When I got my to do list it felt like a huge mountain to climb and I was already exhausted. There were only ten of them but some were huge and with some I was not sure how much underneath would need changing once I started. My supervisors kept telling me that the corrections were not that huge. I did not believe him.
Well I am prepared at the moment to accept a bit of humble pie. Since Christmas I have done a second edit on the the two chapters with major corrections that I saw him about before Christmas and I have also sent him two other chapters. One chapter does not need any changes although I may just do some for the heck of it well actually I have some nice quotes from interviews that might just go in.
The work since Christmas has persuaded me that I did base my findings on my observations. I have put in quotes all through two chapters and they provide strong evidence for what I have concluded on many points. They also do something very interesting as I have not worked them into the text (many are too long for that and others are tangential). The quotes interact both with the text I have written and with each other. The result is far closer to the thesis my supervisor originally wanted with multiple voices working through the text. I have enjoyed creating questions and patterns that placing the quotes next to the text creates. I know many ethnographers suggest this as a method but when I have read texts set out like this the interaction seems minimal. The texts remain largely separate and linear. With my thesis this has not happened. For instance I assert one thing in the text and there are three snippets around it. One is a senior member saying what I have said about another, the next is a junior member who addresses the senior member and final one is a story told by the person the other two are talking about. It shows without doubt the inter-textual nature of the interviews. I could not read one separate from the others.
However I am also very glad that I have used narrative fact-ion within the thesis. These set the context for the happenings within the thesis and for the exploration. They also bring to prominence the anthropological element of the thesis rather than the interviews.
However I suspect my examiners were wanting a linear thesis and what they have now got is a tightly woven one instead. I am however enjoying creating the weave although I expect I will not find rewriting the chapter on Belonging nearly as much fun though I know where I am going with that.
