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Ethnography is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual . It explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining the behavior of the participants in a given social situation and understanding the group members' own interpretation of such behavior.
Ethnography is a form of inquiry that relies heavily on participant observation. In this method, the researcher participates in the setting or with the people being studied, often in a marginal role, to document detailed patterns of social interaction and the perspectives of participants within their local contexts. It had its origin in social and cultural anthropology in the early twentieth century, but has, since then, spread to other social science disciplines, notably sociology.
Ethnographers mainly use qualitative methods, though they may also include quantitative data. The typical ethnography is a holistic study and so includes a brief history, and an analysis of the terrain, the climate, and the habitat. A wide range of groups and organisations have been studied by this method, including traditional communities, youth , religious , and organisations of various kinds. While, traditionally, ethnography has relied on the physical presence of the researcher in a setting, there is research using the label that has relied on interviews or documents, sometimes to investigate events in the past such as the NASA Challenger disaster. There is also ethnography done in "virtual" or online environments, sometimes labelled netnography or cyber-ethnography.
Tacitus has ethnographies in the Agricola, Histories, and Germania. Tacitus' Germania "stands as the sole surviving full-scale monograph by a classical author on an alien people." (2010). 9781400836550, Princeton University Press. ISBN 9781400836550 Ethnography formed a relatively coherent subgenre in Byzantine literature.
In ethnography, the researcher gathers what is available, what is normal, what it is that people do, what they say, and how they work.Preece, J., Sharp, H., & Rogers, Y. (2015). Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction (4th edition). Wiley.
Ethnography can also be used in other methodological frameworks, for instance, an action research program of study where one of the goals is to change and improve the situation.
Ethnographic research is a fundamental methodology in cultural ecology, development studies, and feminist geography. In addition, it has gained importance in social, political, cultural, and nature-society geography. Ethnography is an effective methodology in qualitative geographic research that focuses on people's perceptions and experiences and their traditionally place-based immersion within a social group.
Interviews are often taped and later transcribed, allowing the interview to proceed unimpaired of note-taking, but with all information available later for full analysis. Secondary research and document analysis are also used to provide insight into the research topic. In the past, kinship charts were commonly used to "discover logical patterns and social structure in non-Western societies".[1] In the 21st century, anthropology focuses more on the study of people in urban settings and the use of kinship charts is seldom employed.
In order to make the data collection and interpretation transparent, researchers creating ethnographies often attempt to be "reflexive". Reflexivity refers to the researcher's aim "to explore the ways in which the researcher's involvement with a particular study influences, acts upon and informs such research".Nightingale,[Marvasti, Amir & Gubrium, Jaber. 2023. Crafting Ethnographic Fieldwork: Sites, Selves & Social Worlds. Routledge. Despite these attempts of reflexivity, no researcher can be totally unbiased. This factor has provided a basis to criticize ethnography.
Traditionally, the ethnographer focuses attention on a community, selecting knowledgeable informants who know the activities of the community well. These informants are typically asked to identify other informants who represent the community, often using snowball or chain sampling. This process is often effective in revealing common cultural denominators connected to the topic being studied. Ethnography relies greatly on up-close, personal experience. Participation, rather than just observation, is one of the keys to this process. Ethnography is very useful in social research.
An inevitability during ethnographic participation is that the researcher experiences at least some resocialization. In other words, the ethnographer to some extent "becomes" what they are studying. For instance, an ethnographer may become skilled at a work activity that they are studying; they may become members of a particular religious group they are interested in studying; or they may even inhabit a familial role in a community they are staying with. Robert M. Emerson, Rachel Fretz, and Linda Shaw summarize this idea in their book Writing Ethnographic Field Notes using a common metaphor: "the fieldworker cannot and should not attempt to be a fly on the wall."
Ybema et al. (2010) examine the ontological and epistemological presuppositions underlying ethnography. Ethnographic research can range from a realist perspective, in which behavior is observed, to a constructivist perspective where understanding is socially constructed by the researcher and subjects. Research can range from an objectivist account of fixed, observable behaviors to an interpretive narrative describing "the interplay of individual agency and social structure."S. Ybema, D. Yanow, H. Wels, & F. Kamsteeg (2010). "Ethnography." In A. Mills, G. Durepos, & E. Wiebe (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Case Study Research. (pp. 348–352). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc. Critical theory researchers address "issues of power within the researcher-researched relationships and the links between knowledge and power."
Another form of data collection is that of the "image". The image is the projection that an individual puts on an object or abstract idea. An image can be contained within the physical world through a particular individual's perspective, primarily based on that individual's past experiences. One example of an image is how an individual views a novel after completing it. The physical entity that is the novel contains a specific image in the perspective of the interpreting individual and can only be expressed by the individual in the terms of "I can tell you what an image is by telling you what it feels like." The idea of an image relies on the imagination and has been seen to be utilized by children in a very spontaneous and natural manner. Effectively, the idea of the image is a primary tool for ethnographers to collect data. The image presents the perspective, experiences, and influences of an individual as a single entity and in consequence, the individual will always contain this image in the group under study.
A typical ethnography attempts to be holisticEmber, Carol and Melvin Ember, Cultural Anthropology (Prentice Hall, 2006), chapter one.Heider, Karl. Seeing Anthropology. 2001. Prentice Hall, Chapters One and Two. and typically follows an outline to include a brief history of the culture in question, an analysis of the physical geography or terrain inhabited by the people under study, including climate, and often including what biological anthropologists call habitat. Folk notions of botany and zoology are presented as ethnobotany and ethno-zoology alongside references from the formal sciences. Material culture, technology, and means of subsistence are usually treated next, as they are typically bound up in physical geography and include descriptions of infrastructure. Kinship and social structure (including age grading, peer groups, gender, voluntary associations, clans, moieties, and so forth, if they exist) are typically included. Languages spoken, dialects, and the history of language change are another group of standard topics.cf. Ember and Ember 2006, Heider 2001 op cit. Practices of child rearing, acculturation, and emic views on personality and values usually follow after sections on social structure.Ember and Ember 2006, op cit., Chapters 7 and 8 Rites, rituals, and other evidence of religion have long been an interest and are sometimes central to ethnographies, especially when conducted in public where visiting anthropologists can see them. (1970). 9780801491016, Cornell University Press. ISBN 9780801491016
As ethnography developed, anthropologists grew more interested in less tangible aspects of culture, such as values, worldview and what Clifford Geertz termed the "ethos" of the culture. In his fieldwork, Geertz used elements of a phenomenological approach, tracing not just the doings of people, but the cultural elements themselves. For example, if within a group of people, winking was a communicative gesture, he sought to first determine what kinds of things a wink might mean (it might mean several things). Then, he sought to determine in what contexts winks were used, and whether, as one moved about a region, winks remained meaningful in the same way. In this way, cultural boundaries of communication could be explored, as opposed to using linguistic boundaries or notions about the residence. Geertz, while still following something of a traditional ethnographic outline, moved outside that outline to talk about "webs" instead of "outlines"Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Culture, Chapter one. of culture.
Within cultural anthropology, there are several subgenres of ethnography. Beginning in the 1950s and early 1960s, anthropologists began writing "bio-confessional" ethnographies that intentionally exposed the nature of ethnographic research. Famous examples include Tristes Tropiques (1955) by Lévi-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 Deep Play: Notes on a Balinese Cockfight by Clifford Geertz, 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 postcolonial/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.
This critical turn in sociocultural anthropology during the mid-1980s can be traced to the influence of the now classic (and often contested) text, Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, (1986) edited by James Clifford and George Marcus. Writing Culture helped bring changes to both anthropology and ethnography often described in terms of being 'postmodern,' 'reflexive,' 'literary,' 'deconstructive,' or 'poststructural' in nature, in that the text helped to highlight the various epistemic and political predicaments that many practitioners saw as plaguing ethnographic representations and practices.Olaf Zenker & Karsten Kumoll. Beyond Writing Culture: Current Intersections of Epistemologies and Representational Practices. (2010). New York: Berghahn Books. . pp. 1–4
Where Geertz's and Victor Turner interpretive anthropology recognized subjects as creative actors who constructed their sociocultural worlds out of symbols, postmodernists attempted to draw attention to the privileged status of the ethnographers themselves. That is, the ethnographer cannot escape the personal viewpoint in creating an ethnographic account, thus making any claims of objective neutrality highly problematic, if not altogether impossible.Paul A. Erickson & Liam D. Murphy. A History of Anthropological Theory, Third Edition. (2008). Toronto: Broadview Press. . p. 190 In regards to this last point, Writing Culture became a focal point for looking at how ethnographers could describe different cultures and societies without denying the subjectivity of those individuals and groups being studied while simultaneously doing so without laying claim to absolute knowledge and objective authority.Erickson & Murphy (2008). A History of Anthropological Theory, pp. 190–191 Along with the development of experimental forms such as 'dialogic anthropology,' 'narrative ethnography,' and 'literary ethnography',Literary Ethnography http://literary-ethnography.tumblr.com/ Writing Culture helped to encourage the development of 'collaborative ethnography.'Olaf Zenker & Karsten Kumoll. Beyond Writing Culture: Current Intersections of Epistemologies and Representational Practices. (2010). New York: Berghahn Books. . p. 12 This exploration of the relationship between writer, audience, and subject has become a central tenet of contemporary anthropological and ethnographic practice. In certain instances, active collaboration between the researcher(s) and subject(s) has helped blend the practice of collaboration in ethnographic fieldwork with the process of creating the ethnographic product resulting from the research.
Jaber F. Gubrium's series of organizational ethnographies focused on the everyday practices of illness, care, and recovery are notable. They include Living and Dying at Murray Manor, which describes the social worlds of a nursing home; Describing Care: Image and Practice in Rehabilitation, which documents the social organization of patient subjectivity in a physical rehabilitation hospital; Caretakers: Treating Emotionally Disturbed Children, which features the social construction of behavioral disorders in children; and Oldtimers and Alzheimer's: The Descriptive Organization of Senility, which describes how the Alzheimer's disease movement constructed a new subjectivity of senile dementia and how that is organized in a geriatric hospital. Another approach to ethnography in sociology comes in the form of institutional ethnography, developed by Dorothy E. Smith for studying the social relations which structure people's everyday lives.
Other notable ethnographies include Paul Willis's Learning to Labour, on working class youth; the work of Elijah Anderson, Mitchell Duneier, and Loïc Wacquant on black America, and Lai Olurode's Glimpses of Madrasa From Africa. 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.
Scholars of communication studies use ethnographic research methods to analyze communicative behaviors and phenomena. This is often characterized in the writing as attempts to understand taken-for-granted routines by which working definitions are socially produced. Ethnography as a method is a storied, careful, and systematic examination of the reality-generating mechanisms of everyday life (Coulon, 1995). Ethnographic work in communication studies seeks to explain "how" ordinary methods/practices/performances construct the ordinary actions used by ordinary people in the accomplishments of their identities. This often gives the perception of trying to answer the "why" and "how come" questions of human communication.Rubin, R. B., Rubin, A. M., and Piele, L. J. (2005). Communication Research: Strategies and Sources. Belmont, California: Thomson Wadworth. pp. 229. Often this type of research results in a case study or field study such as an analysis of speech patterns at a protest rally, or the way firemen communicate during "down time" at a fire station. Like anthropology scholars, communication scholars often immerse themselves, and participate in and/or directly observe the particular social group being studied.Bentz, V. M., and Shapiro, J. J. (1998). Mindful Inquiry in Social Research. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage. p. 117.
Anthropologists such as Daniel Miller and Mary Douglas have used ethnographic data to answer academic questions about consumers and consumption. In this sense, Tony Salvador, Genevieve Bell, and Ken Anderson describe design ethnography as being "a way of understanding the particulars of daily life in such a way as to increase the success probability of a new product or service or, more appropriately, to reduce the probability of failure specifically due to a lack of understanding of the basic behaviors and frameworks of consumers."Salvador, Tony; Genevieve Bell; and Ken Anderson (1999) "Design Ethnography," Design Management Journal (pp. 35–41). p. 37 Sociologist Sam Ladner argues in her book, that understanding consumers and their desires requires a shift in "standpoint", one that only ethnography provides. The results are products and services that respond to consumers' unmet needs.
Businesses, too, have found ethnographers helpful for understanding how people use products and services. By assessing user experience in a "natural" setting, ethnology yields insights into the practical applications of a product or service. It is one of the best ways to identify areas of friction and improve overall user experience.A Simple Guide For Conducting Consumer Research by Brian Lischer http://www.ignytebrands.com/customer-research/ Sam Ladner's 2014 book Practical Ethnography: A Guide to Doing Ethnography in the Private Sector provides an overview of how this research method can be used outside of academia, emphasizing the value of ethnography in providing new insights by conducting research in context, and by providing an "emic" position since ethnographers take the participants' point of view (and not just that of the business.)
Companies make increasing use of ethnographic methods to understand consumers and consumption, or for new product development (such as video ethnography). The Ethnographic Praxis in Industry (EPIC) conference 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 do—avoiding the pitfalls that come from relying only on self-reported, focus-group data.
Fine is not necessarily casting blame at ethnographic researchers but tries to show that researchers often make idealized ethical claims and standards which are inherently based on partial truths and self-deceptions. Fine also acknowledges that many of these partial truths and self-deceptions are unavoidable. He maintains that "illusions" are essential to maintain an occupational reputation and avoid potentially more caustic consequences. He claims, "Ethnographers cannot help but lie, but in lying, we reveal truths that escape those who are not so bold".Fine, p. 291 Based on these assertions, Fine establishes three conceptual clusters in which ethnographic ethical dilemmas can be situated: "Classic Virtues", "Technical Skills", and "Ethnographic Self".
Much debate surrounding the issue of ethics arose following revelations about how the ethnographer Napoleon Chagnon conducted his ethnographic fieldwork with the Yanomani people of South America.
While there is no international standard on Ethnographic Ethics, many western anthropologists look to the American Anthropological Association for guidance when conducting ethnographic work. American Anthropology Association Code of Ethics (PDF). p. 1. In 2009, the Association adopted a code of ethics, stating: Anthropologists have "moral obligations as members of other groups, such as the family, religion, and community, as well as the profession". The code of ethics notes that anthropologists are part of a wider scholarly and political network, as well as human and natural environment, which needs to be reported on respectfully. The code of ethics recognizes that sometimes very close and personal relationship can sometimes develop from doing ethnographic work. The Association acknowledges that the code is limited in scope; ethnographic work can sometimes be multidisciplinary, and anthropologists need to be familiar with ethics and perspectives of other disciplines as well.American Anthropology Association Code of Ethics, p.2 The eight-page code of ethics outlines ethical considerations for those conducting Research, Teaching, Application and Dissemination of Results, which are briefly outlined below.American Anthropology Association Code of Ethics, p. 1–8.
According to Norman K. Denzin, ethnographers should consider the following seven principles when observing, recording, and sampling data:
Bochner and Carolyn Ellis have also defined autoethnography as "an autobiographical genre of writing and research that displays multiple layers of consciousness, connecting the personal to the cultural." They further indicate that autoethnography is typically written in first-person and can "appear in a variety of forms," such as "short stories, poetry, fiction, novels, photographic essays, personal essays, journals, fragmented and layered writing, and social science prose."
In the field of epistemology the term is used to characterize the philosophy method employed by such writers as Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault.
Digital ethnography comes with its own set of ethical questions, and the Association of Internet Researchers' ethical guidelines are frequently used. Gabriele de Seta's paper "Three Lies of Digital Ethnography" explores some of the methodological questions more central to a specific ethnographic approach to internet studies, drawing upon Fine's classic text.
The study's roots go back to general anthropology of animals. One of the earliest well-known studies was Lewis Henry Morgan's The American Beaver and His Works (1868). His study closely observed a group of beavers in Northern Michigan. Morgan's main objective was to highlight that the daily individual tasks that the beavers performed were complex communicative acts that had been passed down for generations.
In the early 2000s multi-species ethnography took on a huge increase in popularity. The annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association began to host the Multispecies Salon, a collection of discussions, showcases, and other events for anthropologists. The event provided a space for anthropologists and artists to come together and showcase vast knowledge of different organisms and their intertwined systems.
Multispecies ethnography highlights a lot of the negative effects of these shared environments and systems. Not only does multispecies ethnography observe the physical relationships between organisms, it also takes note of the emotional and psychological relationships built between species.
/ref> Applying this form of ethnography to land and landscape, Munira Khayyat suggests that this approach can also help to refocus previous versions of histories, for example the stories of soldiers and their reception in their homes, to those that have been impacted by the wars on the ground (e.g., civilians in Southern Lebanon).
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