Utilizing Ethnographical Approaches to Study the Abstract, Intimate, and Dynamic Topic of Trust

Abstract

There is an increased need to acquire a more holistic and situated understanding of how and why experiences unfold during real-life situations, especially during research focused on identifying nuanced and dynamic phenomena such as trust. Trust researchers need to revisit and expand their methodological toolkit with immersive qualitative methods for the researching of lived experiences of abstract, intimate, and dynamic experiences. In this article, we discuss two ethnographical approaches to qualitative trust research—autoethnography and at-home ethnography. We illustrate this discussion through two case vignettes from our studies of nuanced and dynamic organizational relationships in which we as researchers were also positioned as a part of the data. We apply philosophical principles connected to reflexivity and provide examples of the researcher as a subject during the study of unfolding vulnerabilities of the field and the researcher.