Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 2.2
New York inner-city neighborhood
prostitution, arson for hire, rape, and murder were commonplace (see Figure 2.2).
This helped policymakers understand the power of certain elements in the com-
munity to distract students from their studies. This description also provided
some insight into the often-lucrative alternatives with which the school com-
peted in attracting and keeping students. Contextualization helped provide a
more accurate characterization of the school's degree of difficulty and helped
prevent a common error—blaming the victim (Fetterman, 1981b).
EMIC PERSPECTIVE AND MULTIPLE REALITIES
The emic perspective—the insider's or native's perspective of reality—is at the
heart of most ethnographic research. The insider's perception of reality is
instrumental to understanding and accurately describing situations and behav-
iors. Native perceptions may not conform to an “objective” reality, but they
help the fieldworker understand why members of the social group do what
they do. In contrast to a priori assumptions about how systems work from a
simple, linear, logical perspective—which might be completely off target—
ethnography typically takes a phenomenologically oriented research approach.
