Complementary reading to Luker

After reading Hine this week, I felt that her text complements the ideas that Luker presents in her book. Hine’s discussion on how ethnographies can be “adaptive methodological approaches” sort of relates to Luker’s idea on how social science research is a journey of discovery and not of prediction. Hine believes that we should not be imposing strict boundaries on our research designs, because this approach does not have the ability to take into account new discoveries or adapt to the changes as the study enfolds. She gives a personal example of how she built her research design or ethnography as she learned more about her field of study. She states that “neither tool nor job was wholly foreseeable from the outset” (Hine, 2009, p.18). She thinks that when one studies technology such as the Internet, it is not possible to outline the boundaries for your study in advance, because the “social phenomena” that you are studying is not “confined” to one site that you can parcel out (Hine, 2009, p. 18). This is similar to Luker’s discussion on how you do not know what your thesis or hypothesis is until the end of your study. Hine seems to complement this idea by saying that you do not know the boundaries of your study or the tools needed to do your research until you begin your study.