Dispensing with Method

Abstract

Methods are the sine qua non of scientific endeavour. They are commonly held to provide for rigor and reproducibility of both approach and results, yet we have none to offer. Indeed, we steadfastly refuse to impose methods on the study of practical sociology. Why? Because a priori methods, or methods devised outside the actual circumstances and situations being studied by people who are not party to the work under investigation, lose the phenomenon: lose members’ mastery of practical sociology. You don’t need methods to develop competence in a setting’s work or to uncover the naturally accountable ways in which members do it and reflexively organise it. So how is ethnography to proceed then? The absence of method – of formula, of prescription, of step-by-step approach – does not mean that advice cannot be offered, or that common tools and resources cannot be used. Our aim in this chapter is two-fold then. Firstly to elaborate the practical necessity to dispense with method. Secondly to elaborate how to approach fieldwork, including configurations of fieldwork for design, and common tools and resources you might employ to elaborate a setting’s work and its real world, real time organisation.