Notes on: M Hammersley (1999) Not bricolage but boatbuilding. Exploring two metaphors for thinking about ethnography. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 28 (5): 574 – 85.

Dave Harris

This is a commentary on Denzin and Lincoln and their moments for qualitative research, with the central theme of the crisis of representation. They recommend that the researcher be considered as a bricoleur, but this is an equivocal term, meaning Jack of all trades but master of none or even a '"small-time crook"'. Lévi-Strauss popularised it As savage thinking solving problems with whatever resources are to hand, working concrete level, giving the example of myth. The Denzin and Lincoln version does not abandon expertise, but nor do they think that bricolage is inferior to science — Lévi-Strauss sees anthropology as a science which studies bricolage.

For Denzin and Lincoln bricolage is the model for social research, especially its pragmatic flexibility, multiple ideas and perspectives with none claiming privilege. These diverse materials are pieced together in a kind of collage. They want to contrast it not with the slightest but with the technician, 'someone who follows a single method rigidly' (576). Again no particular evaluation can always be placed on flexibility, however, if it lacks rigour for example, or if it leads to unfortunate amalgamations and eclecticism.

Instead we should think of boatbuilding, but not the Titanic. Neurath referred to the scientist as someone who constantly repairers and reconstructs the ship while at sea. Ethnographers have indeed in day engaged in 'increasingly men it rebuilding of their boat' (577) following various theoretical influences including post-modern. This has led to diversification and the blending different elements, even different paradigms, although apparently Denzin and Lincoln against that.

This is no good for boatbuilding where the various parts of the match and make a coherent whole. Many of the posts were intended to critique the concept of totality including gender categories, and to doubt whether research can be liberatory or whether there is anything in authentic subjectivity. There are whole differences in goals and in what the nature of the enterprises. Bricolage does not help us survive.

Denzin and Lincoln's history is unhelpful. Positivism in the first half of the 20th century is supposed to last for 50 years, but the other moments increasingly diminish — 'present-ism with a vengeance' (579. This leaves out much diversity. It is doubtful if positivists were that unified in their views, for example including Neurath, who did not believe in first principles.

We need to look at analogous activities. Lincoln and Denzin recommend using literary models, but it's not clear why, and runs the risk of avoiding the distinctive contribution of social science. We can learn a great deal from imaginative literature but they are different and we can't do them through social research or vice versa. Why blur genres?

There are increasing demands that social science shows its practical contributions in exchange for public funds. More generally, to produce value relevant knowledge, and challenging or redefining it to mean 'illuminating fictions or partisan perspectives' (581) risks breaching the implicit contract with public funders.

A lot of qualitative research does think we can begin again from scratch and operate a new paradigms, despite their rejection of foundationalism, but there are bits of the boat which would be foolish to remove. This is seen in Wittgenstein's notion that concepts and assumptions are the hinges of activity, necessary assumptions, like that the world was not created a few years ago. There are paradoxes in epistemology, but taking the next step of rejecting the concept of truth altogether makes no sense, especially outside of research 'lawcourts, in politics and in our mundane dealings with the world' (582).

There are limits to the sort of rebuilding we can do, but we should retain the basic commitment to 'untrammelled enquiry into the production of generic knowledge' (583) and those who want to be poets or activists or both' should not pretend that they can simultaneously be social researchers'.

There is an argument that generic knowledge is impossible and we should substitute ethical and political goals, but this is hardly new, not invented in the crisis of representation, but long associated with Greek sceptics. Nor are they decisive because 'scepticism is self refuting' or 'corrosive of ethical and political beliefs' as well as claims to factual knowledge. Instead it's been used to attack other positions, but not the truth that Lincoln and Denzin wish to advance. As before, in Neurath's day, there is a need to cut away mystification and clarified vision, Lincoln and Denzin appeal to new-age religiosity and say a new spirituality is required, 'a "sacred science" no less' [citing Lincoln and Denzin 1994, p 582 – 3]

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