Tejaswini Joshi
The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, United States
HCI research applies ethnographic methods to understand and represent practices that involve the use of interactive systems. A subdomain of this work is interpretivist ethnography, which positions the researcher’s perspectival view [37] as central to ethnographic research and its epistemic contribution. Given this we ask: How might ethnographic researchers in HCI surface the meaning-making role of their subjectivities in research? We reflect on our prior ethnographic fieldwork on small-scale sustainable farms in Indianapolis, Indiana to bring the ethnographic “I” into focus by articulating our reflections as “impressionist tales'' [64:101-124]. We ground this pursuit in sociologist Andrea Doucet’s concept of “gossamer walls” to surface researcher’s three reflexive relationships 1) with herself; 2) with participants; and 3) with her epistemic communities [34]. We build on and contribute to postmodern ethnography in HCI to clarify the epistemic virtues and methodological best practices of a more unapologetically subjective ethnographic practice in HCI.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642727
The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (https://chi2024.acm.org/)