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Book Review: Learning to Labour

More than any other research approach, ethnography stands or falls by the quality of the researcher. Survey and experimental work is protected by tried and tested formulae, and the mechanics of the research are insured by the method. If, at times, this promotes the exploration of peripheries in global terms, it at least guarantees a product. Ethnography plays for high stakes, seeking to get to the very heart of a sub-culture, both to view it from the inside, and often to assess it from without. Not surprisingly the ethnographic annals are strewn with unimpressive attempts which only got half way, appear to have explored trivia, or which devolved, by force of circumstance, into another, different, kind of approach. Occasionally, however, our faith in ethnography, with its power to invest the human properties of the situation, is fully restored by an outstanding study. One thinks of, in America, the work of W. F. Whyte, Jacob Yablonsky and, more recently, Weider and Zimmerman; and in this country, James Patrick and Howard Parker. What distinguishes these studies is the quality of the rapport established with the groups concerned, with its prominent characteristics of understanding and easy access, trust, loyalty and affection, and the ability to be 'one of the boys' while avoiding the dangers of romantic over-involvement. This enables a happy conjunction of 'real life' data, mined at levels few can reach, and rigorous academic scrutiny. For these reasons, ethnography at its best often promises, as Bruyn says, to yield clues to the meanings which may lie at the root of man's existence in society.