Ethnography as a Non-linear Dynamic System

Introduction
Mike Agar is Emeritus Professor at the University of Maryland and currently works mainly independently as Ethnoworks, in New Mexico. Ethnoworks focuses on research, writing and
consultation in ethnography, language, complexity theory, and organisational analysis from both theoretical and practical standpoints. A proponent of a continuum between academic and professional work and between theory and practice, Mike Agar advocates that the study of dynamic dimensions and series of relationships has started liberating social research since the 1980s and 1990s when a new research framework grew on the basis of ‘complexity’. The growth was driven by a problem shared by researchers of all kinds and enabled by advances in computer technology,
since simulation is the only way to model and explore such systems. That enabled Agar, who had been arguing for a while that ethnography is a kind of logic rather than a unit of study, to develop a general framework for ethnographic research as a complex adaptive system (CAS).
He argues that “It’s less about a study of qualitative versus quantitative and more a study about ‘fitness’ which presents an interesting methodological twist away from methodological recipes and towards ‘the right way to do ethnography’ through a non-linear dynamic lens.”

Description and Explanation of the Method
Mike Agar has developed a general framework to do ethnography based on the premise there is epistemological compatibility between complexity theory and ethnography. He used the model in both short-term applied and long-term research applications. The framework or model for organisational development with social services involves the following steps:

• Clarify indicator-based problem – The initial problem is always defined in quantitative terms e.g. patient waiting time, performance etc. In other words, the definition of the problem is based on one or more system-level quantitative indicators that need to be clarified before locating the ‘tasks’ these indicators are meant to measure.
• Locate actual tasks that those indicators are meant to measure – task in this case refers to what the indicator measures – real moments that involve real people doing real things.
• Do fieldwork in those tasks using iterative recursive abductive (IRA) logic and context/meaning (C/M) questions. Iterative recursive abductive logic calls for taking surprises seriously and creating new concepts to account for them rather than consider them deviant or ‘errors’, and of returning and repeating the process as surprises never stop.
Context/meaning questions refer to being attentive to the fact that there are multiple perspectives and interpretations in play in any human social research and it is, thus, important to take into account the ways in which members of various groups ‘translate’ meanings and situations.
• Analyse the data for patterns in an ethnographic way: a systematic process of identifying patterns that replicate and whose dynamics explain the movement of the indicator. These are the leverage points: leverage points refer to the point at which actions and changes can lead to improvements.
• Do more fieldwork looking at task variation – where leverage points have already been discovered and used, or are discussed or speculated about, on the part of those who perform it. These are positive deviant cases: positive deviance refers to certain individuals’ practices which enable them to find better solutions to community problems. Do more fieldwork with the positive deviant cases to come up with suggestions for how to use leverage points to solve the problem.
• Loop back to the top of this list, probably with better indicators, and try the new strategy out.
But encourage experimentation, variations and modifications on the part of those involved in the task. This approach is related to transformative participatory action research on the premises of appreciative inquiry, as well as Edgar Schein’s concept of « clinical ethnography. »