Writing Tales of the Future: Five “Balancing Acts” for Globographers

Hans Erik Næss

doi:10.18778/1733-8077.17.1.9

Authors

Hans Erik Næss Kristiania University College, Norway https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5757-1988

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.17.1.9

Keywords:

Ethnographic Imagination, Translocal Fieldwork, Creative Writing, Qualitative Research, Communication Strategy

Abstract

Since the early 1990s much has been written about how ethnographers should do fieldwork of the local in a globalizing world. The challenge of communicating their analyses authentically in a world of information overload is much less debated. To rectify this situation, I argue in this paper that five balancing acts are crucial to those who do ethnographies of the global, or “globographers,” in their writing. Emerging from a review of the history of fieldwork and writing, these balancing acts constitute a template of how a communicative consciousness may assist qualitative researchers in achieving ethnographic integrity.

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Author Biography

Hans Erik Næss, Kristiania University College, Norway

Hans Erik Næss is an Associate Professor of sport management, Department of Leadership and Organization, Kristiania University College, Oslo, Norway. He holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Oslo and is the author of several peer-reviewed articles and books on sport governance, sport culture, qualitative research, and the relations between business, politics, and organization of sport, including A Sociology of World Rally Championship. History, Identity, Memories, and Place (2014) and A History of Organizational Change: The case of Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) 1945-2020 (2020), both with Palgrave Macmillan.

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