The difference that makes a difference...
A couple of days ago we headed off to the Amsterdamse Bos where we walked and talked about: The difference that makes a difference… As ethnographers we go into the field, observe what happens there, talk, listen. What we learn is not the same from one site or situation to the next. Different kinds of things happen and one ‘kind’ of thing may still take a different shape in a subsequent moment or another setting. One informant says that all X are P and the other tells they are Q instead. What is a problem here, seems a blessing a bit further along – and vice versa. How to deal with such differences? What kind of differences are relevant in and to your field? To you? To ‘the literature’? Which ones do you follow? Which ones do you let go? In which ways are these differences different? In the social sciences some differences get a lot of attention: geographical ones (between countries), socio-economic ones (between classes), functional ones (between professions, or fields,...