Ethnographic Temporality: Using time‐based data in product renewal

Ladner, Sam

doi:10.1111/j.1559-8918.2012.00005.x

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…It is with just such a lens that I (Ladner) explored applying this lens to reinvigorating business offerings. Aging products can be renewed and brought to market once again with a fresh sense of meaning for their customers if product designers attend to little dramas (Ladner 2012). But this is not typically how businesses anticipate change.…”

Section: Part Two: "Little Dramas Everywhere"mentioning

confidence: 99%

Little Dramas Everywhere: Using Ethnography to Anticipate the Future

English-Lueck

Ladner

Sherman

2021

Ethnographic Praxis

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In this article, the chairs of EPIC2021 reflect on the idea of Anticipation, and what ethnography reveals to us that may not be readily apparent through other means. Looking backward at the year of planning a conference that was to be focused on the future, the authors describe various revelations that unfolded and revealed themselves over the course of time. They raise questions of method, of epistemological position, and ethical responsibility. The authors conclude that anticipation is very much an ethnographic activity, one in which we can ask difficult questions about power and practice.

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Section: Part Two: "Little Dramas Everywhere"mentioning

confidence: 99%

Little Dramas Everywhere: Using Ethnography to Anticipate the Future

English-Lueck

Ladner

Sherman

2021

Ethnographic Praxis

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“…This is a limiting factor for ethnographic research due to the labour and costs involved in observation and shadowing activities. However, big data collection processes can be improved through ethnographic research to provide a better understanding of trends in the data (Strang 1996;Ladner 2012), including giving a reference baseline for detecting trends, informing the data collection processes (Wilson et al 2015) and providing new or improved explanatory variables for analysis. Ethnographic approaches can develop thick data, which in turn can provide a contextually embedded understanding of the systems for ABMs.…”

Section: Bringing the Approaches Togethermentioning

confidence: 99%

Advancing energy policy. Lessons on the integration of social sciences and humanities

Ptashnyk¹

2019

Journal of Contemporary European Studies

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use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the book's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.

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“…As others have pointed out (boyd and Crawford 2012;Seaver 2015;Wang 2016), ethnographic and qualitative work captures different information than that captured by quantitative data sets. Ethnography and qualitative work is particularly advantageous for dealing with the connection between meaning and behavior (Reed 2012), for unearthing meta-feelings and cultural schema (Pugh 2013), and for illuminating subjective experiences (Ladner 2012). These are aspects of the human experience that are difficult to capture and surface in quantitative data sets.…”

Section: Applications Of and Arguments For Ethnographic Predictionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reading the Tea Leaves: Ethnographic Prediction as Evidence

Maiers

2018

Ethnographic Praxis

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Those who work in research know that we live in a world that is strongly influenced by what Tricia Wang has called the quantification bias. More so than other forms of information, numbers have incredible formative power. In our culture, numbers are seen as trustworthy representations of reality that are strongly associated with objectivity and untainted by human bias and shortcomings. Recently, data science, big data, algorithms, and machine learning have fueled a new wave of the quantification bias. One of the central fascinations of this wave has been the promise that humans now have the power of prediction at their fingertips. In this paper, I reflect on what it means to make predictions and explore the differences in how predictions are accomplished via quantitative modeling and ethnographic observation. While this is not the first time that ethnographic work has been put in conversation and in contrast with quantified practices, most theorists have framed the role of ethnography as providing context to that quantified work. Here, I argue that ethnographers produce predictions in their own right. I begin by discussing what it means to predict something, focusing on its function. This is followed by a discussion of the ways in which predictions are constructed through both machine learning and ethnographic work. In the course of this discussion I show the commonalities that exist between ethnographic work and machine learning, and I outline methodologies that claim that ethnographic work can make generalizable and accurate statements about the world, including predictive claims. I also point to some of the challenges in using machine learning as a means of producing predictions. This discussion is not meant to discredit these practices, but to demystify the process as a means of loosening quantification's authority, contextualizing its best applications, and putting the two approaches to knowledge production on even footing. Finally, I discuss circumstances in which qualitatively produced predictions may be most valuable, such as when dealing with emerging phenomena and unstable contexts.

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Ethnographic Temporality: Using time‐based data in product renewal

Cited by 7 publications

References 13 publications

Little Dramas Everywhere: Using Ethnography to Anticipate the Future

Little Dramas Everywhere: Using Ethnography to Anticipate the Future

Advancing energy policy. Lessons on the integration of social sciences and humanities

Reading the Tea Leaves: Ethnographic Prediction as Evidence

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