Meet Mikael Holmqvist, an invited academic guest blogger.
Organizing Rocks offers a beautiful and interesting website, full of notes and pictures. You get glimpses from Johan and Tommy’s visits and reflections that are really fascinating. In my view, I’d like to see more about the research project as such; its aims goals and potentials, that would clearly provide a helpful context for the observations, notes, videos etc. That could, of course rather easily be fixed. However, the most interesting aspect of this project so far is the methods used and the questions they advance; is this a study in ethnography aiming to further a discussion on, e.g., labour and capital in today’s society? Or is it a study of ethnography, where Johan and Tommy are testing out new ways of carrying out sociological research? From what I see, I believe it’s a study of the latter. If so, what are the potentials and problems of “Visual methods” and why is it a relevant strategy? Why can’t you just “wait” and do your stuff literally speaking “in the mine”, without resorting to this “transparency” through social media? If this is a study of ethnography, I think this approach is great, but needs to be better explained in reference to the existing conversation on ethnographic methods. On the other hand, if this is a study in ethnography of something else, I would be less concerned with the web-page and more concerned about doing the study, “in the mine”.
Mikael Holmqvist is PhD, professor, at Stockholm Business School and has recently (2015) published an ethnographic work on an Executive Community (Djursholm).