Reflective Critical Inquiry on Critical Inquiry:A Critical Ethnographic Dilemma Continued

Abstract

This manuscript argues that there is an intimate connection between a "critical" ethnographer's personal history and the data collected. The author traces elements in his personal life, such as school, religion, immigration and forms of discrimination, and connects dominant values within the above to the various studies he has conducted over the last decade. The author reflects back on how he may have unconsciously been seeing the everyday experiences of subjects he was studying as a reflection of his own personal experiences at various times in his life - all which relate to forms of institutional and cultural political resistance. The author argues that the educational Left can only be caught in a theoretical and cynical "catch 22" logic if the interpretation of "critical data" remain at the structural level. Moments of joy and emancipatory possibility , the author maintains, becomes a possibility particularly when the critical ethnographer's personal voice is entered into the whole ethnographic picture. That in mind, the author argues that school change on any level of liberation can only occur when the researcher and researched can attain a level of intersubjective compromise, where both their personal voices and relationships to structure are better understood.