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Ethnography: Bridging the Qualitative-Quantitative Divide

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Jerome Krase
Jerome Krase*
Affiliation:
Brooklyn College CUNY, USA
*
Jerome Krase, Brooklyn College CUNY, 2900 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11210, USA. Email: jerrykrase@aol.com
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Abstract

This analytic autoethnographic and autobiographical essay addresses several interrelated questions regarding the use of ethnographic and otherwise ‘qualitative’ research methods in the study of contemporary urban society. The testy relationship between qualitative and quantitative research has historical as well as logico-deductive roots that continue to haunt the social sciences. As to hermeneutics, the debate parallels my academic career journey from Indiana University to Brooklyn College by way of New York University during which I learned that the normative practices of the social and not so social sciences come in a myriad of different competing, and occasionally conflicting, pre- and proscriptions. My intention in this essay is not to construct a fine, or even a crude, philosophical discourse but to argue for more attention to be paid to what social scientists do best as opposed to the labels they apply to each other and their trades. As the positivist founders of sociology would agree, social science is not exempt from the laws of social science. At the conclusion, an example will be given of the kind of knowledge accessible only through direct observation and best conveyed by thick description.

Keywords

Ethnographyqualitative research methodsdisciplinary labellingthick description
Type
Articles
Information
Diogenes , Volume 63 , Issue 3-4: Urban Anthropology , August 2016 , pp. 51 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2018

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