Principles, Approaches and Issues in Participant Observation

Participant observation as a formal means of inquiry is developed in close relation with the competing approaches of reality (ontology), truthfully apprehending reality (epistemology), and formal research (methodology). In this volume Jorgensen discusses the resulting methodologies of positivism, humanism, and most recently postmodernism in relation to principles, approaches, and issues in participant observation. Specific features of participant observation, as exemplified in a wide range of classic and contemporary studies, are examined by way of these methodological approaches along with the troublesome complexities of values, politics, ethics, and contemporary debates over appropriate representations of the resulting findings about human life.

This concise primer is suitable for undergraduate and graduate students in a wide range of disciplines such as anthropology, religious studies, sociology and nursing.