Purpose

In multi-sited ethnography, “following” (of, e.g. persons, objects and events) is used as a device to structure fieldwork. The purpose of this paper is to problematize and substantiate the notion of following, illustrating that, when adopting a “following” strategy, the endless number of potential trails one could follow may lead a fieldworker to be both everywhere and nowhere at once.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper is based on the experiences and insights derived from a multi-sited ethnography of the strategic collaborations that emerged after the Dutch healthcare reform of 2015. Fieldwork was conducted between 2015 and 2017, and consisted of participant observations, shadowing and interviews.

Findings

An approach well suited to studying the contemporary problems that cut across organizational boundaries, multi-sited ethnography is both valuable and more challenging due to: (1) the continuous need to negotiate access, which stimulates the researcher to reflect on his or her positionality in the field; (2) the inevitable pressure it puts on a researcher to “unfollow” their field(s) and to regain critical distance and (3) its perplexing ability to highlight the lack of a whole, unveiling instead a plethora of perspectives across sites which may or may not align.

Research limitations/implications

This paper ends with three key considerations for future multi-sited research endeavours.

Originality/value

Although the metaphor of following can help to structure fieldwork, the practice of following in multi-sited ethnography is not as straightforward as it appears: there are countless potential “paths” to follow, and researchers themselves must decide which trails to choose and when to step back and “unfollow” their field(s).

中文翻译：

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遍地无处：追随多地点民族志的挑战

目的

在多地点民族志中，“跟随”（例如，人物，物体和事件）被用作构造野外工作的一种手段。本文的目的是对遵循的概念进行质疑和证实，说明采用“跟随”策略时，可能遵循的无数潜在线索可能会导致现场工作人员无处不在。

设计/方法/方法

本文基于从2015年荷兰医疗改革之后出现的战略合作的多地点民族志中获得的经验和见解。实地调查在2015年至2017年之间进行，包括参与者的观察，阴影和访谈。

发现

多地点的人种志研究方法非常适合研究跨越组织边界的当代问题，这既有价值又更具挑战性，原因是：（1）持续需要协商访问权，这激发了研究者反思他或她在研究中的位置。场; （2）研究人员施加不可避免的压力，要求他们“取消关注”他们的领域并重新获得临界距离；（3）令人困惑的能力来强调缺乏整体，反而揭示了跨地点的过多观点或可能无法对齐。

研究局限/意义

本文最后提出了未来多地点研究工作的三个主要考虑因素。

创意/价值

尽管跟随的隐喻可以帮助构建田野调查，但是在多地点民族志中的跟随实践却并不像看起来那样简单：存在无数的潜在“路径”，研究人员自己必须决定选择哪些路径以及何时选择向后退并“取消关注”他们的字段。