Ethnograph

y
Qualitative Research Methods

Ethnography
History & Definition
Roots traced back to late 19th century
anthropologists who engaged in
participant observation in the field.
Derived from the words ethno which
means folk and graph derived from
writing.

Ethnography
Sociological ethnography is assumed to
have originated in the 1920s when a
group of Chicago students were instructed
to put down their texts and use their eyes
and ears
Became known as the Chicago School in
the 30s with two strands 1) concerned
w/ the sociology of urban life and the
movement between over time, (Park &
Burgess) 2) urban settings including
underdog occupations and deviant
roles (Hughes)

Ethnography
Characteristics of Ethnography:
highly descriptive writing about a
particular group of people
1. both a process (the research) and a
product (the
writing)
2. Many forms:
- life history

- critical ethnography

- autoethnography - feminist ethnography

Ethnography
3. Requires:

- the language of that culture

- first-hand participation & interpretation
- intensive work with a few informants
from that setting
Sort of description that can only emerge
from spending a lengthy amount of time
intimately studying and living in a
particular social setting
(Van Maanen, 1982, p. 103-104)

Ethnography
4. Must use the lens of culture to understand the
phenomenon being examined
5. Must also depict the researchers understanding
of the cultural meaning of the phenomenon
Culture: the beliefs, values, and attitudes that
structure the behavior patterns of a specific
group of people
Wolcott (1999) says ethnography must provide
the kind of account of human social activity out
of which cultural patterning can be discerned.

Ethnography
Cultural: at a minimum, similarity must be
shared by a significant number of
members of a social group; shared in the
sense of being behaviorally enacted,
physically possessed, or internally thought
- intersubjectively shared
- must have potential to be passed on to
next
generation, to exist with
permanency through
time and across
space
(DAndreade, 1992)

Ethnography
Today many non-anthropologists
examine subcultures
Subculture: group having social,
economic, ethnic, or other traits
distinctive enough to distinguish it
from others within the same culture or
society

Ethnography
The heart of ethnography is thick
description, that was originally coined by
Clifford Geertz (1973).
Thick description: explains not just the
behavior, but its context as well, such
that the behavior becomes meaningful to
an outsider
- analyzes the multiple levels of meaning
in any situation

Ethnography
Thick description:
Geertz discusses the role of the ethnographer. Broadly, the
ethnographer's aim is to observe, record, and analyze a
culture. More specifically, he or she must interpret signs to
gain their meaning within the culture itself. This
interpretation must be based on the "thick description" of a
sign in order to see all the possible meanings. His example
of a "wink of any eye" clarifies this point. When a man
winks, is he merely "rapidly contracting his right eyelid" or
is he "practicing a burlesque of a friend faking a wink to
deceive a an innocent into thinking conspiracy is in
motion"? Ultimately, Geertz hopes that the ethnographer's
deeper understanding of the signs will open and/or increase
the dialogue among different cultures.

Ethnography
What can be studied:

Kinds of data:

- Tribes

- Interviews

- Subcultures

- Field notes

- Public realm

- Texts

- Organizations

- Visual data
- Transcripts

Ethnography
Doing Ethnography
Using observational research
1. Seeing through the eyes of the people being observed
2. Description: paying attention to the mundane details
3. Contextualism: conveying messages in a complete manner so
that understand the wider social and historical context
4. Process: viewing social life as involving interlocking series of
events
5. Flexible research design: adapting research methods to various
situations as they unfold
6. Avoiding early use of theories and concepts (biasness,
rigidness)

Ethnography
Types of notes needed
1. Short notes made at the time
2. Expanded notes made as soon as possible after
the field session
3. A fieldwork journal to record problems and ideas
that arise during each stage of field work
4. A provisional running record of analysis and
interpretation
1979)

(Spradley,

Ethnography
In order to increase reliability creating contact
summary sheets is suggested.
Why Important:
1. Guide planning
2. Suggests new or revised codes/themes
3. Coordinates several fieldworkers work
4. Serves as a reminder of the contact at a later
date
5. Serves as the basis for data analysis

Ethnography
Questions for Contact Summary Sheets:
1. What people, events, or situations were involved?
2. What were the main themes or issues in the
contact?
3. Which research questions did the contact bear
most centrally on?
4. What new hypotheses, speculations, or guesses
about the field situations were suggested by the
contact?
5. Where should the fieldworker place most energy
during the next contact, and what sorts of
information should be sought?

Ethnography
Methodological Issues
Social researchers assumes a learning
role, so many scientific type questions
will not work when conducting social
science research.
There are several methodological
issues to consider.

Ethnography
1. Defining a research problem
a. avoid early specification of definitions
hypothesis
- puts too many constraints on what youre
observing
b. develop animating questions to consider
- narrow and focus
- limit your research topic

Ethnography
2.

Choosing a research site

- case the joint

3.

Gaining access

- 2 types of research settings

i. closed or private
ii. open or public

Ethnography
4. Finding an identity
Observers may change the situation just by
their presence
- Problematic features of fieldwork identity
i. whether the researcher is known to be a
researcher by all of those being studied, or
only by some, or by none
ii. how much, and what, is known about the
research, by whom

Ethnography
iii. what sorts of activities are and are not
engaged in by the researcher in the field,
and how this locates her or him in relation to
the various conceptions of category and
group membership used by partcipants
iv. what the orientation of the researcher is,
and how completely he or she consciously
adopts the orientation of insider or outsider
v. gender may be an issue that should be
reflected upon

Ethnography
5. Looking as well as listening
explain the situation as you would to a sighted person
who is blindfolded
6. Recording observations
a. must decide what is the best format to record note in
b. must decide what to weed out
- otherwise your data can be overwhelming
c. analyze as you go/categorize
d. revisit original data occasionally
- helps redefine categories as/if needed

Ethnography
7. Developing analysis of field data
a. interweave different aspects of research
through a funnel
Ethnographic research has a characteristic funnel
structure, being progressively focused over its
course. Progressive focusing has two analytically
distinct components. First, over time the research
problem is developed or transformed, and
eventually its scope is clarified and delimited and its
internal structure explored. In this sense, it is
frequently only over the course of the research that
one discovers what the research is really about,
and it is not uncommon for it to turn out to be about
something quite remote from the initially
foreshadowed problems (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1983:
175)

Ethnography
b. testing hypotheses/theories generated in the field
- combines insight with rigor
5 ways to test emerging hypotheses/theories
i. comparison of different groups at one time and of
one cohort w/ another over the course of observation
ii. replication of responses
iii. careful revision of negative or deviant cases
leading to the abandonment, revision or even
reinforcement of the hypothesis
iv. use of simple tabulations where appropriate
v. provision of sufficient raw data