Measuring The Tale

In his brief and brilliant 1988 book ‘Tales of the Field: On writing ethnography’, John Van Maanen outlines a scheme of three types of tales told by ethnographers (those who immersively study other cultures and develop written accounts of them). Van Maanen describes realist, confessional and impressionist tales of the field, and discusses the features of each form of tale, and the standards that are appropriate for judging the quality of the tales. While I have chosen to characterize my own tales in ‘School Stories‘ as impressionist tales of the field, and to discuss the standards appropriate to such tales, they also embody some features of realist and confessional tales. Van Maanen (1988, p. 126) advocates this kind of eclectic, strategic use of the different types of tales for the purposes of the ethnographic researcher, and to act in a dialectical tension that allows each form of tale to ‘question the answers’ provided by the other forms.