ETHNOGRAPHY

Ethno: people or folk; Graphy: describe

something
Methodology
The definition of the term has revealed itself
particularly problematic.

= Ethnography: describing and understanding

Strengths &
another way of life from the native point of
Weaknesses
view (Neuman, 2007)
 What is an Ethnography?
 Ethnographic methods relay substantially on PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION in order to
document routine daily lives of people (Fetterman,1998).

 A way to explore/illuminate cultural practices in diverse cultural groups/contexts

 Has a guiding question that evolves during the study (Hall, 2003). The guiding
quiestion is what we the west, -the capitalist society- do.

 Going to the filed and document daily actividties away from the location. Reveal certain
aspects of that particular place in relation to the ones caracterized the west. In order to
do a contrast.
 FEATURES of social
research
 Strong emphasis on exploring the nature of particular social fenomena (it is
NOT A TEXTING STRATEGY)
 Work primarily with unstructured data. No priary filter, i describe what was
happening around me in a unestructured manner adn leter i estruture it
later. We ahve to distinguish betwwen the describer adn what happens.
 Small number of cases. We dont postion ourselves on a methaphyscal
ground in which we can theorise about humanity, but
 Explicit interpretation. Y difference my own voice, my focus about a
particular social phenomena and what epople say about that aprticualr
experience. My interopetation of data has to be explicit.

Difference bet anthro anf philo: in anthro thefocus is not ideas nor
epistmologyes, but strong emphacis on the nature of particualr social
phenomena illuminated throh this comparative method and obervation.
 Aims of Ethnographic
practices

• Unobtrusive (To which extent any social research implies participation/observation?).when I

gould to the study field I am participating but not inferfiering/ NOT DISTORT, pruduce another
situation than if this person wasn’t there. In the sense that I understand I can stand at the
margen withouot determin with my pressence the actoins of that people. People know ht is there
but our presence should be so centrel to the event that determinats a totally different dynamic.
• Identifies geographical and temporal coordinates. , we don’t talk about culure as a inmobile and
a¡untouchable, but about specific locations. Ej: indonesia in 19 th. No indonisian culture. It is alive
is not sthatic. Not freezing cultures in time.
• Characterized by extremely heterogeneous practices: researchers try to distance themselves
from ‘mainstream’ orthodoxy: engage myself with the study of a particular practices of a culture
removing myself from this general idea that represents for my self the TRUTH and from this
distance I could sturdy what the others do wfrom a NEUTRAL perspective, without bias and
understand them . Reafirming the superiority of cultural believes dependieng from the position
of the person that is inforcing their believes.
 To identify behavior patterns and anticipate; to make the reader
understand the perspective of the native to the culture studied
(Fetterman, 1998). To promote cultural awareness/tolerance/displace
ethnocentrism. We need to be aware that Im the one that is
interprinting, selcting certain elements that I consider more significant
than others , according to my perosnal stand, that cultural awareness.
I understand the context
 We must apply the thcik descrption, tha bility to include different
registers on order to provide whats going in, ej: what they do, what do
they do…

 Understand context, complexity, and politics of social processes

(Warren, 2004)
 Itineraries

 Early debates: data collection/inference and topics.

 Recent and contemporary debates: representation/writing others/authority. Focus is not

posed on data collection, but on this theoretical ideas in late 20 century. The problme of
represent, how, what, can a representation be the total or by repesenting im always
altering, is always a distance betw the thing i produces and the thing outside? Is
descriptoin neutral? Whats my position o fauthority, im one of the many or bc im an
ethnography that mmeans that i can a present things that dont necesary correspond to
what it is and that gives me a possitoin of power?l

Even in photgraohy adn video the doubt of objetivity is still there, why a im showing so
and not the other? I select the particular location and i show what i eant to show, that
removes us from objetivity.

 Cutting critical edge: disinterested observation/advocacy, scientific/humane,

objective/aesthetic.
 Brief Historical Insights
Morgan (Lawyer and anthropologist). In 1851 he
published an ethnography about Indians in the USA.
He didn't gather the information himself- was a “sofa”
anthropologist. He collected a number of text and
collected his monography based on what the opthers
had said.
XIX- early XX century: collecting data firsthand. The
first ethnographies in Britain were published in 1898-
1899. They were built on field research
 NOT JUST A MATTER OF RECOGNITION OF
DIFFERENCES but also awareness that they do not
represent deviation from the norms of the observer
here and now/sign of cultural backwardness. When i
consider something th deviation of the norm what i
am doing is comapring this practice with my own
that becames the general signifier, what is the
correct way od doing things.
 Whether and/or how can other cultures be
understood?
 MALINOWSKI
One of the first that writ an ethongraphic work in ehich he used this new
techniques , he defnied the methodology of anthopological inquiry (observation).
 “Argonauts of the Western Pacific.”

 Stayed with the Trobriands for a great time

 Lived as a native among natives
 Watched them daily at work and at play
 Personal observation
 Statements directly by the natives
https://www.youtube.co
m/watch?
v=Mmahs1s1WR0
I consider that only such ethnographic sources are of
unquestionable scientific value, in which we can clearly
draw the line between, on the one hand, the results of direct
observations and of native statements and interpretations,
and on the other hand, the inferences of the author, based on
his common sense and psychological insight” (Malinowski,
1922, p. 3)
 Important for Ethnographic
Work:

Malinoswi shares some of the concerns of father

figures of modern Anthropology (Boas, Radcliffe-
Brown):

1. AGAINST JUDGING OTHERS according to info

infer by various not direct sources (empirical
research). We should judge others
2. AGANST JUDGING OTHERS according to the
evolutionary logic (Montesquieu, XVIII). Bc a
certain mode of interprete r evolution
 Social and cultural phenomena have their own logic
therefore cannot be understood using methods
applied by natural sciences (positivism/hermeneutics)

 POSITIVISM (roughly defined): social research

should adopt scientific method/modern
physicists/rigorous testing of hypotheses by data-
quantitative measurements.
 Rejection of the idea that these are the only valid
methods/sources of information.
 Need to rethink questions of method, power
positions, hierarchies, researcher-researched:
POLITICAL PRACTICE/ADVOCACY
 KEY element to take into account: production of
knowledge being at the heart of the discipline.
 CRITICAL AWARENESS-
the 70’s and 80’s
 Clifford/Marcus (Eds): WRITING CULTURES

Textual imposition/writing strategies of the

anthropologist over the subject matter.

LITERATARY/RETHORICAL/HISTORICAL/IDEOLOGI
CAL INFLUENCES
 Geertz: INERPRETATION OF CULTURE. Fiction.
Literary conventions and diverse writing styles of
respective authors. Remove the false distinction
between ‘rhetoric’ and science