Nationality American Name James Spradley | Died 1982 | |
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Occupation professor, ethnographer, anthropologist Notable works The Ethnographic Interview, Participant Observation Books Conformity and Conflict, The ethnographic interview, You Owe Yourself a Drunk: An, The cocktail waitress, Participant observation | ||
James Spradley- Clarity and Friendship.mp4
James P. Spradley (1933–1982) was a professor of Anthropology at Macalester College from 1969. Spradley wrote or edited 20 books on ethnography and qualitative research including Participant Observation and The Ethnographic Interview (1979, Wadsworth Thomson Learning). In The Ethnographic Interview, Spradley describes 12 steps for developing an ethnographic study using ethnosemantics. This book followed his 1972 textbook (with David W. McCurdy) The Cultural Experience: Ethnography in Complex Society. He was a major figure in the development of the "new ethnography" which saw every individual as a carrier of the culture rather than simply looking to the outputs of the great artists of the time.
Contents
He died of leukemia in 1982.
Reception and impact
Spradley's work was widely used as college texts for American Studies classes in the 1970s.
In You Owe Yourself a Drunk he conducted interviews and created a "typology of the different kinds" of homeless alcoholic men. It has been called a "classic" of "good systemic ethnography".
Spradley's book Deaf Like Me, written with his brother Tom, records the experience of Tom's daughter Lynn who was born deaf after her mother contracted the German measles. The book follows the family from the first fears that their child may be deformed, the relief of having a healthy baby girl, the anguish at realizing she was deaf and the years of treatment. Spradley provides a deep and meaningful insight into what its like to have a deaf child. At the time, many doctors encouraged a purely oral environment. Lynn's parents explain that their daughters "native language" was not English but sign language. Most of the book explains what led to this revelation.
Types of analysis
Spradley describes ethnography as different from deductive types of social research in that the five steps of ethnographic research—selecting a problem, collecting data, analyzing data, formulating hypotheses, and writing—all happen simultaneously (p. 93-94).
In The Ethnographic Interview, Spradley describes four types of ethnographic analysis that basically build on each other. The first type of analysis is domain analysis, which is “a search for the larger units of cultural knowledge” (p. 94). The other kinds of analysis are taxonomic analysis, componential analysis, and theme analysis.