The importance of relations and rationality in ethnography

I claim that it is hard to understand the cooperation and also the distance that there is between the ethnographic field and the researcher when we are involved in ethnographic data collection. From the classical scholarly point of view, in an observation situation we can either be participatory observers and, therefore, co-actors, or else distanced observers. It is hard for many of us as researchers to become participatory observers when the field we observe is a profession other than our own. But if we decide “just to observe”, the risk is that we do not totally understand the interactions taking place. I see nexus analysis as a methodology that can solve this dilemma. With nexus analysis, the researcher uses a fair amount of time to understand the people, their routines, work conditions, etc. in the field in question. Also, it is equally relevant for the researcher to get to know the concrete locations and places with their specific work practices. This is why the first and important step in nexus analysis is to “engage” in the practices that constitute the ethnographic field under analysis. This means in practice that the researcher will familiarize oneself with the field without becoming part of it like one does as a participatory observer.
In the field I have studied (nursing students’ clinical training period) nexus analysis has meant that I as a researcher have come close to my field – and also all the actors, frames and discourses that influence and are part of the field. Because of this, the distance between the ethnographic field and I as a researcher has narrowed down. I am still an observer, but need a “total picture” in order to understand my field and my data. The basic idea in nexus analysis is – like in Conversation Analysis – an interactionist participant perspective. I would claim that such an emic participant perspective becomes more valid to maintain in a humanistic frame when a methodology such as nexus analysis is used. I do not only concentrate on my ethnographic field in its immediacy, but also on everything that helps constitute it “underneath”. My interpretations as a researcher with an emic perspective are, therefore, also supported by totally different kinds of data and angles.