An Introduction to Philosophical and Methodological Foundations of Critical Ethnography; Emphasizing Carspecken Critical Ethnography

In general, research is divided into quantitative and qualitative categories. Qualitative research has several types, most notably ethnography, grounded theory, phenomenology, discourse analysis, hermeneutics, and semiotics. Critical ethnography is a kind of ethnography rooted in the Chicago School and developed by the Birmingham Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies in England. The main purpose of critical ethnography is to critique and interpret culture and change it in favor of equality of power in social relations and the empowerment of subjects under study. Therefore, critical ethnography is always related to the problem of power, and change, value-orientation and the relationship between agency and structure are among the characteristics of this method. One of the methods in critical ethnography is the method of  Carspecken that emphasizes the communication experience and has been influenced by pragmatism, neo-marxism, and phenomenology. By placing the concept of validity within the theory of meaning, Carspecken emphasizes the inner relationship between meaning and validity. He has a five-step approach to critical ethnography. These are: collecting original documents; analyzing collected observational data; generating conversational data (emic approach); the discovery of relationships between what is discovered and the fields broader and, finally, linking the findings from the earlier stages to macro-sociological theories and constructions, to illustrate the processes of production and social reproduction.