Ethnography
Ethnography (from the
Greek ethnos = nation and
graphein = writing) refers to the genre of writing that presents
qualitative description of human social phenomena, based on
fieldwork. Ethnography presents the results of a
holistic research method founded on the idea that a system's properties cannot necessarily be accurately understood independently of each other. The genre has both formal and historical connections to travel writing and colonial office reports. Several academic traditions, in particular the
constructivist and
relativist paradigms, claim ethnographic research as a valid research method.
Cultural anthropology and social anthropology were developed around ethnographic research and their canonical texts are mostly ethnographies: e.g.
Argonauts of the Western Pacific by
Bronislaw Malinowski,
The Nuer by
E. E. Evans-Pritchard,
Coming of Age in Samoa by
Margaret Mead, or
Naven by
Gregory Bateson. Cultural and social anthropologists today place such a high value on actually doing ethnographic research that
ethnologyâ€"the comparative synthesis of ethnographic informationâ€"is rarely the foundation for a career.
Ethnographic research is the direct, first hand observation of daily behavior where the researcher may even participate in the actual process as a participant observer. It is a research method based entirely on fieldwork. Ethnographic research seeks to observe phenomena as it occurs real time and gives the researcher the worldview of his observed subjects. The criticism against ethnographic research is that the observer's presence may in itself contribute to results that are inaccurate. This is because the observed subjects may act in a manner that's different from norm due to the presence of the observer. Since the observed behavior is not usual behavior, hence the derived results are false because it does not depict normal behavior.
Within cultural anthropology, there are several sub-genres of ethnography. Beginning in the late 1950s and early 1960s, anthropologists began writing "confessional" ethnographies that intentionally exposed the nature of ethnographic research. Famous examples include
Tristes Tropiques by
Claude LĂ©vi-Strauss,
The High Valley by Kenneth Read, and
The Savage and the Innocent by
David Maybury-Lewis, as well as the mildly fictionalized
Return to Laughter by Elenore Smith Bowen (
Laura Bohannan). Later "reflexive" ethnographies refined the technique to translate cultural differences by representing their effects on the ethnographer. Famous examples include
Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco by
Paul Rabinow,
The Headman and I by Jean-Paul Dumont, and
Tuhami by
Vincent Crapanzano. In the 1980s, the rhetoric of ethnography was subjected to intense scrutiny within the discipline, under the general influence of literary theory and
post-colonial/
post-structuralist thought. "Experimental" ethnographies that reveal the ferment of the discipline include
Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man by
Michael Taussig,
Debating Muslims by Michael F. J. Fischer and Mehdi Abedi,
A Space on the Side of the Road by
Kathleen Stewart, and
Advocacy after Bhopal by Kim Fortun.
Cultural anthropologists, such as
Clifford Geertz, study and interpret cultural diversity through ethnography based on field work. It provides an account of a particular culture, society, or community. The fieldwork usually involves spending a year or more in another society, living with the local people and learning about their ways of life. Ethnographers are participant observers. They take part in events they study because it helps with understanding local behavior and thought.
Sociology and
cultural studies also produce ethnography.
Urban sociology and the
Chicago School in particular are associated with ethnographic research, although some of the most well-known examples (including
Street Corner Society by
William Foote Whyte and
Black Metropolis by Clair Drake) were influenced by an anthropologist,
Lloyd Warner, who happened to be in the sociology department at Chicago.
Symbolic interactionism developed from the same tradition and yielded several excellent sociological ethnographies, including
Shared Fantasy by
Gary Alan Fine, which documents the early history of fantasy
role-playing games. But even though many sub-fields and theoretical perspectives within sociology use ethnographic methods, ethnography is not the
sine qua non of the discipline, as it is in cultural anthropology.
Education,
Ethnomusicology,
Performance Studies, and
Folklore are others fields which have made extensive use of ethnography. The American anthropologist
George Spindler (Stanford University) was a pioneer in applying ethnographic methodology to the classroom.
James Spradley is another well-known ethnographer, especially for his book,
The Ethnographic Interview, published in 1979.
Ethnographic methods have been used to study business settings. Groups of workers, managers and so on are different social categories participating in common social systems. Each group shows different characteristic attitudes, behavior patterns and values.
Increasingly, universities (such as the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) are using ethnographic methods as a technique to encourage undergraduate research in the humanities. For example, the
Ethnography of the University (EOTU) program sponsors undergraduate research on UIUC and archives it in web-accessible form for the UIUC community. EOTU also functions as a learning group for students, staff, and faculty interested in what it means to conduct research on universities as institutions.
Anthropologists like
Daniel Miller and
Mary Douglas have used ethnographic data to answer academic questions about consumers and consumption. Businesses, too, have found ethnographers helpful for understanding how people use products and services, as indicated in the increasing use of ethnographic methods to understand consumers and consumption, or for new product development (sometimes called 'design ethnography'). The recent Ethnographic Praxis in Industry (EPIC) conference, co-sponsored by Intel and Microsoft, is evidence of this. Ethnographers' systematic and holistic approach to real-life experience is valued by product developers, who use the method to understand unstated desires or cultural practices that surround products. Where focus groups fail to inform marketers about what people really do, ethnography links what people say to what they actually doâ€"avoiding the pitfalls that come from relying only on self-reported, focus-group data.
# Direct, first-hand observation of daily behavior. This can include participant observation.# Conversation with different levels of formality. This can involve small talk to long interviews.# The genealogical method. This is a set of procedures by which ethnographers discover and record connections of kinship, descent and marriage using diagrams and symbols.# Detailed work with key consultants about particular areas of community life.# In-depth interviewing.# Discovery of local beliefs and perceptions.# Problem-oriented research.# Longitudinal research. This is continuous long-term study of an area or site.# Team research.
Not all of these techniques are used by ethnographers, with interviews and participant observation being the most widely used.
*
Virtual Ethnography: a form of ethnography that involves conducting ethnographic studies on the Internet.
* Agar, Michael (1996)
The Professional Stranger: An Informal Introduction to Ethnography. Academic Press.
* Douglas, Mary (1996) The World of Goods: Toward and Anthropology of Consumption
. Routledge, London.
* Erickson, Ken C. and Donald D. Stull (1997) Doing Team Ethnography : Warnings and Advice
. Sage, Beverly Hills.
* Miller, Daniel (1987) Material Culture and Mass Consumption
. Blackwell, London.
* Kottak, Conrad Phillip (2005) Window on Humanity : A Concise Introduction to General Anthropology
, (pages 34-44). McGraw Hill, New York.
* Kottak, Conrad Phillip (2005) Window on Humanity : A Concise Introduction to General Anthropology'', (pages 2-3, 16-17, 34-44). McGraw Hill, New York.
*
Genzuk, Michael (2003) A Synthesis of Ethnographic Research*
Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History - Over 160,000 objects from Pacific, North American, African, Asian ethnographic collections with images and detailed description, linked to the original catalogue pages, field notebooks, and photographs are available online.
