Ethnografie und Aufmerksamkeit Zur ph nomenologischen Perspektivierung der Feldforschung

This article discusses how phenomenological procedures can be used to instruct ethnographic research. Since doing ethnography in the field builds on sensory perception, a closer inspection of relevant processes of perception is necessary. Insights into the field that is studied are dependent on the manner in which it is perceived. As Waldenfels' "phenomenology of attention'' displays, the distribution of attention is of crucial importance in this context. To get to grips with the uses of phenomenology in the field, three areas of tension are explored: proximity – distance, mixture – analysis and presence – recording. These terminological pairs relate to tensions that structure experience and the play of perceptions in the field. Based on a reflection of these relations, the article offers a methodology that is characterized by mobility, openness and a continuous highlighting of how the researcher's corporal embeddedness into the field affects the distribution of attention.