Page "Participant observation" Paragraph 14

A variant of participant observation is observing participation, described by Marek M. Kaminski, who explored prison subculture as a political prisoner in communist Poland in 1985.

" Observing " or " observant " participation has also been used to describe fieldwork in sexual minority subcultures by anthropologists and sociologists who are themselves lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender ; the different phrasing is meant to highlight the way in which their partial or full membership in the community / subculture that they are researching both allows a different sort of access to the community and also shapes their perceptions in ways different from a full outsider.

This is similar to considerations by anthropologists such as Lila Abu-Lughod on " halfie anthropology ", or fieldwork by bicultural anthropologists on a culture to which they partially belong.

The sociological methods known as grounded theory ( Glaser and Strauss ) overlap significantly with the more formalized versions of participant observation.