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Shadowing Virtual Work Practices: Describing Subjects and Objects as Action Nets
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Author(s): Craig Lee Engstrom (Elmhurst College, USA)
Copyright: 2012
Pages: 21
Source title:
Virtual Work and Human Interaction Research
Source Author(s)/Editor(s): Shawn Long (University of North Carolina Charlotte, USA)
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-0963-1.ch002
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Abstract
Without modification, traditional ethnological approaches cannot fully attend to the translocation of practices into and out of virtual spaces. The ethnographer can observe the dislocation of a particular work practice from a specific place when he or she observes a research subject “log on,” but accounting for the translocation of others’ practices into the shared virtual space, which is necessary to conduct hermeneutical (or constitutive) research in virtual environments, remains an elusive methodological practice. In this chapter, interpretive shadowing, as it has recently been described (e.g., Czarniawska, 2007), is offered as one way to address some of the limitations of virtual ethnography. By describing (virtual) action nets vis-à-vis the “hybrid character of actions,” researchers are able to follow subjects and objects as they move through various spaces/places and describe how these actants constitute fields of practices. Drawing upon examples from two years of shadowing research within the field of private investigations, this chapter describes how shadowers can observe both immediate and virtual practices. Specifically, descriptions of how to account for institutional practices that transcend space, place, and time are provided. Though interpretive research is theoretically sound, examples of specific methodological techniques are provided to address some of the technical limitations of the method when using it to study virtual practices.
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