Consider the metaphor of "landscape," such as the Palouse landscape

 

1. "story" is analogous to a specific landscape, its particular and unique and defining characteristics and boundaries - for example, the Palouse.

 With its array of "symbols," analogous to the visual, natural surface features and terrain of that landscape, for example, the rich soils of its rolling hills

 

2. "values," "teachings" and "principles" - collectively called, the "bones" - are analogous to the underlying climatic and geological processes and events that formed the natural features and gave the landscape its character, such as wind erosion and the Missoula Flood of some 15,000 BP

 

3. "engaged research methods" is analogous to traveling the Palouse landscape, entailing your full engagement and participation - being very attentive and observant in your interviewing and participant observations, as you apply the tools of "story," and "values/teachings" to your travels,

 

all in order to make an interpretation of the meaning of that landscape - the end goal of doing ethnographic qualitative research.

 

 

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