Revisiting Ethnography through Shotter

Reading and engaging with Shotter, Wittgenstein, even Foucault has caused me to revisit my thought on the utility and limitations of ethnography as a methodology and or a tool( method). I still think ethnography is pretty cool and reflects my curiosity about the world and the types of things my creative mind is generally interested in knowing. However, I find my self caught on questions of culture in ethnography and in its use as a variable in positivist (as in things should be measured empirically) studies.

If Shotter is correct, and "different people in different positions at different moments will live in what they formulate as different realities" (14), then I've been looking at research all wrong. Despite all my "critical thinking" I've made the assumption that I can observe and reason and even make general observations about trends within a groups of people and make true and right conclusions about what I observe. Perhaps we call this a stereotype for a reason. I'm coming to terms with the fact that perhaps I can never really understand everything in full. However, instead of wallowing, and wondering what is it exactly that I aspire to do here, with my perceptions of how the world can be a "better place" and how I intend to discover it, I've been intrigued by the question of whether there can be a collective consciousness.. I think even among social/cultural understandings, (which at times we assume to be at least in some form, homogeneous), they are not (according to Shotter) as congruent as we have been thought to believe. But what are the implications of this for our studies or knowledge of culture? (even our own)

We constantly say that culture matters. But there is something very disconcerting about a variable or factor so important yet we cannot measure it empirically it let alone "accurately" perceive it. And what of the many cultures we belong to? (our ethnic backgrounds, cohort, families, et al?) In terms of structure is there a formula for when some rules are followed or subjected to others? If so, would we be able to map it? Shotter also makes an interesting point about how we can be confused by the languages we employ. p197 "...talking amongst ourselves about the difficulties of human relations we face as problems that can be solved, can lead us into 'bewitching' ourselves with our own linguistic constructions. Right from the start we inevitably formulate such problems in terms of supposedly hidden entities, things which none of us have actually ever seen--we talk of thoughts, ideas, of mental processes, of states of mind, attitudes, [culture]...."

Considering ethnography, how can one fully imbed themselves within a group of people to fully understand its culture? Is that exercise even fully possible? Even within a "cultural group", not everyone ascribes to the dominant cultural understanding. Would it be better to say ethnography allows us to observe and experience nuances within a cultural group? When if at all does heterogeneity become so diverse that its difficult/impossible to draw generalizable conclusions? And how do we reconcile that with our own perceptions of how research should be done and what we can do with it?

Shotter also says that we deceive ourselves into thinking that this exercise is not a task for explanatory theory in dividing the correct or true view (61), but then what do we use it for? It seems that I might understand myself better, and how i interact in the social world, or even how others interact differently based on the vocabulary and and values we assume, (63) but how does that translate to research and knowledge that others can find valuable?

Is language a lens to a culture?