Recognizing Differences with Ethnographical Methods

My presentation concentrates on differences related to gender, age and place in the context of information technology. These differentiations create also margins. Margins are mobile positions, which are defined in the relationship towards culturally and socially strong centres. Between centres and margins there are negotiations about positions in which, at the end, are questions of power. In my research margins are not negatively defined. Margins are rather seen as unusualities – differences.

My research applies the qualitative methodology of social sciences, especially ethnography. By using ethnographical methods it is possible to introduce, explain and analyse people’s experiences and the cultures that surround these experiences. Ethnography recognizes and describes the way in which experiences are connected with the wider societal and cultural context. Because ethnography is sensitive to people’s experiences it is possible to recognize and identify differences.

By the end of the 1990’s in North Karelia there were worries about middle-aged women to drop out from the development of information technology and information society. By that time there were computer groups and peer training for women in order to include these women to IT society. In this presentation my empirical material consists of ethnographical long-term interviews of five women, who are middle-aged and living in the rural area of North Karelia. I follow the negotiations of these women when they are leaving the margins and join the centres of IT society.