Chapter 3: Critical Ethnography: Method and Methodology: "For me this research project was a political action. I saw it as part of my role to construct the data rather than discover 'hidden truths out there'. Throughout the project I tried to make my political option clear to the participants. It was political because the YCW assumes that young workers are able to reflect on their own practices and develop actions to free themselves from oppressive structures and situations.
The nature of my involvement with this group and the nature of the YCW suggested to me that I adopt a participant observer stance. In adopting this stance, I recognised that I could not be objective or politically neutral in my observations and research. In particular, as a result of my role as a collaborator I was involved in challenging the practices and processes of the group. In stating this 'openly ideological' position (Lather, 1986a), I knew that I would need to meet the challenges presented by Gitlin in that it is not enough to state one's bias (Gitlin et al, 1989). A simple statement would not change the dominating social relations that occurred between myself and the research participants. My emancipatory intentions could only be achieved through the use of emancipatory tools. A key tool to emancipatory research is the fostering of a dialogical community (Reid 1985, Hedin 1986); a community where the researcher and the researched are involved 'in the planning, execution and dissemination of [the] social research' (Rowan, 1981:97 cited in Lather, 1986b:73)."