‘Missing out’: Reflections on the positioning of ethnographic research within an evaluative framing

REYNOLDS, Joanna (2017). ‘Missing out’: Reflections on the positioning of ethnographic research within an evaluative framing. Ethnography, 18 (3), 345-365.

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Abstract

Contemporary approaches to evaluating ‘complex’ social and health interventions are opening up spaces for methodologies attuned to examining contextual complexities, such as ethnography. Yet the alignment of the two agendas – evaluative and ethnographic – is not necessarily comfortable in practice. I reflect on experiences of conducting ethnographic research alongside a public health evaluation of a community-based initiative in the UK, using the lens of ‘missing out’ to examine intersections between my own ethnographic concerns and those of the communities under study. I examine potential opportunities posed by the discomfort of ‘missing out’, particularly for identifying the processes and spaces of inclusion and exclusion that contributed both to my ethnographic experiences and to the realities of the communities engaging with the initiative. This reveals productive possibilities for a focus on ‘missing out’ as a form of relating for evaluations of the impacts of such initiatives on health and social inequalities.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	1601 Anthropology; Anthropology
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1177/1466138116664106
Page Range:	345-365
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Elements
Depositing User:	Symplectic Elements
Date Deposited:	23 Jan 2019 10:26
Last Modified:	18 Mar 2021 06:50
URI:	https://shura.shu.ac.uk/id/eprint/23382

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