Practicing the Four Seasons of Ethnography Methodology while Searching for Identity in Mexico

Abstract

This narrative is an account of my field experiences and challenges practicing González’s (2000) Four Seasons of Ethnography methodology in Mexico City. I describe the complexities and tensions inherent in managing two scientific paradigms: Western scientific logic vs. a more organic ontology. The experiential knowledge produced in this text is useful to ethnographers who face questions of identity and ethics in the field. To evoke a sense of experience, I represent the ethnography for the reader in the way it unfolded for me—sometimes painful, other times insightful, oftentimes both. This dual text exposes my struggles as emergent ethnographer grappling with issues of voice, identity, and representation while describing scenes from life in Mexico drawn from observations and narrative interviews. At the forefront of this text are the methodological choices and ontological experiences of the Four Seasons of Ethnography methodology, while observations and conversations in Mexico City form the backdrop.