Introduction to ethnography: basic principles, definition and nature

Despite this diversity of positions from which ethnographers may derive, we may still highlight a few important features that link the many and varied approaches:

  • A search for patterns proceeds from the careful observations of lived behavior and from detailed interviews with people in the community under study. When ethnographers speak about ‘culture’ or ‘society’ or ‘community’, it is important to keep in mind that they are speaking in terms that are generalized abstractions based on numerous bits of data in ways that make sense to the ethnographer who has a global overview of the social or cultural whole that people living in it may lack.
  • Ethnographers must pay careful attention to the process of field research. Attention must always be paid to the ways in which one gains entry to the field site, establishes rapport with the people living there, and comes to be a participating member of that group.

1. Definitions

So at this point we can say that

Although developed as a way of studying small-scale, non-literate, traditional societies and of reconstructing their cultural traditions, ethnography is now prac­ticed in all sorts of social settings. In whatever setting,

Ethnographers collect data about the lived human experience in order to discern predictable patterns rather than to describe every conceivable instance of inter­action or production.

Ethnography is conducted on-site and the ethnographer is, as much as possible, a subjective participant in the lives of those under study, as well as an objective observer of those lives.

2. Ethnography as method

The ethnographic method is different from other ways of conducting social science research.

  • It is field-based (conducted in the settings in which real people actually live, rather than in laboratories where the researcher controls the elements of the behaviors to be observed or measured).
  • It is personalized (conducted by researchers who are in day-to-day, face-to- face contact with the people they are studying and who are thus both partici­pants in and observers of the lives under study).
  • It is multifactorial (conducted through the use of two or more data collection tech­niques – which may be qualitative or quantitative in nature – in order to triangu­late on a conclusion, which may be said to be strengthened by the multiple ways in which it was reached; see also Flick, 2007b, for a discussion of this issue).
  • It requires a long-term commitment (i.e. it is conducted by researchers who intend to interact with the people they are studying for an extended period of time – although the exact time frame may vary anywhere from several weeks to a year or more).
  • It is inductive (conducted in such a way as to use an accumulation of descrip­tive detail to build toward general patterns or explanatory theories rather than structured to test hypotheses derived from existing theories or models).
  • It is dialogic (conducted by researchers whose conclusions and interpretations can be commented upon by those under study even as they are being formed).
  • It is holistic (conducted so as to yield the fullest possible portrait of the group under study).

3. Ethnography as product

The results of some forms of ethnographic data collection may be reducible to tables, graphs, or charts, but on the whole the finished ethnographic report takes the form of a narrative, a kind of extended story whose main goal is to draw the reader into a vicarious experience of the community in which the ethnographer has lived and interacted. The most common form of narrative is rendered in prose, in which case it often borrows (consciously or not) some of the literary techniques common to storytelling of any kind. (If the ethnographer makes the choice to tell the story in forms other than prose, then the resulting ‘narrative’ will be similarly influenced by the artistic conventions of visual art, dance, film, or whatever.)

There are many different ways in which an ethnographer can tell a story, three categories of which seem to be most common:

  • Stories told in a realistic mode are de-personalized, objectively rendered por­traits provided by an emotionally neutral analyst – even if he or she was an emotionally engaged participant during the conduct of the research itself.
  • Stories told in a confessional mode are those in which the ethnographer becomes a central player and the story of the community under study is explic­itly told through his or her particular viewpoint.
  • Stories told in an impressionistic mode openly embrace literary – or other appropriately artistic – devices, such as the use of dialogue, elaborate charac­ter sketches, evocative descriptions of landscape or decor, flashback or flash- forward narrative structure, use of metaphors). (See van Maanen, 1988, for the classic exposition of these and other ‘tales’ of fieldwork.)

Regardless of the format of the narrative, any ethnographic report must some­how include several key points if it is to serve the purposes of science as well as of literature or art:

  • First, there should be an introduction in which the reader’s attention is cap­tured and in which the researcher explains why his or her study has analytical value.
  • Then there can be a setting of the scene in which the researcher describes the setting of the research and explains the ways in which he or she went about collecting data in that setting; many authors use the term thick description to indicate the way in which the scene is depicted (although the reader is urged to be cautious as this term is also used in various other ways that depart from our discussion in this section) – ‘thick description’ is the presentation of details, context, emotions, and the nuances of social relationships in order to evoke the ‘feeling’ of a scene and not just its surface attributes. (See Geertz, 1973, for the classic treatment of this issue and an elaboration of its ramifica­tions for the conduct of ethnographic research.)
  • Next comes an analysis in which the researcher draws the numerous descrip­tive details into a coherent set of social/cultural patterns that help the reader make sense of the people and their community, and that link this particular ethno­graphic study to those produced from other, somewhat similar communities.
  • Finally, there is a conclusion in which the researcher summarizes the main points and suggests the contributions of this study to the wider body of knowledge.

Source: Angrosino Michael (2008), Doing Ethnographic and Observational Research, SAGE Publications Ltd; 1st edition.

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