Page 177 - Decoding Culture

170 D E C O D I N G C U L TURE
other similarly disposed research. First, even today we lack the the­
oretical resources to implement Morley's project of relating active
meaning production to the structuring restrictions imposed by cul­
ture, although growing interest in Bourdieu's (1977, 1986) work in
the 1990s may go some way toward remedying that lack. Secondly,
as we know from other areas of sociology, there is a methodologi­
cal risk with this kind of qualitative research that the provision of
'rich description' (Geertz, 1973) comes to substitute for analysis;
presentation of the 'ethnographic' material becomes an end in
itself. Neither of these difficulties is insuperable, nor do they con­
stitute reasons for not pursuing the project that Morley proposes.
But they do suggest the need for more in the way of theoretical and
methodological reflection.
Let us begin that process with an apparently straightforward
methodological question: in what senses is Morley's and other sim­
ilar audience research appropriately described as 'ethnography'? If
one were to adopt a strict definition of the kind that used to be
accepted in, say, social and cultural anthropology, then the work of
Morley or Ang (1985) or Buckingham (1987) or Gray (1992) or
Radway (1987), whatever its many virtues, would hardly count as
ethnographic. The classical ethnographic project required exten­
sive participant observation fieldwork with a view to the
researcher's total immersion in the social and cultural world of the
subjects. In consequence of this immersion, sometimes over a
period of years, the ethnographer would then generate a thorough­
going description of the system. The resulting account was
naturalistic and holistic: the former in its assumption that it was
possible to 'get inside' the culture and understand it from its par­
ticipants' point of view; the latter in the ambition to offer an account
of it as a whole system of social interaction. Some of that ambition
does survive in modern audience research. Most of these
researchers would wish to see the researched world from their

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