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Rubenstein's Microculture

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McCurdy, Spradley ad Shandy (2005) state that when performing ethnographies, we should choose accessible microculture. Since it was difficult for Rubenstein to find informants who were available, I believe he should have changed his microculture to study. It would be extremely difficult to study relationships that are forged at the station when you only are interviewing one person. Had his original three, willing informants been available, he would have been able to perform a much better study.
It would have also been beneficial to be able to use informants of various ranks such as the Chief, the Captain, the Lieutenant, the Recruit or Candidate, as well as the general members of the team. Being able to observe how they interact with those …show more content…

More often these days, you hear of females participating in roles that previously were male oriented. Do you believe that life would be different in the fire station if there was a female on the squad or engine companies? Do you think that it would be more difficult to build a relationship with a female firefighter than with a male firefighter (or vice versa if interviewing a female firefighter)? Why?
3. There have been several popular movies and television shows that portray the lives of firefighters. Some of these such as Backdraft (Howard and Lewis, 1991), Ladder 49 (Russell and Silver, 2004) and Chicago Fire (Wolf, 2012) present life as a career firefighter. However, in the United States, close to seventy percent are volunteer firefighters (National Fire Protection Association, 2014, p. iii). What differences do you see between career firefighters and volunteer firefighters?
Berg and Lune (2012) suggest using the Spiraling Research Approach. Had Rubenstein used this approach, he would have included some literature review as part of his study and the naïve reality that I believe existed within his study may have been eliminated or at least minimized due to the background information he may have discovered prior to the data collection portion of the study. As it stands, we do not know the questions that Rubenstein asked John, his informant. Rubenstein shares seven excerpts of his interviews with us, but we do not know in what context these remarks were made. That is,

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