Describing the Community in Thorough Detail

Abstract

Community study as a method focuses holistically on how people think and act in their every-day lives, in their natural settings. An inductive process is used to learn the meanings attached to things in their lives. If a community is selected carefully it can serve as a representative cultural or societal sample. For a community study the researcher is the research instrument who typically becomes immersed in the place, even for a short while. The researcher inter-acts with people, shares daily life, and participates in community experiences with at least some of the inhabitants. In this process, termed participant observation, data are collected systematically and unobtrusively (Taylor and Bogdan, 1998). Being an observer has moral and ethical problems, and communities are not likely to agree with all or some of what is found [c.f., famous example of (1968)]. A community study can provide vivid rich detail that uniquely in social science research makes a place come alive, due to the field immersion of the researcher. A typical criticism is that a researcher produces a sympathetic portrait of a place, due to a lack of detachment (Bell and Newby, 1972). The aim is to describe the uniqueness of a community studied but simultaneously show that it is representative of a problem or phenomena in, and theory about, the wider society.