Observation/Ethnography – what about personal biases?

This week’s recommended reading about the subculture of skateboarding made me think about situations where the researcher potentially goes in with a predetermined mindset, or perhaps has expectations about the potential outcome of observation.

Although Becky Beal states upfront that she combined a ‘feminist’ and ‘critical’ perspective about the subculture of skating, I felt that the feminist aspect was not analyzed very critically! It almost felt as if she had set out to discover an ‘alternative form of masculinity’ and therefore may have overlooked some of the underlying emotions or perspectives expressed by the female skaters. She describes her method of selecting participants to observe and interview – her method was fairly random in terms of recruiting skaters she met on the streets, and snowballing from her initial point of contact. The group of people she eventually selected over the two year duration of her research – although geographically co-located in the same city – had various numbers of years of experience and diverse backgrounds. The quotes discussed in the article prove diverse points of view for the male as well as female skaters – but I wasn’t convinced that the author had immersed herself enough within the subculture she analyzed in order to make claims about their behaviour (i.e. I didn’t feel she provided sufficient evidence of her own role). Or if I were to view her role as a ‘non-member’ as described by Stebbins – then did she really have enough insight into the emotions and perspectives of the skaters to make her claim about their alternative form of masculinity? Stebbins described his perspective about ‘nonmembers’ fitting in through the process of learning and participating to demonstrate competence. I wonder though if it is truly possible for an ‘outsider’ to make a conscious effort to fit in enough to demonstrate competence for the purposes of making claims about the group or community being studied without subconsciously (or maybe even consciously) developing biases about the potential outcome. And I wonder how these biases are addressed under ideal circumstances.