Visualization of cultural patterns to "see" the consequences

I recently saw a twitter comment from der-mo that took mi to a post at his blog, and it made me think about ethnography as a box tool that goes beyond "qualititive" research.

Ethnography is sometimes tagged as "qualitative research". For some reason, I've never felt comfortable with calling myself a qualitative researcher. Putting Ethnographic research under the Qualitative as an inclusive tital, disconnects ethnography from statistical methods, or any mathematical tools. There's a false opposition between qualitative and quantitative, that is clearly visible through ethnographic research.

Ethnography is an approach focused in understanding what's going on in a setting, and it's predominantly inductive. Statistics are also inductive and really can help to achieve a better understanding of a setting. Ethnpgrahers don't neglect or evade numbers. On the contrary, we need statistical accounts of a reality to keep making more relevant connections and interpretations of our fieldwork.


Chris Jordan’s TED talk is great. In his latest project, Running the numbers, he writes: