Seeking, Creating, or Avoiding Irritation: Reflections on Research Processes in Ethnographic Projects

Abstract

For research to produce novel results, the familiar must be disrupted. This raises the question of how researchers navigate these disruptions in the research process and what significance they hold within the generation of knowledge. The premise of our contribution is that while irritations are a continual occurrence in empirical social research, their significance in contributing to knowledge production remains inadequately explored. Consequently, we delve into the different ways of dealing with irritations, using ethnographic research strategies as a case in point, exploring how they can be sought, generated, or even avoided, in order to explore the potential of a reflexive approach in yielding scientific insights. For this purpose, we draw upon ethnographic studies in the field of educational science as our empirical material, which we approach through the mode of reflexive secondary analysis. The goal of this article is to systematically present instances of irritation within qualitative-interpretive research processes and to discuss their significance, potentials, and limitations.