Listening with indifference

In the following, we suggest that the product of ethnographies undertaken for commercial and industrial purposes is under threat of losing its integrity. The sorts of results furnished through 'applied ethnography' and those resulting from methods like focus groups, interviews, questionnaires, etc. appear largely of the same kind; they describe and codify the members of a setting and their behaviours, and differ, if at all, in terms of depth and detail. In short, it is not easy to distinguish between the product of applied ethnography and that produced from the many other methods available. This apparent dissolution begs the question 'what's left' for applied ethnography and, indeed, for its practitioners? We report on our efforts to take this question seriously and reflect on how 'the ethnomethodological policy of indifference' has offered a useful starting point. Having situated this policy in a disciplinary context, we offer brief examples of how its insistence on a distinct analytic sensibility has directed us to see and hear, as best we can, from the 'local's viewpoint'. It is the strong commitment to this, then, that we conclude may offer applied ethnography one opportunity to distinguish itself.