What is the difference between ethnology and

ethnography?
Ethnography (generic, no “an” or “the” article) is the academic art of collecting cultural data
about particular cultures, generally through the process of “fieldwork,” which to an
anthropologist usually means living with, or among, the members of the culture being
studied, for an extended period of time (often a year or more). Any shorter, or less intense,
level of contact with a culture is not likely to yield useful ethnographic data, since it takes
time to develop trust and empathy (in both directions) with native informants (who are not
— ever — referred to as experimental “subjects,” because they are NOT, but that’s another
issue) and to at least witness a full annual cycle of cultural events. We also speak of
“anethnography” or “the ethnography of the X tribe written by Y” to refer to a specific
published study, usually in monograph book form, that describes the culture of a specific
village, tribe, or relevant group. (A modern urban ethnography may, for instance, focus on
“surfers” as a culture, or “disco fans.”)

Ethnology is the branch of anthropology that involves comparative study of cultures and the
analysis of that data to propose theoretical frameworks for better understanding cultural
phenomena. Ethnographies are the studies that provide the raw data which ethnology
analyzes to develop theories of culture.

One other answer seemed to imply that ethnographies include any historical, geographical,
linguistic, etc. study of a particular ethnic group, and may even include travelogues or
popular-market curiosity reports prepared by missionaries, explorers, and the like.
Although such non-professional materials were all that was available when the scientific
study of cultural anthropology was getting started in the late 1800s and early 1900s, they
are a far cry from the careful and detailed studies of culture which is expected of modern
ethnographic fieldwork (what a grad student has to do to gather data for a thesis or
dissertation, and what a professional, academic ethnographer does throughout his or her
career) and must be taken with a very large grain of salt if they were not written with the
perspective on what culture is and why it is important that is implanted in anthropology
students as part of their training.

Too often, such non-anthropological studies suffer from a “noble savage” bias, as if the
culture under study represented some lost golden age from which the modern West has
descended to corruption, or the opposite, an “ooga-booga” bias, pointing amusing fingers at
the quaint customs of primitive people as if that shows how far advanced our modern age is
over whatever “backward” group is being studied. Neither perspective has any scientific
basis and both can wildly skew the results. People everywhere are people, and their human
motivations are the same, but the cultural responses they have developed to meet the
challenges of living in their environment can be wildly different, though equally intelligent
and equally valid. At the same time, primitive or pastoral people as a whole are no more
angelic, or no more demonic, than are modern people fully integrated into global society.
Non-professional observers also tend to lack the training and tools to look for seemingly
minor factors that help pin together the elements of a culture and provide a sound basis for
ethnologic theorizing.
5. What is the difference between ethnography, ethnology, and ethnohistory? (p.77)
Ethnography- is a descriptive account of one culture; comparison of two or more cultures.
Ethnology- analyzes cultures, especially in regard to their historical development and the
similarities and dissimilarities between them.
Ethnohistory- the branch of anthropology concerned with the history of peoples and cultures
Terms:Binary contrasts-
Binary contrast - Meaning from seeing themes or elements as connotative categories of
opposites.
Cognitive anthropology-investigates cultural knowledge, knowledge which is embedded in
words, stories, and in artifacts, and which is learned from and shared with other humans"
Culture change-changes in the culture of a society. The modification or discontinuation of existing
‘tried’ or ‘tested’ procedures transmitted to us from the past as well as introduction of new
procedures.
Cultural ecology-the study of human adaptations to social and physical environments. Human
adaptation refers to both biological and cultural processes that enable a population to survive and
reproduce within a given or changing environment.
Cultural materialism-is a scientific research strategy that prioritizes material, behavioral and etic
processes in the explanation of the evolution of human socio-cultural systems.
Cultural relativism-the view that moral or ethical systems, which vary from culture to culture, are
all equally valid and no one system is really “better” than any other.
Diachronic versussynchronic perspective
Synchronic: The analysis of cultural data at a single point in time, rather than through time.
Diachronic: The analysis of sociocultural data through time, rather than at a single point in
time(historical linguistics).
Emic versus etic perspective
The emic approach- the members of the culture being studied are the main source of information
used to understand the culture.

The etic approachto studying human culture employs existing theories and perspectives that
originated from outside the culture being studied.
French structuralism- Functionalism-a theory stressing the importance of interdependence among
all behavior patterns and institutions within a social system to its long-term survival.
Historical particularism-claims that each society has its own unique historical development and
must be understood based on its own specific cultural context, especially its historical process
Inductive approach-starts with the observations and theories are proposed towards the end of the
research process as a result of observations
Level of socio-cultural integrationMaterialismversus idealismperspective
Materialism- a theory that physical matter is the only or fundamental realityand that all being and
processes and phenomena can be explained as manifestations or results of matter
Idealism- Concept that only mind and thought are real and form the basis of all experience and
knowledge, the perceived objects may exist but cannot have substance.