Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Rituals are repeated patterns of symbolic behavior that play a part in both reli-
gious and secular life. In the CIP school, administrators, teachers, and students
wore a special school “CIP is Hip” T-shirt 1 day a month every month. The
T-shirt represented the program's values of cooperation, hard work, friendship,
achievement, and educational opportunity. The CIP T-shirt, as a symbol, was
worn every month on a special day. The day was a program ritual in which
students received special awards to reinforce specific positive behaviors—for
example, an award for best or most improved attendance. Everyone in the pro-
gram, including the principal, wore the symbolic T-shirt during this rite of soli-
darity. The ritual served to reinforce the group's unity or family feelings as well
as to reward desirable behaviors (for another illustration, see Burnett, 1976).
Rituals also exist in business organizations and institutions. During a study
of a university hospital, I found that one administrator examined the budget and
expense statement every month. She would check every line item to see if every
charge had a receipt. Hers was a ritualistic behavior. In this case, however, the
ritual was hollow and had lost all meaning. The administrator checked for the
appropriate receipts for all expenses but never checked to see if the charges
themselves were appropriate. In many cases, charges were completely inappro-
priate. The ritual gave her and the hospital a false sense of security and con-
vinced the hospital administration that it had a firm grip on finances despite the
hospital's rapid expansion and growing complexity (Fetterman, 1986g).
Ethnographers see symbols and rituals as a form of cultural shorthand.
Symbols open doors to initial understanding and crystallize critical cultural
knowledge. Together, symbols and rituals help ethnographers make sense of
observations by providing a framework with which to classify and categorize
behavior (see Dolgin, Kemnitzer, & Schneider, 1977; Swatos, 1998, p. 505).
MICRO- OR MACROLEVEL STUDY
The application of these concepts to ethnographic work does not take place in
a vacuum. The ethnographer's orientation is determined by the study's bound-
aries. In turn, these boundaries evolve from the study itself. Some basic param-
eters, however, can be established at the beginning of the study.
An ethnographer's theoretical disposition and problem selection will deter-
mine whether a micro- or macrolevel study is conducted. A microstudy is a
close-up view, as if under a microscope, of a small social unit or an identifiable
activity within the social unit. Typically, an ethnomethodologist or symbolic
interactionist will conduct a microanalysis (see Denzin, 2001; Hinkel, 2005). For
example, Erickson's (1976) study of gatekeepers involved reviewing videotaped
