John

Name: John Boy
Affiliation: Assistant professor (with tenure) at Leiden University

Procedural starting point

The way I described my methods or process in my last funding application was: This is from the most recent successful application: "The main #mode_of_inquiry will be ethnographic. #ethnography refers to the systematic study of #cultural phenomena from the point of view of those who make and live the cultures being studied. It involves application of a variety of #qualitative #techniques ---among them #interviews and #observation ---usually over the course of longer-term research. Aside from drawing on the #methodological #toolkit of anthropology and sociology, we can build on foundational studies that scholars in these fields have done on hackers and other communities of technologists [references omitted]."

What I actually did was / what I usually do is: That description was #productively_vague and gave me space to #improvise. I ended up not doing much (formal) interviewing. Instead I did more observant participation and " #participant_comprehension" (as Harry Collins calls the process of trying to understand a group and what it does instead of observing it).