Why is participant-observation often described as paradoxical or as a contradiction in terms?

Question

Answer

Because it requires you bridge the gap between texts and actions by paying attention to what people say they do and what they actually do.

Answer

Because it requires you to simultaneously experience the phenomenon you are studying as an insider and outsider.

Answer

Because it requires you to defamiliarise cultural forms you know and familiarise ones you don't

Answer

Because it requires you to simultaneously be neither detached nor immersed in the situation you're studying

Crowdly