2. Critical Ethnography Overview
Critical ethnography such as Pascoe’s work starts with an ethical
responsibility based in compassion for the subjects to research and
engage unfairness or injustice in a specific lived domain. and move that
situation from “what is” to “what could be”. This creates a situation in
which the researcher:
feels a moral obligation toward changing the conditions toward
greater equity.
researches, reveals, and disrupts a status quo of obscure power and
control structures, that is sometimes below superficial layers of social
entities.
resists assimilation by the system and shifts from “what is” to “what
could be”.
Critical ethnographers must use privileges, attributes, resources,
knowledge, and other factors, to break through the superficial layers
and access the stories of those who may be suppressed or restrained by
the system in such a manner as to defend their voice.
(Madison, 2005; Carspecken, 1996; Noblit, Flores, & Murillo, 2004; Thomas, 1993).
3. Purpose of text
Pascoe (2007, P. 18) ”This book examines the way
gendered and sexualized identifications and the
institutional ordering of these identifications in a
California High School both reinforce and challenge
inequality among students.”
4. Goals
Pascoe intended to display:
The influence of masculinity in the high school
atmosphere and how it permeates the struggle for
power and control over others.
Different interpretations and issues with power and
masculinity as it pertains to race, gender, social
status, etc.
Students that display non-normative behaviors and
characteristics and observing how they adjust to the
social environment of the high school setting.
5. Viewing the World
Pascoe relates everything to the “social world” that
she studies (p. 5).
An undercurrent theme that was woven throughout
the study was one of identity formation specifically
during adolescence. This topic provides a great
context for studying power, inequalities, gender,
and psychological processes—things she has been
interested in since high school (p. ix).
6. Paradigm Shifting
Pascoe values social justice and purposefully
challenged others’ theories and traditional
definitions as she sought to demonstrate that it is not
feasible to strictly categorize or independently
define concepts, such as masculinity, without delving
into the social norms and cultures that impact the
participants perception through an interactionist
approach because it is a process and not a singular
characteristic (pp.11-14).
7. Author’s Intentions
Pascoe confirms that all children go through the
socialization process that includes teasing and
bullying. Being compassionate, she provides some
recommendations for institutions that would better
support gay and non-normatively gendered
students (p. 24). This would assert that she would
like to make a difference in the future by helping to
decrease these behaviors within high school settings.
8. Foundations
The recognition that high school is the major socializing structure that is
prevalent for the youth in our society.
The identification of non-normative students and recognizing that they
are marginalized because of their lack of “power” in how they are
treated and supported.
The use of the “fag discourse” also prevails in that masculine qualities
are rewarded with power and privilege. These qualities are not seen
in the inferior person with feminine qualities (“the fag”).
Femininity is referred to as a means to emasculate males and render
females helpless. Females who have masculine qualities are revered,
while males with feminine qualities are ridiculed.
The integration of queer theory, feminist theory, and sociological
research literature to explore the process and definitions of
masculinities
9. Behavior Considerations
She believes it is important to recognize how masculinity
and sexuality influence the power that students possess.
Men and women both possess masculinity and various
influences of power.
Perceptions of masculinity and sexuality influence the
powers that students possess.
Similar perceptions often dictate power or privilege
that is afforded to those in certain situations and
categories.
Perceptions play a major role in society as to how
people are viewed or judged.
10. Rationale
The study was conducted in order to display the
difficulties students, faculty, and staff possess in
providing adequate and equal opportunities for all
students.
In the words of Pascoe, “At both the institutional
and individual levels, we need to support boys and
girls who enact non-normative gender and sexual
identities. Make them safer places for all students:
masculine girls, feminine boys, and all those in
between.”
11. Positionality
Ethnographic positionality ≠ subjectivity
Subjectivity is part of positionality, but positionality recognition must go
beyond subjectivity of self.
Consider: MAHER and TETREAULT (1994), Madison (2005), and St. Louis
& Barton (2002). Positionality is how people are defined by
location within shifting networks of relationships that are
subject to analysis and change.
race, gender, class, and other socially significant dimensions.
12. Positionality
A focus solely on suffering, injustice, and power struggles are not enough in their
political aims. There must be a shift from just politics to politics of positionality
(Madison, 2005).
Three forms of positionality of ethnographer as a researcher according to Fine
(1994)
Ventriloquist-Transmits information with no political stance. Ethnographer’s essence
is invisible in the text.
Voices-Subjects are the focus and their expressions relay the indigenous
meanings/experiences that are in conflict with power and status quo.
Ethnographer’s essence is not clearly addressed but somewhat present in the text.
Activism-Marginalized groups and locations and the tangible effects of
power/status quo on them are revealed in an active effort by ethnographer.
Ethnographer offers alternative practices to system. A clear presence of
ethnographer’s intervention on hegemonic practices is evident in text.
These are similar to Habermas’s (1971) (in Madison, 2005) positions of natural
science model, historical and interpretive model, and critical theory model,
respectively.
13. Why Positionality is Important
Noblit et. al. (2004) exclaimed the concern of a focus on social
change in critical ethnography, but a lack of focus of the
postionality of the researcher:
“Critical ethnographers must explicitly consider how their own acts of
studying and representing people and situations are acts of domination
even as critical ethnographers reveal the same in what they study” (p.
3).
Positionality recognition by the researcher is crucial because it
makes the researcher:
Recognize their own power of authority, subjectivity, biases,
privilege, as they are critiquing systems that encompass the subjects
they are studying.
Accountable for research paradigms, and how the research is
interpreted and presented.
Madison (2005)
14. Why Positionality is Important
Questions presented in Madison (2005) that reflection of positionality
(“reflexive ethnography”) force the researcher to ask:
What am I going to do with the research?
Who benefits from the research?
How am I an authority in such a manner to make claims based on
the research?
What changes will come from the research?
How does my past relate/influence the research?
This creates a situation where critical ethnography can strive to critique
objectivity and subjectivity equally (Goodall, 2000).
To sum up why consideration of positionality is important:
“We are simply forbidden to submit value judgments in place of
facts or to leap to ‘ought’ conclusions without a demonstrable
cogent theoretical and empirical linkage” (Thomas, 1993, p. 22).
15. Further questions from Madison (2005,
p 4.)
1. How do we reflect upon and evaluate our own purpose,
intentions, and frames of analysis as researchers?
2. How do we predict consequences or evaluate our own
potential to do harm?
3. How do we create and maintain a dialogue of
collaboration in our research projects between ourselves and
Others?
4. How is the specificity of the local story relevant to the
broader meanings and operations of the human condition?
5. How—in what location or through what intervention—will
our work make the greatest contribution to equity, freedom,
and justice?
16. Pascoe’s Positionality
There are so many factors that go into a
researcher’s positionality that even the researcher
themselves may have a hard time accounting for
them all. Because this is the case, it is the intent for
the Green Team to give examples of influences of
Pascoe’s positionality in order to illustrate what it is.
As a researcher in Dude You’re a Fag, it is
interpreted that Pascoe’s positionality based on
Fine’s (1994) classification is Voices/Activism (More
on the activism side). (NOTE RATIONALE SLIDE FOR
HER FOCUS IN THIS STUDY)
17. Pascoe’s Embeddedness
Fieldwork:
Suburban High School in working class Riverton
Demographics of Riverton: ½ white, ¼ latino or hispanic, ¼
African American or Asian.
18. Influences on Pascoe’s Positionality
Personal Factors:
Influences from educators/education system:
High school English teachers:
Taught her how to write
Introduced her to “social topics that still drive my research-
power, inequality, gender, psychological processes, and
feminism” (Pascoe, 2007 p. ix).
Mentors at Brandeis University:
Introduced her to sociology and feminist theory.
Taught her about scholarship, contemplating social world,
and addressing inequality.
19. Influences on Pascoe’s Positionality
Personal Factors Continued:
Partner “is a teacher and mentor to youth much like
those as River High.” (Pascoe, 2007 p. xi)
Identifies herself as
“A strong, assertive woman” (Pascoe, 2007, p. 183).
One who socializes mainly with feminists.
Feeling scared, angry, unsettled, and objectified when she
was used as an identifying resource in the boys positioning
her as a potential sexual partner.
20. Influences on Pascoe’s Positionality
Financial Resources, Support, and Affiliations
The Graduate Division, Center for the Study of Sexual
Cultures
Center for the Study of Peace and Well-Being,
Abigail Reynolds Hodgen Fund
Department of Sociology (U of California at Berkely)
21. Influences on Pascoe’s Positionality
Intellectual Support: from educators/education system:
Center for Working Families, Center for the Study of Sexual
Cultures
Themes of support from University of California, Berkeley
Mentors:
Sociology, feminist theory, theories of interaction, theories of childhood
(These are the one’s Pascoe stated influenced her approach to the youth at
River High. They are also many of the same ones she cites in her research.
Assistance in analysis on gender, youth, and sexuality.
Themes of support from University of California, Berkeley
Students:
Drew from student in her own courses such as “The Sociology of Gender”,
“Gender and Education”, and “Masculinities” to get feedback and keep
relevant to teen culture.
22. Thoughts on Positionality
Some high school boys may be “performing” for her and
intensifying their beavior in her presence at times for her
attention (P 62-63 with Ben and the oily jeans)
Pascoe must reflect on her presence as a researcher and how it
may affect their behavior.
She conveys her purpose of research as writing a book about
guys. I think this may be problematic in her research in that it may
magnify some of the students behavior towards stereotypical
“guyness”.
She notes that the students knew about the focus of her study on
masculinity.
23. Pascoe’s Embeddedness & Positionality
Considered factors that affect her research such as:
Appearance: Wore baggy cargo pants, black t-shirt or
sweater and sneakers with no make-up.
Was mistaken by teachers students, and staff as either a student,
teacher, or parole officer.
Interaction: Did not try to exclude herself, or fit in with the
students. Used just enough slang like students to communicate
differently than teachers, but also asked them frequently to
explain themselves so she would indicate she was not one of
them. Also had to come across to administrators as
responsible.
Did not want to be seen as an authority figure.
24. Pascoe’s Embeddedness & Positionality
Considered factors that affect her research such as:
Gender/sexuality/age intersections: Being female studying adolescent boys:
Had to balance the line as a young female who looks like one of the students
who could have been susceptible to sexual content being infused into interactions
by boys. Managed these interactions and maintained professionalism by
creating a “least-adult identity” or least-gendered” identity (Mandell, 1988)
Least Adult/Gender
Positioned herself as a woman who had “masculine cultural capital.”
Used bodily comportment, inability to be offended, living in a tough
area, athleticism, competitive joking.
Balanced between acceptance of boys use as a potential sexual
partner/object and an insider/outsider role in relation to age/sexuality/
gender.
Utilized “soft-bunch lesbian demeanor” (Pascoe 2007, p.181)
25. Pascoe’s Embeddedness & Positionality
Least Adult/Gender continued
Allowed for maximizing information gathering while not
disrupting boys masculinity building.
Played the role of young adult many times by placing herself as
a liaison between teenage and adult world through her
interactions.
Constant documentation and materials though still put her in the
role of privileged outsider as it was perceived that she knew
more about the boys as they did themselves.
Had to promise repeatedly that students would not get in trouble
for what they told her.
Students repeatedly tested her to determine if this was the
case.
26. Positionality in Summary
Pascoe had to continuously monitor her own interactions with
her subjects as she had to conduct herself in a manner as to not
be objectified by the masculinity power building process of the
teenage boys, but also had to not look like such an authority
figure as to remove her ability to research it. This was
especially difficult in some ways given her age, gender, small
stature, and student like appearance. Conversely, these factors
also gained her privileged access to witnessing important
phenomena that would help her research. Pascoe also had to
recognize her personal qualities (education and her own
personal research interests) that made her more sensitive, yet
insightful to occurrences such as objectification by the boys in
their quest for masculinity. Lastly, she also had to remain
professional enough to work with in the constraint of
administrators, the school system, and professional ethics.
27. Ethical Considerations
Pascoe had issues of being a woman researcher
asking high school adolescents questions and
observing their behaviors related to sexuality,
gender, roles, etc.
She had issues of confidentiality when learning
about “getting girls” and practices that sounded a
lot like sexual assault on the part of the males.
Like most critical ethnographer closely interacting
with her subjects, she had to weigh her subjectivity
and positionality.
28. References
Carspecken, P.F. (1996). Critical ethnography in educational research: A theoretical and practical guide. New
York: Routledge.
Fine, M. (1994) Chartering Urban School Reform: Reflections on Public High Schools in the Midst of Change
Teachers College Press,New York, NY.
Madison, D. S. (2005) Critical Ethnography: Methods, Ethics, and Performance. Thousand Oaks, US: Sage
Publications.
Maher, F. A. & Tetreault, M. K. (1994). The Feminist Classroom. New York: Basic Books.
Noblit, Flores & Murillo. (2004). Postcritical ethnography: An introduction. In Noblit, Flores & Murillo (Eds.)
Postcritical ethnography: Reinscribing critique. Cresskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press Inc.
Goodall, H.L. Jr. (2000). Writing the new ethnography, Walnut Creek California, Alta Mira.
St. Louis, K. & A. C.Barton (2002). Tales from the Science Education Crypt: A Critical Reflection of Positionality,
Subjectivity, and Reflexivity in Research Qualitative Social Research Forum, Volume 3, No. 3, Art. 19
Thomas, J. (1993). Doing Critical Ethnography. Sage Publications, Newbury Park, CA
