 ASAC. Published by John Wiley &
Sons, Ltd.
Mots-clés : ethnographie organisationnelle, méthodes
qualitatives, fautes méthodologiques, méthodes
anthropologiques, archétypes académiques
just as a perspective for empirical studies of organizations,
but as a mindset and a way of approaching the fi eld. One
important issue, however, has not as of yet been suffi ciently
addressed—namely, that of failures and misses. It has been
argued that stories of failures and near-failures are more
important for learning than success stories (Snowden, 2003;
Weick & Sutcliffe, 2001). We agree with this argument and
thus aim to explore the less successful side of organizational
ethnography. Particularly worthy of examination is the iden-
tity of the researcher, which is an important part of the
research process, not just in classical ethnography—a fi eld
much better acknowledged by such well-known authors as
Agar (1980)—but also in organizational ethnography. In
this paper, we explore the consequences of failures for the
Monika Kostera
University of Warsaw and Linnaeus University
Organizational ethnography has for a long time been an
important method for the exploration of organizations (for
an overview see for example, Czarniawska-Joerges, 1992;
Van Maanen, 1998). Its infl uence has been immense, not

NARRATIVES OF IRONY AND FAILURE IN ETHNOGRAPHIC WORK JEMIELNIAK AND KOSTERA
Can J Adm Sci
Copyright © 2010 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 336 27(4), 335–347 (2010)
construction of the organizational ethnographer’s identity
and regard this process in narrative terms, that is, we refl ect
on how the individual narrates the identity. We have
employed narrative methods suited to researching the
subject from such a perspective and have collected stories
from active organizational ethnographers. The results of our
study point to the role of irony in the researcher’s identity
construction in response to these slips or failures.
Writing ethnography is a serious endeavour, and it often
means disregarding situations not part of its success. Fail-
ures and dead-ends fall outside the process and do not have
a place in the arguments leading to theory-building conclu-
sions. However, it is our conviction that their role is quite
important, if not for the theories and models that the eth-
nographers produce, then for the way they construct their
professional identity.
In this paper we are concerned with misses and failures
but not as funny asides or anecdotes that spice up or “per-
sonalize” tales from the fi eld. Their place in ethnographic
accounts is usually marginal. Although “confessional writers
are forthcoming with accounts of errors, misgivings, limit-
ing roles, and even misperceptions, they are unlikely to
come to the conclusion that they have been misled dramatic-
ally” (Van Maanen, 1988, p. 79). The presented slips typ-
ically serve a purpose of legitimization (Clifford & Marcus,
1986; Van Maanen, 1988), creating a feeling of “being
there,” and of authenticity. The tales we normally hear have,
for obvious reasons, happy endings. Here, we intend to
concentrate on stories that are typically marginalized, and
thus our intent is to redefi ne methodological constraints
from the very practice of ethnographic work. This is a study
dedicated explicitly to failures, blunders, and gaffes in
ethnographic work and is a narrative on the ethnographical
profession based on professional ethnographers’ narratives
(Corvellec, 1997, 2006; Czarniawska, 2000; Czarniawska-
Joerges, 1998).
The Method and the Purpose
We sent emails to our colleagues asking for stories of
their failures, blunders, and gaffes in their fi eldwork. We
received nine stories from eight organizational ethnograph-
ers, all of whom are active fi eld researchers and also our
friends. These narratives constitute the main material (or
“data”) in this paper.
In presenting their tales, scholars have to carefully
decide what is important and what is not for the fi nal text.
In most cases, ethnographies are written on the basis of
thousands of pages of fi eld notes: It is never possible to
present even a fair part of the success stories relevant to the
chosen topic, and, as a result, the failures quite naturally
have to be underrepresented in published accounts. Like
writers, scholars, and especially ethnographers, must be per-
suasive and recount interesting and consistent stories that
their audiences will appreciate (Phillips & Hardy, 2002).
They have to prove their credibility in the eyes of their
peers. As a result, their work is (again, like that of any other
scholar) ultimately rhetorical (Nelson, Megill, & Mc-
Closkey, 1987), and could potentially affect their standing
in the academic community and, as a result, may include
elements of “keeping face” or facework (Goffman, 1961).
Consequently, although admissions of blunders may occa-
sionally add some colour to the narrative, they are usually
dosed with caution, so as not to undermine the researcher’s
credibility. The stories we collected narrate something that
often goes untold. Articles addressing research situations
and studies that turned out to be failures are rarely accepted
by academic journals. Often, admissions of blunders are
removed from fi nal reports and are considered redundant
and irrelevant to the main argument. Although in some cases
(e.g., in ethnographic memoirs, as described by Prasad,
2005) the admission of failure plays an important role in the
narrative, it still is not the main topic.
However, understanding the rules of exclusion (and
seeing the stories that are typically excluded in scholarly
publications) may be useful and interesting in defi ning the
boundaries of our discipline. After all, it is not only how
tales of the fi eld are told (Van Maanen, 1988), but also what
is discarded and omitted from the tale that defi nes and con-
structs the outcome. Moreover, Prasad (1997) has spoken
of ethnography as a methodological tradition—a concept
embracing not just the methods but also the ethos and pro-
fessional implications of ethnographic practice. This way of
understanding ethnographic research has implications not
just for the question of “how” but also for the question of
“whom.” To understand the professional identity of an eth-
nographer, it is crucial to interpret the common mistakes.
Such an understanding is valuable not only for begin-
ning ethnographers and students of methodology, but also
for the whole community of researchers: understanding our
peers’ slips is a tremendous help in reconceptualizing our
own. Unfortunately for us, the most interesting stories of
research blunders are probably the ones that will never be
told; we hope those we present here are a close second.
It should be noted that exposing one’s own failures, or
simply funny situations that happened “out there” is not
only time-consuming, but also delicate, and it should not be
surprising that only a few of our colleagues chose to reply.
We are grateful for and indebted to their contributions, and
we believe their input helps us better understand how the
role of the ethnographer is constructed. We have included
our own stories as well, as it would be hypocritical of us to
ask for confessions of research slips while conveniently
refusing to reveal our own.
The stories are all self-ironic in the sense that they show
a professional ethnographer having trouble maintaining his/
her professional role. This self-irony should not be mistaken
for silliness or foolishness. One of the characteristics of
stupidity is the inability to see oneself and to refer allegoric-

NARRATIVES OF IRONY AND FAILURE IN ETHNOGRAPHIC WORK JEMIELNIAK AND KOSTERA
Can J Adm Sci
Copyright © 2010 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 337 27(4), 335–347 (2010)
ally to the outer world (Ronell, 2002). In contrast, the stories
we present show irony in its highest and most self-refl ective
form. Although, they are not always humorous and are
indeed occasionally tragic. In this sense we believe that the
irony is, in fact, one of the keys to understanding these
accounts and to interpreting the role of ethnographer more
generally.
Our approach can be described as both interpretive, as
we searched for meaning in the narratives of failure and
irony, and postmodern, as we found playfulness, not only in
our own quest for meaning, but also in the multiple facets
of interpretations available to the reader (Prasad, 2005). We
intend to open the grounds for multiple readings of the nar-
ratives that have been gathered.
Although this article is meant for readers generally
familiar with qualitative studies, we do hope that a more
general audience may fi nd it useful as well by showing the
problems and pains typical for organizational ethnograph-
ers, and by making their work behind the scenes more
understandable.
Irony and Organizational Realities
Irony is a characteristic of a style in the text that implies
a deliberate contradiction between the literary meaning of
the statement and its actual meaning not directly expressed.
It can be subtle or crude, but is always based on a kind of
imbalance. In traditional slapstick comedy, it is the body
that becomes unbalanced: The well-dressed man slips on the
banana peel and the displacement of the body provokes
laughter. In witty intellectual comedy, the lack of balance is
of a higher order and is cultural or spiritual. The essential
element of sarcasm comes from the unexpected confusion
of stereotypes and archetypes. Such a semiotic reading may
defi nitely revive the works long forgotten (Eco, 1979): The
recent comeback of Chuck Norris as a satirical fi gure is but
one example (i.e., a character originally meant to look tough
and strong is considered funny because of his image of
being all too serious and grandiose).
In organizations, irony has many cultural uses: It facili-
tates socialization and bonding, it offers agency or empower-
ment to people who feel oppressed or limited in their
freedom to act (Kostera, 1995), it helps people to distance
themselves from their social roles (Kunda, 1992), and it
helps make sense of paradox and ambiguity (Hatch &
Ehrlich, 1993). Irony may help to construct professional
identity in social settings, and is especially useful if there is
a perceived discrepancy between key symbols (Kociatkie-
wicz & Kostera, 2005).
Irony is present in all levels of organizations. Ethnog-
raphers have mapped uses of humour by manual workers
(Konecki, 1990), middle-level managers and engineers
(Kunda, 1992), and top-level executives (Hatch, 1997).
In many cases, irony is an important social instrument
used to deal with organizational change and organizational
ambivalence (Dent, 2003; Höpfl , 1995). It reinforces and
creates social divisions in the workplace, as it is one of the
crucial ways of “us” and “them,” deepening the split between
workers and management or between staff and clients
(Jemielniak, 2007; Mik-Meyer, 2007). Similarly, irony can
be seen as a way to achieve a sense of belonging among
ethnographers, and perhaps also a sense of legitimization
that comes from a shared sense of common mistakes and
blunders.
Ironic ambiguity is an inseparable part of anthropo-
logical work. The tension and distance between the identity
of the ethnographer and the studied people, as well as the
contrast between his/her passive role and the eagerness to
change the observed social reality, all result in what Clifford
Geertz (1968) called “anthropological irony.” This irony is
sustained by the fi ction of mutual interest of the researcher
and the subject studied. The illusion that the reality, in which
the researcher is performing the study, may change as a
result of his/her presence is usually recognized as beguiling
by both sides. Both sides, however, decide to save face and
play their roles accordingly in a cheerful rapport, which
makes the process of anthropological inquiry deeply ironic.
This paradoxical interplay is sometimes considered meth-
odologically useful and advisable (Clifford, 1983), but does
not change the fact that all ethnographers have to deal with
a double-edged identity (or rather, a series of identities) in
their work (Down, Garrety, & Badham, 2006). Feeling
ironic about oneself, as it seems, is one of the major emo-
tions of anthropological inquiry. Therefore, for the advance-
ment of organizational ethnography, it is crucial to
understand what the professional anthropologists of organ-
izations construct as ironic or erroneous.
However, our study understands irony more as the
ability to self-refl ect and separate from one’s own serious-
ness, rather than as humorous. In this sense, we looked for
the potential of ethnographers to deal with dual identities
and ponder their own mistakes, rather than for situational
comical aspects of their stories. Our use of irony as an
explanatory category is subservient to the general purpose
of broadening our understanding of professional identity in
ethnographic work. The humorous aspects of failure result
from hindsight, rather than from situational comedy.
Narratives
The stories we received are constructed as short prose,
in fi rst-person narrative. For professional anthropologists, it
is the primary genre of delivering research results. In fi eld
research, organizational ethnographers collect stories, and
when they subsequently write up the accounts of their
studies, they do so in the form of stories (Czarniawska-
Joerges, 1999). Stories, however, are not the unique domain
of ethnography—in fact, their role in life and research is
tremendous and is increasingly appreciated by many authors

NARRATIVES OF IRONY AND FAILURE IN ETHNOGRAPHIC WORK JEMIELNIAK AND KOSTERA
Can J Adm Sci
Copyright © 2010 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 338 27(4), 335–347 (2010)
(for an overview, see Czarniawska, 2000; Czarniawska,
2004; Gabriel, 2000).
Indeed, storytelling is arguably the most natural form
of communication (Czarniawska, 2000) and enacted
accounts are one of the most common forms of social inter-
action. Roland Barthes put it bluntly, stating that a narrative
is “simply there like life itself ” (1977, p. 79). Jerome Bruner
(1991) held that narrative is a way of organizing normal
experiences for humans and also the way in which people
frame their perceptions of the world. This role describes not
only everyday perception but also the more “advanced”
perception of scientifi c research.
Narratives have gained much interest as method and
substance of research in social sciences (Czarniawska,
2004), and in our own fi eld of organization studies (Boje,
2001). David Boje’s seminal works have convincingly
shown that the very process of organizing and sensemaking
relies on the production of narratives in interplay with
stories and ante-narratives (Boje, 2001). Organization
theory is also a genre in its own right, with ample room for
varieties of storytelling (Czarniawska, 1999). Ethnograph-
ers are professional storytellers: they are formally legitim-
ized to “scientifi cally” describe their “subjects,” but still are
expected to create narratives. Ownership of the right to write
is of crucial importance, as the weaving of the narrative
relies both on the author and on the entrusting audience
(Boje, Luhman, & Baack, 1999). Ethnographers are socially
recognized as knowledge creators, and their stories receive
a very particular status. Although all scholarly writings
belong to a specifi c genre of narratives (Czarniawska-
Joerges, 1998), ethnography is one of the few to openly
admit its narrative character, while also operating on a meta
level by creating stories about stories.
We understand, following Yannis Gabriel, that stories
are “narratives with simple but resonant plots and charac-
ters, involving narrative skills, entailing risk, and aiming to
entertain, persuade and win over [the listeners]” (2000,
p. 22). In our study, we made twofold use of stories: Firstly,
we collected them from our respondents and analyzed them
in a narrative fashion, and secondly, we composed a narra-
tive account of the central feature of the collected narratives,
as we saw it.
The Stories
Although we did not explicitly ask for humorous or
ironic accounts, all of the collected stories were ironic (we
only expressed our interest in the accounts of slips, blun-
ders, or funny stories from the fi eld). We found the irony of
the texts particularly interesting and that became our fi rst
facet of their interpretation. We fi rst looked for the main
feature of the irony, which we understood as the ability of
the researcher to look back on his/her work and smile. We
tried to understand what exactly made the texts ironic (or,
even better, self-refl ective). We came up with four major
types of disruption, which we discuss in the following order:
1. Losing the Mask: Disruptions in the presentation of self,
especially the ethnographer’s professional role, and all
questions about what this role may embrace.
2. Losing the Path: Trouble with relating to the Other in
space, time, and in a symbolic way.
3. Losing the Link: Cultural discrepancies, such as cultural
blunders and shocks, causing personal and professional
turmoil and misunderstandings.
4. Losing the Zone: Complete incompatibility and
incommensurability of the ethnographer and the Other:
a rift in expectations and realities so profound that it
makes any benefi cial contact between them impossible.
Figure 1.
Types of disruptions in ethnographic accounts: Ways
to get lost in the fi eld
LOST
MASK PATH
LINKZONE
Losing the Mask
The fi rst category of stories about disruptions of self
contains narratives of the loss of the professional mask.
Heather Höpfl (1995) described an experience that actors
call “corpsing.” When a stage actor misses his cue, the
validity of the performance comes into question and the act
“dies” on stage. The loss of the mask, literal in classical
theatre and metaphorical in modern-day performances,
exposes the make-believe, uncovering what is usually
accepted as a symbol of the performance. It happens that
the pause is followed by the laughter of the failed actor, and
sometimes of the audience. We have collected several
stories about this kind of unbalancing. In the fi rst, the author
presents a situation quite similar to corpsing. She loses her
place in the script, and exposes the precariousness of the
role:

NARRATIVES OF IRONY AND FAILURE IN ETHNOGRAPHIC WORK JEMIELNIAK AND KOSTERA
Can J Adm Sci
Copyright © 2010 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 339 27(4), 335–347 (2010)
Still a student at Warsaw University, I was working as
part of a consulting team of the Action Research type.
We were about to start our project for a big Polish con-
sumer goods company and we intended to carry out
extensive open-ended interviews and direct observations
at the site. I had done some interviews before, but only
with people I knew personally or who were introduced
to me by my Swedish supervisor (and I interviewed them
in her presence). [...] As is my style, I did not admit to
my lack of experience but decided to just go ahead. So
one day I stood there in my interviewee’s offi ce, holding
my notebook and pen in my hand, ready to plunge in.
Carefully avoiding eye contact, I sat down in front of her
and opened my mouth to ask the fi rst question. And shut
it quickly again. [...] I sat there in silence for what
seemed like hours and felt how my face grew more and
more red. Finally, in an upsurge of desperate daring I
looked up at her. She was just as red in her face as I must
have been. (Monika Kostera)
By corpsing, the ethnographer reveals the uncertain
fabric, not just of her own role in the encounter, but also
that of the Other’s. The role of the ethnographer is not only
ambivalent in itself, but, in the experience of many organ-
izational ethnographers, is premised only on very vague
terms by the social actors in the fi elds we visit, and then
only at best. Many have never heard of organizational eth-
nographers before we pay them a visit, and do not know
what to expect. If they are unsure what role the ethnographer
should have, they may be just as uncertain about what role
they should take vis-à-vis the ethnographer. Apparently, the
ambiguity works both ways and the researcher may be as
frightened as the subject of the study. Being open to new
experience and keeping the “anthropological frame of
mind,” which allows childlike fascination of and surprise
by even the mundane reality, is an important professional
skill for an ethnographer (Czarniawska-Joerges, 1992), but,
alas, only once s/he knows it.
The second narrative is an account of how the protagon-
ist perceives her role as shaky and unstable. What setting is
she part of, and how should she respond to it? She believes
that there are certain cues to follow from the script, which
she regards as part of her role as ethnographer. But there are
also other alternative cues, derived from the script of par-
ticipating in an organizational reality. When the cues become
contradictory or discrepant, embarrassment (and/or comical
consequences) may ensue.
One of the most diffi cult experiences during fi eld studies
that I have been conducting up till [sic] now, regards my
presentation in the organization. I am unable to come up
with one concrete example, but there is an intensely
embarrassing feeling accompanying the fi rst encounters
with the fi eld, very much alive in my memory. First of
all, when I begin a fi eld study, I usually don’t know what
I am really interested in. Method books console the
uncertain fi eldworker—this is not a sin in the initial
phase of the study. However, having to explain some-
thing I don’t know myself to people I meet in the fi eld
leads to misunderstandings and is a source of strong
feelings of embarrassment. Recently I faced this situa-
tion when interviewing a group of programmers. After
my brief presentations [...] a series of questions fol-
lowed: “but what are you trying to prove?” “what you
say sounds interesting but what is your practical aim?”
“what will the end-result of this study be?” When faced
with such questions, I always considered whether I
should be “authentic” and say something like “we’ll see”
and as a result be treated patronizingly (for not being a
real “scientist”) or if I should rapidly come up with some
catchy topic and impress the interlocutor with what he
or she would be able to perceive as more “professional”?
(Dominika Latusek)
The role of the ethnographer is not well defi ned in the
fi eld and there are no consistent internal and external stan-
dards about what is and what is not “scientifi c” and “profes-
sional.” The gap in between invites embarrassment—and
makes room for irony. The protagonist whips up a charming
self-irony as a resolution: She admits to fantasizing about
inventing a façade for herself that the Other would perceive
as “cool” enough. In an adolescent fashion, she dreams of
impressing them or, at least, of making them accept her
story. Ethnographers, apparently, are particularly prone to
being treated as weird (why don’t they get a normal job,
anyway?) and have to pretend to be someone else to be able
to keep the professional image.
The third story shows how much heroic effort can be
put into ethnographic “facework” (as in “keeping face”),
and how far the ethnographer is willing to go in order to
keep the mask in its dignifi ed place.
When I was collecting fi eld materials for my doctoral
thesis I was invited home to one of my interviewees, in
order to interview him there. I dressed rather smartly—in
a shirt and jacket and left my hotel. I found the address
I have been given by my interlocutor on the phone. The
fl at was located in an old, patrician building [...] It was
evening and early spring, the central heating season had
been ended and it was as cold inside as in a crypt. My
interviewee was used to this, dressed in a warm sweater
he sat there and told (very interesting!) stories of his
childhood and his youth. I sat opposite him in a chair,
more and more cowed, asking questions, nodding and
doing my best not to chatter my teeth (you can’t hear it
on tape but it cost me a lot of effort) [...] The nice inter-
locutor realized, after a few hours, that I was cold and
offered me a blanket. It did help a bit when I wrapped it
over me, but by then I was so frozen that when we said
goodbye late in the night, I had considerable trouble in
hauling myself to a taxi. It ended with a severe cold and
on antibiotics. For my next interview in that cold fl at I
turned up dressed as if for the Antarctic: several layers
of clothes and warm socks. (Katarzyna Wolanik Boström)
The protagonist reveals the great lengths she was
willing to go in order to keep her professional mask in place.
Like the archetypal samurai, she chooses to suffer and
even to get sick rather than to lose her (professional) face,

NARRATIVES OF IRONY AND FAILURE IN ETHNOGRAPHIC WORK JEMIELNIAK AND KOSTERA
Can J Adm Sci
Copyright © 2010 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 340 27(4), 335–347 (2010)
apparently in the belief that admitting to being cold was out
of line or unbecoming for the truly dedicated researcher.
However, the author chooses to be self-ironic and self-
deprecating rather than proud of her achievement, turning
the story and its point into an ethnographic facework account
with a touch of light self-distancing.
Losing the Path
Our second category consists of stories where the ironic
twist is constructed around the disruptions in the relation-
ship with the Other. These narratives deal with the experi-
ence of losing a sense of direction in the fi eldwork.
The fi rst story in this category portrays an ethnographer
who fails to make it to the fi eld at all:
I hate ethnography. I really loathe it. It’s not the “Being
There” that bugs me though, although that can be an
arduous experience. It’s the traveling that I hate. I mean,
where are we going when hey-ho, hey-ho, ethnographing
now we go? The practice of fi eld-work is most of the
time described as: deciding to go somewhere, being
there and writing out the fi rst two parts. Being There
seems very central, almost a braggable feat. It is as if
[...] in the Being There [stage, we fi rst] would become
ethnographers, truly attaining oneness with our study-
objects, or at least oneness with what we want to become
when Being There [sic]. I would like to bring another
part of ethnography to your attention, one that has been
unfairly forgotten—Getting There.
The air-conditioning on the Aerofl ot fl ight from Helsinki
to Moscow is a bit peculiar [...] Functioning basically
like a big humidifi er, it spews out cold steam into the
cabin, making the air more breathable and the atmos-
phere less pleasant [...] I get picked up at the airport, and
my surly driver takes me to my hotel. It is huge. The
reception is manned by stalwarts from the Soviet
service industry, unsmiling, uninterested, unforgiving. I,
however, manage to get my room. It is OK, situated at
the start of an insanely long corridor. There is no-one
[sic] else around. It is quiet. Grave-like, even. I can’t
even fi nd a bar, and by now, I need one.
My driver comes in the morning, as surly as the night
before. He speaks no English. I give him the paper which
is supposed to indicate where I’m going. It is a copy of
a fax (of a copy?), and very diffi cult to read [...] He starts
driving. And we drive. And drive. And drive. It is glar-
ingly obvious that he has no idea where we’re going. He
stops, asks for directions, scratches his head, drives some
more. An hour passes. I have no idea where we are, as
I’ve never been in Moscow before. Then, he seems to
get an idea. He guns the engine, and drives me to a
construction site. I get off, and we agree that he’ll pick
me up in three hours. He drives away, and I start looking
for the site offi ce. I fi nd it, but it’s locked. I realize there
is no-one [sic] on the site. I’m alone. Without a driver,
in a city I do not know, not knowing the language. And
the site is empty. I almost start crying. And I realize that
there is something much, much worse than a failed
ethnography—not even getting there. (Alf Rehn)
This is a straightforward account of a dead-end, in the
geographical sense. The researcher goes beyond failures in
research: He, because of the misunderstanding (or, perhaps,
because of the vile intentions of the driver), does not even
make it to the fi eld and his prospects of getting back to the
city seem to be fully dependent on the driver.
Losing the sense of intellectual direction is another type
of losing the way, and is depicted in the following story,
which, as painful experience as it describes, culminates in
a happy, albeit ironic, ending.
My task was simple, or so I thought. I was to go to the
company, make interviews, spend some time on observa-
tions [...] Short of a car but very motivated, I took two
buses and a bit less than after two hours [sic], in the early
morning, I was at the site. After going through the pre-
liminaries, and after talking to the manager (not too
happy to have me there, but quite helpless, as the word
from above came that I would be doing the study), I was
allowed to go to the software engineers’ working rooms,
where I was shortly introduced and left by myself.
Feeling that, as I was probably already being perceived
as an intruder, I probably should be a bit more polite than
usual, and also seeing how hectic the work seemed, I
decided to schedule a couple of appointments and call it
a day. It went surprisingly easy: I made four appoint-
ments, both scheduled two weeks ahead (but fortunately
for me for the same day). Quite satisfi ed, I returned home.
Two weeks went by and I made the trip to the company.
When I came to the room, it turned out that what I
thought [...] had been hectic earlier was nothing com-
pared to what took place now. Indeed, there was a serious
breakdown or bug in the system [that the team main-
tained], to make matters worse [it was] in the system
used by an important client. It made no sense to disturb
anyone, as they would not have time for me anyway, so
I just made sure to reschedule the interviews. Fortunately
enough, all four interviewees agreed that in two more
weeks latest everything will come back to normal and
we would be able to have our interviews done. We all
put the date into our calendars and I took the buses home.
Finally, when another two weeks passed, I begun [sic]
to understand an important thing: if there is anything
close to “normal” in software development, it was hectic
and short of time. Although I did not make my interviews
then, I fi nally realized that it does not make any sense to
schedule them. Instead I stayed and talked to people over
lunch breaks—but this turned out to be quite effective
and does not belong to this story anymore. (Dariusz
Jemielniak)
This story is striking because it owes its happy ending
to the recognition of—and giving in to—the perceived
ambiguity in the fi eld. The protagonist enters the scene like
John Wayne, ready to take on the perceived enemy, which
for ethnographers is chaos or uncertainty. The researcher has
a plan about how to carry out his study. In his ignorance, he
does not recognize the mañana character of the schedules,
which itself is a topic much more fascinating than he had

NARRATIVES OF IRONY AND FAILURE IN ETHNOGRAPHIC WORK JEMIELNIAK AND KOSTERA
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imagined. When they start to fail, he becomes alarmed.
Then, when he embraces the uncertainty of the fi eld and
goes with the fl ow, his mission at last begins to succeed.
The last story is much less optimistic and its strong
ironic accent provides perhaps the only salvation. Not only
does the plan fail, the whole endeavour becomes endan-
gered and the ethnographer is left with her sense of humour
and nothing else.
When I was doing my dissertation fi eld work I wanted
to keep the specifi cs of the focus of my study of the way
physical spaces affect how people work a secret so as
not to infl uence the way that my informants reported
their behavior. As I was getting ready to meet the fi rst
group of employees at one of my fi eld sites I heard over
the intercom “all those signed up for the physical space
study should go immediately to the conference room!”
So much for planning! (Mary Jo Hatch)
The reckless revealing of the topic of the study to the
company results in a true disaster. The research ends before
it even starts, as the population being studied irrevocably
loses its innocence by being spoiled with knowledge. We do
not know what happens next. This story is notable in that it
leaves no hope for success.
Losing the Link
The next type of discrepancy is the inconsistency of
cultures, a common enough trait of the context in which the
ethnographer fi nds her- or himself. One could say that cul-
tural disagreement is the inbuilt professional condition of
threat for the ethnographer, just like violence is for the
police offi cer. Ethnographers have famously been called
professional strangers (Agar, 1980). This is a mission “to
explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new
civilizations, and to boldly go where no one has gone
before,” as the popular Star Trek TV series put it. Wherever
they roam (be it to an exotic tribe or just to the adjacent
room), they are not to familiarize themselves with the fi eld
too much: their professional identity must prevail. This,
perhaps, is the reason (if not an excuse) for the fact that
ethnographers are vulnerable to culture clashes. After all,
according to Hammersley and Atkinson (1995, p. 102):
Confrontation of the ethnographer with an “alien” culture
is the methodological and epistemological foundation of
the anthropological enterprise, whether it be from the
point of view of a romantically inspired search for exotic
cultures, or the less glamorous sort of encounter
The fi rst of the stories of this kind shows how easy it
is to put one’s foot in one’s mouth during ethnographic
work. The narrated event could, of course, have taken place
in any other social setting. However, for an ethnographer it
can be a more frequent occurrence than for most people
(cultural blunders abound among those who are busy study-
ing alien cultures), and it can have devastating consequences
for his or her entire project. The ethnographer is considered,
if anything, an expert on cultures and a cultural blunder may
affect his or her credibility.
Recently I was conducting an interview in English, with
a manager in an IT company. My interlocutor was
describing an implementation of a new solution for a
client. At some moment, when I wanted to make sure if
I understood him right, I asked an additional question:
“so, you mean implementing the fi nal solution?” From
the conversation it should be clear that I meant the fi nal
version of the IT solution implementation. My inter-
viewee, however, stopped talking abruptly and started
scrutinizing me in an uncomfortable silence. After a
while he remarked that he did not appreciate my use of
the phrase “the fi nal solution,” also because of his Jewish
roots ... (Dominika Latusek)
Perhaps this time the ethnographer, thanks to her
foreign background, overcoming the awkwardness of the
situation, manages to convince the interlocutor that her
unfortunate choice of words is neither deliberate nor a con-
sequence of incompetence. After all, the role of a stranger
allows not only for strange questions, but also for inappro-
priate behaviour. But these two aims are at cross-purposes.
If she does not mean what she says or if she is not familiar
with the English translation of Endlösung, she shows her
ignorance of the contemporary world and of history. If she
is familiar with the term, she is deliberately offensive, or at
least insensitive. Invoking foreignness can in such situation
be a blissful resolution of a “damned if you do, damned if
you don’t” dilemma. The second story describes a serious
cultural misunderstanding without a comforting resolution.
I had only come across the idea of ethnography in
passing whilst completing the fi rst year of my under-
graduate course in sociology. But in looking forward to
starting an option in industrial sociology in the second
year, I decided that I would spend all my summer vaca-
tion working in a factory. I would be like an anthropolo-
gist going deeply “into the fi eld.” [...]
Not far from my home was a business that engaged in
what it called “scientifi c packaging” and they were
advertising jobs in the department which made crates
and packing cases. I got one of these jobs and found
myself, day in, day out, working alongside a dozen or
so other youths, constructing ammunition boxes for the
Ministry of Defence. I learned about and took part in all
sorts of practices—and malpractices—that I was later to
read about in the Hawthorne Studies and Gouldner’s
gypsum factory study. All this learning was valuable, but
the most signifi cant learning came when I was asked if
I would provide two weeks’ holiday cover for the man
who worked “the big chopper” in the part of the factory
where various delicate mechanical items were packed
into boxes for dispatch around the world.
I experienced something of what I later came to know
as “culture shock” when I entered C Shop for the fi rst

NARRATIVES OF IRONY AND FAILURE IN ETHNOGRAPHIC WORK JEMIELNIAK AND KOSTERA
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Copyright © 2010 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 342 27(4), 335–347 (2010)
time at 7:55 am the next Monday morning. It was a large
hangar-like building in which rows of women sat or
stood at benches to do the packing. I was led into a small
room through a door in one wall of the main working
area. In this room was an enormous guillotine. This was
the big chopper. And my job was to slice up paper and
cardboard into precise dimensions which the women, in
ones or twos, would bring to me in the “chopper room”
throughout the working day. The C Shop foreman and I
were the only two men in this part of the site.
I was not naïve enough to be surprised by leg-pulling
and sexual banter from the women who would visit me
for what they called “chopper services” through the day
[“chopper” is a British slang word for penis]. What I was
surprised about, however, was the seriousness which
often accompanies pranks and joking in all sorts of set-
tings (a theme which I subsequently took up in my
“grown-up” ethnographic research). And this serious-
ness soon became clear to me as a result of a foolish
mistake which I made. [...A] women asked, quite reason-
ably, about what I was studying at university. None of
them had heard of sociology and so I fl oundered around
gabbling about social structures, social roles, cultures
and the like. Eventually, to make it simple, I said that
sociology was “not the study of people” but “the study
of the relationships which existed between people.”
“Aha,” said one woman, “relationships.” “Yes,” said her
mate, “Tony’s at college studying sex.” Stupidly—so
very stupidly—and with a foolish grin on my face I said,
“that’s it, I am a trainee sex expert.” So that was the
information which was immediately fl ashed around the
workshop: the lad in the chopper room knows a lot
about sex.
At fi rst it seemed that this had not been a bad idea. An
opportunity had been created for some good “laughs.”
There were jokes about “chopper doctors,” jokes about
lecturers on sex courses appearing naked in lecture the-
atres and, inevitably, jokes about the experiments that
“sex students” might be required to perform in the course
of their studies. But it was not long before it became
apparent that there was something more serious going
on. I think this fi rst occurred to me when one of the
younger women asked me whether it was true that sexual
intercourse performed “standing up” would not lead to
pregnancy. I was about to make some trite quip in
response to this but the expression on the girl’s face (a
very young face beneath a blond fringe, which I can still
picture) made me hesitate. She was indeed genuinely
anxious (or was acting out a part in a way which has left
me convinced to this day). She said her boyfriend was
insisting that there was no problem in his entering her
without protection when he was “saying goodnight to me
up against the wall in the alley-way next to our house.”
And the way I dealt with this, and subsequent such
queries, put me in a trap. I felt that the only way I could
answer her was with as realistic a response as possible.
But in telling her that I understood that there was as
much chance of getting pregnant from vertical inter-
course as there was from horizontal coupling, I was
confi rming my alleged role as a sex expert. If I simply
made a joke of the matter, I might be condemning her to
an unwanted pregnancy. But in telling her that her boy-
friend was either “badly informed” or “trying it on” I
was setting myself up with an authority I did not possess.
It was a horrid ethical dilemma which my naïve joking
about sociology being sex studies had got me into [...]
One morning a woman came in to see me, with her roll
of corrugated cardboard and some measurements. I
recognised her as the mother of a youth with whom I
had worked on the ammunition box line. She told me
that every time she had sexual intercourse she found
herself bleeding for some time afterwards. As she spoke,
I found myself shrinking inside. “But surely your doctor
... ,” I stammered. She cut me off with “My doctor is
useless.” “But I have no idea about this sort of thing,” I
insisted, “This sex expert business has got out of line.”
There was an awkward silence. And to break the silence
I stupidly turned to humour and, with a forced laugh
uttered, “Oh it must just be that you are doing it wrong—
perhaps you should try some new positions.” I thought
my tone made it clear that I was making a joke to close
the conversation. She said nothing. And she left without
a glimmer of the smile that I hoped I might see on her
face to signal that we were both retreating from an
embarrassing conversation. That was it. And before long
it was lunchtime [...] When I returned to work, I dashed
into the guillotine room to avoid being late. I immedi-
ately found myself looking into the eyes of a man in
workman’s overalls. He stood with his booted feet
slightly apart and his arms folded. I was convinced I was
going to be beaten up. In a way, it might have been easier
if he had thumped me. What he did was much worse.
With an utterly sincere look on his face he said, “I under-
stand you know about these things, mate, and that you
think the missus and me ought to go about things in a
different way. Perhaps you could. ... .” At this point my
memory fails me. I was utterly and totally embarrassed.
I was ashamed of myself. That very night, as my girl-
friend (now my wife) tells me, I could not remember
what happened next. I no doubt offered mumbled apolo-
gies and attempted some sort of explanation of how we
had got into this situation. What I am sure I did not do
was to try to make any kind of joke of the matter. I had
learned an important ethnographic lesson: think very
hard before you make any kind of joke in a fi eldwork
situation where there is any kind of cultural ambiguity.
(Tony Watson)
As the author points out, one has to be very careful in
situations where there is cultural ambiguity, and such situa-
tions abound in the everyday life of ethnographers. The
described position is completely hopeless. The ethnographer
has no third option of an exit between Scylla of incompe-
tence and Charybdis of perceived ill will; there are just too
many cultural mazes in which to get lost. The protagonist
takes the emergency exit of banishing a part of the incident
from his memory.
Losing the Zone
The fourth category contains only one story in which
the ironic twist is constructed around an insurmountable
disruption between the ethnographer’s and the Other’s real-
ities. Sometimes there is really nothing more to add, and no
way to repair the failed encounter with the fi eld. Alf Rehn’s

NARRATIVES OF IRONY AND FAILURE IN ETHNOGRAPHIC WORK JEMIELNIAK AND KOSTERA
Can J Adm Sci
Copyright © 2010 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 343 27(4), 335–347 (2010)
story of not arriving at the site is potentially such a narrative,
but the unmet fi eld remains fascinating and taunts a memory
of a promise unfulfi lled and an endeavour unrealized. The
following story is different in that the ethnographer, who
actually got to the fi eld and met some of the actors, had
some of his social, ethnographic, and organizational sense
taken away from him.
My expectations had been huge. ... I expected to conduct
at least 5 interviews, to take numerous fi eld notes, to
personally experience what this company is really about.
I was hoping to gain precious research material. But I
did not.
I arrived to Sleepy Hollow (let’s call it this way, it was
actually a small town in the west of Poland) quite early
in the morning, which meant that I had to get up in the
middle of the night. But it wasn’t really a problem. The
fi rst problem I had on that day was to get any piece of
information from my fi rst interlocutor—The Boss. Not
getting into much detail, I should probably add that I was
interested in how the HR company policy of a very par-
ticular and quite unusual kind—compelling all its
employees to participate in a spiritual course where they
were told about various spiritual techniques and ethical
issues, and after the course fi nished, strongly encouraged
to participate in diverse spiritual follow-up activities—
affects various organizational functions. But any attempt
at getting The Boss to talk about these matters had an
interesting effect: he was getting deeper and deeper into
issues such as the immortality of [the] human soul, num-
erous levels of consciousness, instant materialization and
dematerialization of various objects and the frequency of
encounters with aliens, to name just a few. After two
hours I gave up. His demonstrative avoidance of any of
the topics in any possible way related to organizational/
managerial issues was intriguing, but hey, I still had more
interviews coming, so no worries, right? Wrong.
When we fi nally arrived at the company my conversa-
tion with The Boss, or more accurately, his lecture, took
place in one of the neighbouring restaurants, and I was
introduced to the employee which I was supposed to [...]
interview [...], I thought that from now on it will be just
fi ne. I wouldn’t probably have thought that, had I noticed
how tense (not to say terrifi ed) the employees were when
they saw their boss. That, I noticed a second later. Pre-
cisely when we all went to yet another restaurant, sat
around the table and started our conversation. “All”
means me, my interlocutor, her boss and his little daugh-
ter. When I made a remark that this could be boring for
him, The Boss answered that, on the contrary, he was
vitally interested in what his employee had to say. What
a lovely picture we must have made: me, trying to get
some answers pertaining to [the] employee’s version of
the effects of the company’s policy; she, almost trem-
bling and occasionally directly asking her boss for the
permission to answer my question; The Boss, sitting
comfortably and scrutinizing his employee’s face; and
the little girl eating her ice cream. According to what I
heard from the employee, working for this company was
idyllic. Needless to say, I heard otherwise from another
source.
Once we were done, I asked The Boss if I could talk to
someone else as well. My question seemed rhetorical
since I was supposed to talk to many people there. Well,
apparently it was not. No, I will not talk to other employ-
ees. Reason? I quote: “it doesn’t make sense, they are
not really interested in what is taught to them, they don’t
even attend the post-course meetings. They will have
nothing interesting to tell you.” Obviously, they were the
only people who could have told me something interest-
ing on that occasion. But, the day hadn’t fi nished yet. I
had the rare opportunity to spend some time in The
Boss’s luxurious residence located on the outskirts of the
town and dine together with his family, just before I took
the train back. And going back was probably the best
part of my stay in Sleepy Hollow. Still, jokes aside,
although I planned to achieve something else, what hap-
pened on that day was also quite revealing. And I don’t
necessarily refer to what I’ve learned about reincarnation
and the UFO, but rather about this organization’s culture
and the impact of top down imposition of various
company policies on employees’ behaviour. Or, on the
[sic] second thought, maybe I didn’t learn anything and
it was a perfect, spectacular disaster. (Michał Izak)
Although the experience of studying people who were
being observed by their boss could, perhaps, be very refresh-
ing, it failed utterly to meet the researcher’s requirements.
As authors of this paper, we have both at some time in our
careers taught courses on the principles of management and
have insisted on sending students out to the fi eld. McDon-
ald’s as an organization was banned from the course after
several groups of students reported McDonalds’ employees
to be extremely happy with their work (needless to say,
while being interviewed in the presence of their manager).
The ethnographer never returned to Sleepy Hollow, but
he turned up at other places and is, to our best knowledge,
still happily collecting his fi eld material. When all else fails,
ethnographers can at least hope for better luck next time.
They are often rewarded with it, as the abundant and fas-
cinating ethnographic literature about organizations shows.
However, the dark side of fi eld research is much less known.
Discussion
Summary
Why are these recalled incidents funny or ironic? Why
are they important? We are inclined to think that the reason
is linked to how organizational ethnographers construct
their identity. In social sciences, identity is the continuity of
experience, consistency of role, and a sense of agency
(Alvesson, 1994; Côté & Levine, 2002). Barbara Czarnia-
wska-Joerges (1994) understood identity as a modern insti-
tution and as the assumption that a given kind of actor will
undertake a given kind of action. The actors’ actions shape
their identity and may form patterns of relationships
and interactions with the context over time. Thus, the
context infl uences the actors and vice versa. According to

NARRATIVES OF IRONY AND FAILURE IN ETHNOGRAPHIC WORK JEMIELNIAK AND KOSTERA
Can J Adm Sci
Copyright © 2010 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 344 27(4), 335–347 (2010)
Czarniawska-Joerges, identity construction is a contextual
social process, always in progress and always tentative.
However, there are cues and expectations about the itera-
tions and the outcome. The cultural context defi nes the
actors’ desired/desirable identities. The actors may use these
cues as well as their own ideas and translate them into an
actual enactment of their identities: In the process, “travel-
ling ideas [encounter] a frame of reference, that is ideas in
residence” (Czarniawska-Joerges, p. 209). As a result of this
highly fl uid and iterative process, one is rewarded by a sense
of stability and coherence, as these are the central features
of what identity is supposed to be.
Some identities are more strictly socially defi ned than
others. The identity of the ethnographer, or the professional
stranger (Agar, 1980), is perhaps among the less defi ned. As
such, it is open to paradoxes and inconsistencies, which are
easier to cope with if the actor adopts a distance toward her/
himself (Rorty, 1989). For Rorty (1989), someone adopting
such a distance is a liberal ironist, whom he defi nes as
someone who emphasizes contingency in seeking a situa-
tional and contextual awareness, and as someone who does
not believe in one central idea beyond the cultural context.
The ironist possesses neither a fi nal vocabulary, nor the
conviction that certain words, such as truth, reason, and
faith, carry a value beyond refl ection and problematization.
The ironists are social actors who distance themselves from
their vocabularies; they refuse to take themselves too
seriously.
We have noticed that the ethnographers who contrib-
uted their accounts of failures to our text practiced ironic
distancing in their identity construction in order to deal with
the ambiguity and uncertainty inherent in their role of eth-
nographers doing research in organizational fi elds. They did
so by exposing a major incongruence they encountered in
their research, one that disturbed or sabotaged their identity
work in the fi eld, and then distanced themselves from it.
Describing the errors long passed is, after all, a way to come
to peace with them and move on.
They narrated four different kinds of incongruence:
placed within the role, within the relationship with the
Other, within the context, and, fi nally, within the ethno-
graphic project itself.
Due to its intrinsic vagueness, the role of the ethnog-
rapher can be a source of many contradictions. These con-
tradictions are also a result of the fi eld’s lack of knowledge
about its scope and content. Paradoxically, it is not neces-
sarily true that because cultural anthropologists visit foreign
and exotic lands that they only immerse themselves in
unknown contexts while organizational ethnographers
operate only in familiar environments. Organizational eth-
nographers come from academic environments that differ
very much from the organizations they study. Indeed, some
may say that being separated from the object of the study is
the key to successful research, as the more traditional
approach to ethnography demands that one should not study
one’s own culture. Furthermore, the fi eld does not necessar-
ily understand who the ethnographer is or, indeed, that such
a legitimate social role even exists. How many times have
we encountered reactions ranging from happy surprise to
outright condescension from puzzled practitioners, who
expected a more business-type kind of person (“you, coming
from a management department, should be able to offer
some practical advice on how to run my business”), or a
more traditional scientist (“what hypothesis do you work
with and how many questionnaires do you want to send
out?”). The ethnographer may be truly lost in this conun-
drum, and unable to adjust to the expectations of the fi eld.
Perhaps worse, the ethnographer may be lost in his or her
own conceptions of what being an ethnographer is or is
not about.
The second source of clash in identity construction is
the way the relationship between the ethnographer and the
Other in the fi eld develops. Both sides may expect different
things of the relationship and hold differing mental maps.
Ethnographers know that when doing inductive and idio-
graphic research, they need to keep their mind open and
receptive to new ideas. However, lacking the strict rules and
guidelines of quantitative researchers, they often think they
are facing raw chaos and experience a need to tame and
order it, at least by having a general plan of what they are
supposed to do. The fi eld, alas, has a tendency to sabotage
plans and denounce initial ideas and assumptions. As this is
part and parcel of any ethnographer’s work, be it the cultural
anthropologist’s or the organizational ethnographer’s, the
best and perhaps only approach to numerous situations
when the plan breaks down is ironic distance. Sometimes
the Other in the fi eld reciprocates the ethnographer’s uncer-
tainty with his or her own insecurity about how the relation-
ship should develop. In Mary Jo Hatch’s tale, the manager
who torpedoed her research probably had no intention of
doing so. The researcher had a plan, and so did the Other in
the fi eld. Unfortunately, they were both doomed to fail.
The third type of incongruence derives from the cul-
tural context of both the ethnographer and the fi eld. In the
the role
the project
the Other
the context
Figure 2.
Types of identity incongruity in ethnographic work

NARRATIVES OF IRONY AND FAILURE IN ETHNOGRAPHIC WORK JEMIELNIAK AND KOSTERA
Can J Adm Sci
Copyright © 2010 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 345 27(4), 335–347 (2010)
case of organizational ethnographers, the context may seem
similar, but the similarity is illusory and the illusion can be
dangerous. Contemporary cultural anthropology is preoccu-
pied with colonialism and its devastating consequences for
the understanding of and between different cultures (Wright,
1998). Ethnographers may not be as innocent as they would
like. In organizational ethnography, there may also be some
risk of postcolonial insensitivity, but mainly the risks of
cultural clash derive from other colonizing discourses
within the societies, such as the colonizing of the public
sector with ideas from business (Czarniawska-Joerges,
1994), or the colonizing of the life styles of the working
class with values and sensibilities of the middle classes
(Sennett, 1998). These tendencies, like the rifts between
cultural contexts, even within the same “national culture,”
can add ambiguity and confusion into the ethnographer’s
identity construction.
Finally, there is the major rift depicted in the last story,
where differing approaches to reality make the continua-
tion of the project impossible. Of all the collected narra-
tives, only this one is of a fi nal failure, where the Other
and the researcher simply fail to meet and no process of
identity construction can ensue. The ethnographer wanted
to conduct an ethnographic study and become familiar with
the organization and its actors by free interaction and cul-
tural immersion. The manager had no intention of letting
him do that but pictured him, instead, as a mirror that
would refl ect a preferred identity. The scale of the clash
was of cosmic proportions—the manager and the ethnog-
rapher inhabited separate realities not likely to overlap. The
only thing left to the ethnographer was irony in which to
allow the hole in his identity construction process to heal.
Contributions to Scholarship
This leads us to the question of the role of irony in the
identity construction of the organizational ethnographer. We
are not attempting to create a universally valid conceptual
model, but rather to decipher the narratives collected. We
believe that this may be a relevant endeavour, inasmuch as
the stories may be of interest to other ethnographers, learn-
ing and taking heart from the tales of others who have
encountered similar problems and done similar things. Our
ideas are thus more of a model for experiential learning than
a general explanation of identity construction.
We would fi rst like to consider the outcomes of the col-
lected narratives and the role of irony in leading the plot to
the outcome. All of the stories describe a serious disruption,
showing the defeat of the protagonist in a struggle against
misfortune. Their defeats are not in vain, because they raise
their own and the consciousness of the readers. For all pur-
poses, this description matches Hayden White’s (1973) def-
inition of tragedy. However, while none of the narratives are
sad, neither are they amusing. The circumstances remain
depressing but the outcomes are not. This is due to the pro-
tagonist’s ability to distance him- or herself from the tragic
fi nale, thus providing the narrative with an ironic twist and
a valuable ingredient for the construction of the ethnog-
rapher’s identity. When the reader begins to empathize with
Katarzyna Wolanik-Boström, whose interview literally
made her sick, she ceases to be a victim and turns into a
cheerful character who can laugh at herself. In the same way,
just as the reader begins to commiserate with Alf Rehn on
his unpleasant journey and failure to reach his destination,
the mood of the story shifts and the reader sees the whole
event as comical, and one that Rehn does not take seriously,
as demonstrated in the last sentence of his account. In the
collected stories the ironic fi nale corresponds with the kind
of emplotment Hayden White (1973) called romance: the
main character transgresses and triumphs over the everyday
world.
All tales point to obstacles beyond the protagonist’s
powers, ranging from geography to a lack of understanding
of the role of the ethnographer, or even the ethnographer’s
lack of understanding of the culture under examination. The
latter is a formidable objective obstacle because the ethnog-
rapher is supposed to enter the fi eld with an open mind and
no preconceived ideas. However, with open-mindedness
comes misunderstanding, as in Dominika Latusek’s story of
the offensive phrase that she used in a conversation with a
Jewish programmer, or in Tony Watson’s account of a dis-
astrous clash between the cultures of different classes.
However, the fi nal ironic twist to all of the tales shifts the
ideology from radical to anarchist. The liberation of
the subject through the adoption of ironic distance lifts the
accounts to a level at which transcendental change becomes
possible, which is beyond the former frame of reference. In
Katarzyna Wolanik-Boström’s tale, the fi nal irony changes
her identity from heroic to comic, and liberates her from
acting valiant and insensitive to hardships. She leaves the
reader with the image of herself swaddled in several layers
of warm clothes, not taking her former sufferings seriously
at all. Mary Jo Hatch and Michał Izak both describe a major
failure in their fi eldwork and then admit philosophically that
it was indeed a failure. Their fi eldwork may have been
compromised, but their identity as ethnographers seems to
have gained additional value. These failures, then, become
valuable to the ethnographers because through them is it
possible to truly understand successes.
Applied Implications
Many of the narratives presented in this article hap-
pened early in the contributors’ careers. It may just be that
many of them decided to refl ect on the situations that hap-
pened a long time ago. However, we believe the reason may
be more complex. Experiencing of failure and accepting that
we all occasionally make fools of ourselves is a crucial part
of maturing as a researcher. Realizing that we can all make
mistakes is not only ironic, but also edifying.

NARRATIVES OF IRONY AND FAILURE IN ETHNOGRAPHIC WORK JEMIELNIAK AND KOSTERA
Can J Adm Sci
Copyright © 2010 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 346 27(4), 335–347 (2010)
The shift from vulnerable and restricted social actor to
someone who can rise above and have a good laugh is a
transcendent change characteristic of all of the tales. This is
not an autobiographical attribute of style but is, in our
opinion, an interesting element of the ethnographer’s iden-
tity. All authors are capable of performing that lift. The
ethnographer is capable of turning tragedy into romance and
of teaching the ideological lesson of transcending immov-
able institutions.
Limitations and Future Research Directions
Our study is obviously limited by the responses we
received. The biggest failures are probably rarely confessed,
and we have been able to collect only the accounts of what
our fellow ethnographers and we ourselves consider safe to
admit. This, however, is perhaps even more interesting than
the “real” disasters: Acknowledged slips take part in defi n-
ing the professional role of an ethnographer. Following the
narrativist tradition, we drew from the “near misses” often
considered the most educational.
Our study can lead to future analyses of the role of
irony in professional identity construction. It would be
informative to examine the role of irony in some other
scholarly as well as nonacademic professions. Another path
for study is to more closely research ethnographers them-
selves to better understand their occupational culture.
Although this task may seem suicidal or, at best, very dif-
fi cult because of the self-awareness and refl exivity they may
display, it is still quite crucial in revealing the fundamentals
of our work.
Conclusion
The narrators of the stories we have collected could
address their fellow ethnographers: The story is over, now
get on with your identity construction projects as you see
fi t. Even if you don’t fi nd the stories humourous, their
authors do; the ability to perceive themselves ironically
made them mature and grow into the identity of professional
ethnographer.
Joseph Campbell, in his interesting analysis of the
structure of myths (1949/2004), argued that most cultures
repeat the same plot in which the hero is separated from
home (or a safe place) and in departing, goes through an
initiation in order to return with new found wisdom and
power to the place of his or her origin. This cycle, borrowed
from the anthropological observations of Arnold van Gennep
(1909/1966), forms the basis of the perpetual Monomyth.
In the same fashion, the ethnographer’s identity narrative
(Czarniawska-Joerges, 1994) can be seen as a retelling of
the story of the Wise Old Man or, in Jung’s words, a senex
(Jung, 1959). As such, the narrative can be said to be arche-
typical, as it touches profound layers of the human psyche
known as the collective unconscious. It can also be con-
sidered a type of linguistic framing because the contributors
refer to the narrative schemes that are deeply rooted in
human culture (Kostera, 2008). The ethnographer, like all
characters referring to the senex archetype, comes from
another world, sometimes offering advice to the people, but
usually keeping to his/her own goals. Through the heroic
adventure, the ethnographer comes to understand his/her
lore better and comes back to the beginning enlightened,
only to smile at his or her former self. Thus the identity can
be said to contain elements of self-control, an authority
internalized within the role itself, which is symbolized by
this inner sage who is capable of saving the day in face of
failure.
From this perspective, our stories of irony and failure
go beyond the initial interpretation. They are not really
accounts of slips; they are much more. By becoming part of
the current neglected discourse on ethnographical errors,
these stories become successes and important lessons in the
development of mature ethnographers. Prasad (1997) men-
tioned empathy as one of the key attributes of the ethno-
graphic methodology. An empathic professional needs to be
not only open to the Other, but also able to incorporate
self-irony into his or her identity.
In summary, our fi ndings reveal the role of irony in the
identity construction of organizational ethnographers in
response to slips during fi eldwork. We consider the slips
crucial to the identity construction process. Thanks to their
slips, ethnographers are able to position themselves as wise
outsiders who can handle ambiguity and failure. The impli-
cations of our fi ndings for future ethnographic work concern
fi rst and foremost a more open attitude towards failure. Such
candour among ethnographers should be encouraged. A
second implication is the conscious use of irony for the
maturation of the identity. The development of such a skill
can be advocated during the training and mentoring of
young ethnographers.
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