Interpretive sufficiency: where evidence in journalism and ethnography meet

Abstract

ABSTRACT In Interrogating Ethnography, Steven Lubet urges ethnographers to adopt norms of journalism to improve their standards of accuracy and ethics. I examine the purpose and separate evolutions of ethnography and journalism to understand why they have standards of evidence that appear contradictory. The reasons are both epistemological and ethical. The controversies over facts and ethics in Alice Goffman’s book On the Run illustrate this divide. Yet ethnography and journalism both underwent an interpretive turn in the past half-century, each borrowing from the other. In both journalism and ethnography, interpretive approaches embrace the understanding that humans interpret reality and that power relations affect whose knowledge prevails as truth. Professional codes of ethics are negotiated sets of norms that need continual discussion to meet the demands of interpretive approaches. Lubet’s analysis reinforces an outdated mythology that “facts” can be established with clear sets of rules untouched by power and ideologies, but ethnography and long-form journalism point to interpretive sufficiency as a standard more consistent with the realities of complex communities.