The sound of violets: the ethnographic potency of poetry?

Phipps, A. and Saunders, L. (2009) The sound of violets: the ethnographic potency of poetry? Ethnography and Education, 4(3), pp. 357-387. (doi: 10.1080/17457820903170168)

Abstract

This paper takes the form of a dialogue between the two authors, and is in two halves, the first half discursive and propositional, and the second half exemplifying the rhetorical, epistemological and metaphysical affordances of poetry in critically scrutinising the rhetoric, epistemology and metaphysics of educational management discourse. Phipps and Saunders explore, through ideas and poems, how poetry can interrupt and/or illuminate dominant values in education and in educational research methods, such as: • alternatives to the military metaphors – targets, strategies and the like – that dominate the soundscape of education; • the kinds and qualities of the cognitive and feeling spaces that might be opened up by the shifting of methodological boundaries; • the considerable work done in ethnography on the use of the poetic: anthropologists have long used poetry as a medium for expressing their sense of empathic connection to their field and their subjects, particularly in considering the creativity and meaning-making that characterise all human societies in different ways; • the particular rhetorical affordances of poetry, as a discipline, as a practice, as an art, as patterned breath; its capacity to shift phonemic, and therewith methodological, authority; its offering of redress to linear and reductive attempts at scripting social life, as always already given and without alternative.

• Item Type: Articles
• Keywords: Poetry, ethnography, educational research, education policy, violets
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Phipps, Professor Alison
• Authors: Phipps, A., and Saunders, L.
• Subjects: L Education > LB Theory and practice of education; P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General)
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Education; College of Social Sciences > School of Education > Culture, Literacies, Inclusion & Pedagogy
• Journal Name: Ethnography and Education
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• ISSN: 1745-7823
• ISSN (Online): 1745-7831
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2009 Taylor and Francis
• First Published: First published in Ethnography and Education 4(3):357-387
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher.