9/19 What is Ethnography?

Ethnography

A primary research strategy in cultural anthropology involving a detailed, in-depth description of everyday life and practice. This is sometimes referred to as "thick description" • It implies a qualitative research process and method (one conducts an ethnography) and product (the outcome of this process is an ethnography) whose aim is cultural interpretation. • Ethnographers attempt to explain how everyday events represent "webs of meaning", the cultural constructions, in which we live. Ethnographers generate understandings of culture through representation of what we call an emic perspective, or what might be described as the "'insider's point of view." • The emphasis in this representation is thus on allowing critical categories and meanings to emerge from the ethnographic encounter rather than imposing these from existing models or theories. • Long-term engagement in the field setting or place where the ethnography takes place, is called participant observation. This is perhaps the primary source of ethnographic data.

"outsider"

Not part of the group

"insider"

Part of the group

Participant Observation

Participant Observation is not about going native. It's about immersing yourself in a culture and learning to remove yourself every day from that immersion so you can intellectualize what you've seen and heard, put it into perspective, and write about it convincingly. Participant observation is the most ethically problematic of social research methods, because it's thoroughly manipulative

Qualitative Research

Reality is socially constructed, small samples, inductive, understanding actor's perspectives, holistic, ends with hypothesis and grounded theory, interpretation, presents data as narratives, empathic understanding of the subjects lives, emic approach, participant observation/interviews/focus groups

Reflexivity

Reflexivity requires an awareness of the researcher's contribution to the construction of meanings throughout the research process, and an acknowledgment of the impossibility of remaining 'outside of' one's subject matter while conducting research. Reflexivity then, urges us "to explore the ways in which a researcher's involvement with a particular study influences, acts upon and informs such research."

Thick description

a thick description of a human behavior is one that explains not just the behavior, but its context as well, such that the behavior becomes meaningful to an outsider.

Emic

informant's voices, narratives, and point of views

Multi-sited ethnography

is a method of data collection that follows a topic or social problem through different field sites geographically and/or socially. It provides a way to examine global processes and the increasing interconnectedness of all people through the process of globalization. Multi-sited ethnography solves the need for a method to analytically explore transnational processes, groups of people in motion, and ideas that extend over multiple locations.

Etic

researcher's interpretation about informants' narratives.

Virtual ethnography

Ethnography conducted on the Internet; a qualitative, interpretive research methodology that adapts the traditional, in-person ethnographic research techniques of anthropology to the study of online cultures and communities formed through computer mediated communications.

Key informant

Gate keepers, give insight to a group

Ethics in research

We need to be aware that the data we produce can be used to reinforce negative stereotypes against our Informants.

Positionality

your social positions in the field, in terms of factors such as gender, social class, power relations with informants, etc.) that will impact your research and data.