ethnographic dissertation example

• Search Menu
• Browse content in Arts and Humanities
• Browse content in Archaeology
• Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Archaeology
• Archaeological Methodology and Techniques
• Archaeology by Region
• Archaeology of Religion
• Archaeology of Trade and Exchange
• Biblical Archaeology
• Contemporary and Public Archaeology
• Environmental Archaeology
• Historical Archaeology
• History and Theory of Archaeology
• Industrial Archaeology
• Landscape Archaeology
• Mortuary Archaeology
• Prehistoric Archaeology
• Underwater Archaeology
• Urban Archaeology
• Zooarchaeology
• Browse content in Architecture
• Architectural Structure and Design
• History of Architecture
• Residential and Domestic Buildings
• Theory of Architecture
• Browse content in Art
• Art Subjects and Themes
• History of Art
• Industrial and Commercial Art
• Theory of Art
• Biographical Studies
• Byzantine Studies
• Browse content in Classical Studies
• Classical Literature
• Classical Reception
• Classical History
• Classical Philosophy
• Classical Mythology
• Classical Art and Architecture
• Classical Oratory and Rhetoric
• Greek and Roman Archaeology
• Greek and Roman Epigraphy
• Greek and Roman Law
• Greek and Roman Papyrology
• Late Antiquity
• Religion in the Ancient World
• Digital Humanities
• Browse content in History
• Colonialism and Imperialism
• Diplomatic History
• Environmental History
• Genealogy, Heraldry, Names, and Honours
• Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
• Historical Geography
• History by Period
• History of Agriculture
• History of Education
• History of Emotions
• History of Gender and Sexuality
• Industrial History
• Intellectual History
• International History
• Labour History
• Legal and Constitutional History
• Local and Family History
• Maritime History
• Military History
• National Liberation and Post-Colonialism
• Oral History
• Political History
• Public History
• Regional and National History
• Revolutions and Rebellions
• Slavery and Abolition of Slavery
• Social and Cultural History
• Theory, Methods, and Historiography
• Urban History
• World History
• Browse content in Language Teaching and Learning
• Language Learning (Specific Skills)
• Language Teaching Theory and Methods
• Browse content in Linguistics
• Applied Linguistics
• Cognitive Linguistics
• Computational Linguistics
• Forensic Linguistics
• Grammar, Syntax and Morphology
• Historical and Diachronic Linguistics
• History of English
• Language Variation
• Language Families
• Language Acquisition
• Language Evolution
• Language Reference
• Lexicography
• Linguistic Theories
• Linguistic Typology
• Linguistic Anthropology
• Phonetics and Phonology
• Psycholinguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Translation and Interpretation
• Writing Systems
• Browse content in Literature
• Bibliography
• Children's Literature Studies
• Literary Studies (Modernism)
• Literary Studies (Asian)
• Literary Studies (European)
• Literary Studies (Eco-criticism)
• Literary Studies (Romanticism)
• Literary Studies (American)
• Literary Studies - World
• Literary Studies (1500 to 1800)
• Literary Studies (19th Century)
• Literary Studies (20th Century onwards)
• Literary Studies (African American Literature)
• Literary Studies (British and Irish)
• Literary Studies (Early and Medieval)
• Literary Studies (Fiction, Novelists, and Prose Writers)
• Literary Studies (Gender Studies)
• Literary Studies (Graphic Novels)
• Literary Studies (History of the Book)
• Literary Studies (Plays and Playwrights)
• Literary Studies (Poetry and Poets)
• Literary Studies (Postcolonial Literature)
• Literary Studies (Queer Studies)
• Literary Studies (Science Fiction)
• Literary Studies (Travel Literature)
• Literary Studies (War Literature)
• Literary Studies (Women's Writing)
• Literary Theory and Cultural Studies
• Mythology and Folklore
• Shakespeare Studies and Criticism
• Browse content in Media Studies
• Browse content in Music
• Applied Music
• Dance and Music
• Ethics in Music
• Ethnomusicology
• Gender and Sexuality in Music
• Medicine and Music
• Music Cultures
• Music and Culture
• Music and Religion
• Music and Media
• Music Education and Pedagogy
• Music Theory and Analysis
• Musical Scores, Lyrics, and Libretti
• Musical Structures, Styles, and Techniques
• Musicology and Music History
• Performance Practice and Studies
• Race and Ethnicity in Music
• Sound Studies
• Browse content in Performing Arts
• Browse content in Philosophy
• Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
• Epistemology
• Feminist Philosophy
• History of Western Philosophy
• Metaphysics
• Moral Philosophy
• Non-Western Philosophy
• Philosophy of Action
• Philosophy of Law
• Philosophy of Religion
• Philosophy of Science
• Philosophy of Language
• Philosophy of Mind
• Philosophy of Perception
• Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic
• Practical Ethics
• Social and Political Philosophy
• Browse content in Religion
• Biblical Studies
• Christianity
• East Asian Religions
• History of Religion
• Judaism and Jewish Studies
• Qumran Studies
• Religion and Education
• Religion and Health
• Religion and Politics
• Religion and Science
• Religion and Law
• Religion and Art, Literature, and Music
• Religious Studies
• Browse content in Society and Culture
• Cookery, Food, and Drink
• Cultural Studies
• Customs and Traditions
• Ethical Issues and Debates
• Hobbies, Games, Arts and Crafts
• Lifestyle, Home, and Garden
• Natural world, Country Life, and Pets
• Popular Beliefs and Controversial Knowledge
• Sports and Outdoor Recreation
• Technology and Society
• Travel and Holiday
• Visual Culture
• Browse content in Law
• Arbitration
• Browse content in Company and Commercial Law
• Commercial Law
• Company Law
• Browse content in Comparative Law
• Systems of Law
• Competition Law
• Browse content in Constitutional and Administrative Law
• Government Powers
• Judicial Review
• Local Government Law
• Military and Defence Law
• Parliamentary and Legislative Practice
• Construction Law
• Contract Law
• Browse content in Criminal Law
• Criminal Procedure
• Criminal Evidence Law
• Sentencing and Punishment
• Employment and Labour Law
• Environment and Energy Law
• Browse content in Financial Law
• Banking Law
• Insolvency Law
• History of Law
• Human Rights and Immigration
• Intellectual Property Law
• Browse content in International Law
• Private International Law and Conflict of Laws
• Public International Law
• IT and Communications Law
• Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law
• Law and Society
• Law and Politics
• Browse content in Legal System and Practice
• Courts and Procedure
• Legal Skills and Practice
• Primary Sources of Law
• Regulation of Legal Profession
• Medical and Healthcare Law
• Browse content in Policing
• Criminal Investigation and Detection
• Police and Security Services
• Police Procedure and Law
• Police Regional Planning
• Browse content in Property Law
• Personal Property Law
• Study and Revision
• Terrorism and National Security Law
• Browse content in Trusts Law
• Wills and Probate or Succession
• Browse content in Medicine and Health
• Browse content in Allied Health Professions
• Arts Therapies
• Clinical Science
• Dietetics and Nutrition
• Occupational Therapy
• Operating Department Practice
• Physiotherapy
• Radiography
• Speech and Language Therapy
• Browse content in Anaesthetics
• General Anaesthesia
• Neuroanaesthesia
• Browse content in Clinical Medicine
• Acute Medicine
• Cardiovascular Medicine
• Clinical Genetics
• Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
• Dermatology
• Endocrinology and Diabetes
• Gastroenterology
• Genito-urinary Medicine
• Geriatric Medicine
• Infectious Diseases
• Medical Oncology
• Medical Toxicology
• Pain Medicine
• Palliative Medicine
• Rehabilitation Medicine
• Respiratory Medicine and Pulmonology
• Rheumatology
• Sleep Medicine
• Sports and Exercise Medicine
• Clinical Neuroscience
• Community Medical Services
• Critical Care
• Emergency Medicine
• Forensic Medicine
• Haematology
• History of Medicine
• Medical Ethics
• Browse content in Medical Dentistry
• Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
• Paediatric Dentistry
• Restorative Dentistry and Orthodontics
• Surgical Dentistry
• Browse content in Medical Skills
• Clinical Skills
• Communication Skills
• Nursing Skills
• Surgical Skills
• Medical Statistics and Methodology
• Browse content in Neurology
• Clinical Neurophysiology
• Neuropathology
• Nursing Studies
• Browse content in Obstetrics and Gynaecology
• Gynaecology
• Occupational Medicine
• Ophthalmology
• Otolaryngology (ENT)
• Browse content in Paediatrics
• Neonatology
• Browse content in Pathology
• Chemical Pathology
• Clinical Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetics
• Histopathology
• Medical Microbiology and Virology
• Patient Education and Information
• Browse content in Pharmacology
• Psychopharmacology
• Browse content in Popular Health
• Caring for Others
• Complementary and Alternative Medicine
• Self-help and Personal Development
• Browse content in Preclinical Medicine
• Cell Biology
• Molecular Biology and Genetics
• Reproduction, Growth and Development
• Primary Care
• Professional Development in Medicine
• Browse content in Psychiatry
• Addiction Medicine
• Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• Forensic Psychiatry
• Learning Disabilities
• Old Age Psychiatry
• Psychotherapy
• Browse content in Public Health and Epidemiology
• Epidemiology
• Public Health
• Browse content in Radiology
• Clinical Radiology
• Interventional Radiology
• Nuclear Medicine
• Radiation Oncology
• Reproductive Medicine
• Browse content in Surgery
• Cardiothoracic Surgery
• Gastro-intestinal and Colorectal Surgery
• General Surgery
• Neurosurgery
• Paediatric Surgery
• Peri-operative Care
• Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
• Surgical Oncology
• Transplant Surgery
• Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery
• Vascular Surgery
• Browse content in Science and Mathematics
• Browse content in Biological Sciences
• Aquatic Biology
• Biochemistry
• Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
• Developmental Biology
• Ecology and Conservation
• Evolutionary Biology
• Genetics and Genomics
• Microbiology
• Molecular and Cell Biology
• Natural History
• Plant Sciences and Forestry
• Research Methods in Life Sciences
• Structural Biology
• Systems Biology
• Zoology and Animal Sciences
• Browse content in Chemistry
• Analytical Chemistry
• Computational Chemistry
• Crystallography
• Environmental Chemistry
• Industrial Chemistry
• Inorganic Chemistry
• Materials Chemistry
• Medicinal Chemistry
• Mineralogy and Gems
• Organic Chemistry
• Physical Chemistry
• Polymer Chemistry
• Study and Communication Skills in Chemistry
• Theoretical Chemistry
• Browse content in Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Architecture and Logic Design
• Game Studies
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Mathematical Theory of Computation
• Programming Languages
• Software Engineering
• Systems Analysis and Design
• Virtual Reality
• Browse content in Computing
• Business Applications
• Computer Games
• Computer Security
• Computer Networking and Communications
• Digital Lifestyle
• Graphical and Digital Media Applications
• Operating Systems
• Browse content in Earth Sciences and Geography
• Atmospheric Sciences
• Environmental Geography
• Geology and the Lithosphere
• Maps and Map-making
• Meteorology and Climatology
• Oceanography and Hydrology
• Palaeontology
• Physical Geography and Topography
• Regional Geography
• Soil Science
• Urban Geography
• Browse content in Engineering and Technology
• Agriculture and Farming
• Biological Engineering
• Civil Engineering, Surveying, and Building
• Electronics and Communications Engineering
• Energy Technology
• Engineering (General)
• Environmental Science, Engineering, and Technology
• History of Engineering and Technology
• Mechanical Engineering and Materials
• Technology of Industrial Chemistry
• Transport Technology and Trades
• Browse content in Environmental Science
• Applied Ecology (Environmental Science)
• Conservation of the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Environmental Sustainability
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Environmental Science)
• Management of Land and Natural Resources (Environmental Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environmental Science)
• Nuclear Issues (Environmental Science)
• Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Environmental Science)
• History of Science and Technology
• Browse content in Materials Science
• Ceramics and Glasses
• Composite Materials
• Metals, Alloying, and Corrosion
• Nanotechnology
• Browse content in Mathematics
• Applied Mathematics
• Biomathematics and Statistics
• History of Mathematics
• Mathematical Education
• Mathematical Finance
• Mathematical Analysis
• Numerical and Computational Mathematics
• Probability and Statistics
• Pure Mathematics
• Browse content in Neuroscience
• Cognition and Behavioural Neuroscience
• Development of the Nervous System
• Disorders of the Nervous System
• History of Neuroscience
• Invertebrate Neurobiology
• Molecular and Cellular Systems
• Neuroendocrinology and Autonomic Nervous System
• Neuroscientific Techniques
• Sensory and Motor Systems
• Browse content in Physics
• Astronomy and Astrophysics
• Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
• Biological and Medical Physics
• Classical Mechanics
• Computational Physics
• Condensed Matter Physics
• Electromagnetism, Optics, and Acoustics
• History of Physics
• Mathematical and Statistical Physics
• Measurement Science
• Nuclear Physics
• Particles and Fields
• Plasma Physics
• Quantum Physics
• Relativity and Gravitation
• Semiconductor and Mesoscopic Physics
• Browse content in Psychology
• Affective Sciences
• Clinical Psychology
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology
• Criminal and Forensic Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Educational Psychology
• Evolutionary Psychology
• Health Psychology
• History and Systems in Psychology
• Music Psychology
• Neuropsychology
• Organizational Psychology
• Psychological Assessment and Testing
• Psychology of Human-Technology Interaction
• Psychology Professional Development and Training
• Research Methods in Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Browse content in Social Sciences
• Browse content in Anthropology
• Anthropology of Religion
• Human Evolution
• Medical Anthropology
• Physical Anthropology
• Regional Anthropology
• Social and Cultural Anthropology
• Theory and Practice of Anthropology
• Browse content in Business and Management
• Business History
• Business Strategy
• Business Ethics
• Business and Government
• Business and Technology
• Business and the Environment
• Comparative Management
• Corporate Governance
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Entrepreneurship
• Health Management
• Human Resource Management
• Industrial and Employment Relations
• Industry Studies
• Information and Communication Technologies
• International Business
• Knowledge Management
• Management and Management Techniques
• Operations Management
• Organizational Theory and Behaviour
• Pensions and Pension Management
• Public and Nonprofit Management
• Strategic Management
• Supply Chain Management
• Browse content in Criminology and Criminal Justice
• Criminal Justice
• Criminology
• Forms of Crime
• International and Comparative Criminology
• Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice
• Development Studies
• Browse content in Economics
• Agricultural, Environmental, and Natural Resource Economics
• Asian Economics
• Behavioural Finance
• Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics
• Econometrics and Mathematical Economics
• Economic Methodology
• Economic Systems
• Economic History
• Economic Development and Growth
• Financial Markets
• Financial Institutions and Services
• General Economics and Teaching
• Health, Education, and Welfare
• History of Economic Thought
• International Economics
• Labour and Demographic Economics
• Law and Economics
• Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
• Microeconomics
• Public Economics
• Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
• Welfare Economics
• Browse content in Education
• Adult Education and Continuous Learning
• Care and Counselling of Students
• Early Childhood and Elementary Education
• Educational Equipment and Technology
• Educational Strategies and Policy
• Higher and Further Education
• Organization and Management of Education
• Philosophy and Theory of Education
• Schools Studies
• Secondary Education
• Teaching of a Specific Subject
• Teaching of Specific Groups and Special Educational Needs
• Teaching Skills and Techniques
• Browse content in Environment
• Applied Ecology (Social Science)
• Climate Change
• Conservation of the Environment (Social Science)
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Social Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environment)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Social Science)
• Browse content in Human Geography
• Cultural Geography
• Economic Geography
• Political Geography
• Browse content in Interdisciplinary Studies
• Communication Studies
• Museums, Libraries, and Information Sciences
• Browse content in Politics
• African Politics
• Asian Politics
• Chinese Politics
• Comparative Politics
• Conflict Politics
• Elections and Electoral Studies
• Environmental Politics
• European Union
• Foreign Policy
• Gender and Politics
• Human Rights and Politics
• Indian Politics
• International Relations
• International Organization (Politics)
• International Political Economy
• Irish Politics
• Latin American Politics
• Middle Eastern Politics
• Political Theory
• Political Methodology
• Political Communication
• Political Philosophy
• Political Sociology
• Political Behaviour
• Political Economy
• Political Institutions
• Politics and Law
• Public Administration
• Public Policy
• Quantitative Political Methodology
• Regional Political Studies
• Russian Politics
• Security Studies
• State and Local Government
• UK Politics
• US Politics
• Browse content in Regional and Area Studies
• African Studies
• Asian Studies
• East Asian Studies
• Japanese Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Middle Eastern Studies
• Native American Studies
• Scottish Studies
• Browse content in Research and Information
• Research Methods
• Browse content in Social Work
• Addictions and Substance Misuse
• Adoption and Fostering
• Care of the Elderly
• Child and Adolescent Social Work
• Couple and Family Social Work
• Developmental and Physical Disabilities Social Work
• Direct Practice and Clinical Social Work
• Emergency Services
• Human Behaviour and the Social Environment
• International and Global Issues in Social Work
• Mental and Behavioural Health
• Social Justice and Human Rights
• Social Policy and Advocacy
• Social Work and Crime and Justice
• Social Work Macro Practice
• Social Work Practice Settings
• Social Work Research and Evidence-based Practice
• Welfare and Benefit Systems
• Browse content in Sociology
• Childhood Studies
• Community Development
• Comparative and Historical Sociology
• Economic Sociology
• Gender and Sexuality
• Gerontology and Ageing
• Health, Illness, and Medicine
• Marriage and the Family
• Migration Studies
• Occupations, Professions, and Work
• Organizations
• Population and Demography
• Race and Ethnicity
• Social Theory
• Social Movements and Social Change
• Social Research and Statistics
• Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
• Sociology of Religion
• Sociology of Education
• Sport and Leisure
• Urban and Rural Studies
• Browse content in Warfare and Defence
• Defence Strategy, Planning, and Research
• Land Forces and Warfare
• Military Administration
• Military Life and Institutions
• Naval Forces and Warfare
• Other Warfare and Defence Issues
• Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution
• Weapons and Equipment

• < Previous chapter
• Next chapter >

12 Ethnography

Anthony Kwame Harrison, Department of Sociology, Virginia Tech

• Published: 02 September 2020
• Cite Icon Cite
• Permissions Icon Permissions

This chapter introduces ethnography as a distinct research and writing tradition. It opens with a discussion of ethnography’s current fashionability within transdisciplinary academic spaces and some of the associated challenges. The next section provides a historical overview of ethnography’s emergence as a professionalized research practice within the fields of anthropology and sociology. Focusing on ethnography as a research methodology, the chapter outlines several key attributes that distinguish it from other forms of participant observation–oriented research; provides a general overview of the central paradigms that ethnographers claim and/or move between; and spotlights three principal research methods that most ethnographers utilize—namely, participant observation, field-note writing, and ethnographic interviewing. The final section of the chapter introduces a research disposition called ethnographic comportment , defined as a politics of positionality that reflects both ethnographers’ awarenesses of and their accountabilities to the research tradition they participate in.

Introduction

In a classic 1929 American Mercury article on racial passing and investigating lynchings, the future executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Walter White, opened with an observation:

In any American village, North or South, East or West, there is no problem which cannot be solved in half an hour by the morons who lounge about the village store. World peace, or the lack of it, the tariff, sex, religion, the settlement of the war debts, short skirts, Prohibition, the carryings-on of the younger generation, the superior moral rectitude of country people over city dwellers (with a wistful eye on urban sins)—all these controversial subjects are disposed of quickly and finally by the bucolic wise men. (White, 1929 , p. 77)

Ethnographers are neither morons nor bucolic wise men. If called on, they may supply truncated answers to difficult questions. But they do this with an understanding that they are merely scratching the surface or offering something along the lines of sweeping tendencies regarding what are typically complicated and often contradictory aspects of human organization and social relations. The closer and deeper one looks, the more one sees. For this reason, ethnography is not particularly well suited for the kinds of business or policy-oriented research that requires statistically verifiable findings or strict evidentiary bases for direct and uncomplicated action plans (Jones, 2010 ). Still, references to ethnography and/or ethnographic thisses-and-thats increasingly appear in these and numerous other settings. To fully appreciate the value of ethnographies, it is important to read them in their entirety. Ethnographies are not built for efficiency in research practice or in communicating research results.

As a reflexive, intersubjective research tradition—that speaks to audiences’ hearts as well as to their minds—ethnography is most at home in spaces where complexity, nuance, and betwixt-and-betweenness are valued. Thus, there is a palpable tension between this research methodology—founded on patience and aspirations for comprehensive understandings—and the increasingly neoliberal academic environments, where the practices of ethnography have historically been nurtured and where a majority of practicing ethnographers continue to reside, settings where, increasingly, time, volume of output, and tangibility of results are key factors determining what is valued. We see this among graduate students of the early 21st century, who are progressively more pressured to have solid publication records upon completing their degrees—a practice that encourages some advisors to discourage students from pursuing ethnographic research. Another consequence of this development is the gradual erosion of ethnographic standards as shorter durations of research and shortened pathways to confirmable findings are accepted, if not heralded, as measures of competency. Under such conditions, the invisible work of ethnography (Forsythe, 1999 ), and the associated belief that anyone can do it, amplifies its current fashionability in problematic ways.

This chapter provides a foundation for understanding ethnography as a research methodology and genre of research reporting. While celebrating ethnography’s flexibility and generative potential—indeed, its refusal to be contained within fixed definitions—I also present it as a distinct research tradition, guided by a series of evolving conventions and commitments. This emphasis on precision is motivated by what I see as a multipronged crisis within the transforming field of ethnographic research. Factors influencing this crisis include but are not limited to: (a) ethnography’s place within neoliberal universities and associated spaces where efforts toward increasing efficiency reign; (b) a “transdisciplinary romance with ethnography” (Kazubowski-Houston & Magnat, 2017 ) that, too often, leads undertrained and underinvested researchers to claim the label—thus, in my view, doing violence to ethnography in both a figurative and a literal sense (Ingold, 2014 ); and (c) increased institutional surveillance and “methodological conservatism,” which creates hostile environments for ethnographers seeking to have their work approved by oversight bodies and agencies (Lincoln, 2005 ). At the same time, ethnography has qualities that make it particularly well suited for grasping and representing complex social phenomena and the contentious bases of knowing during these difficult times. Methodologically, ethnography flourishes in the liminal spaces between research design and improvisation. Through their critical engagements with its sometimes troubled history, trained ethnographers tend to align with marginalized perspectives and the communities they emanate from. Representationally, ethnography refuses to reduce the social world to simplistic binaries or neatly bracketed findings. In the following pages, I elaborate on these and other qualities of the ethnographic enterprise. Specifically, I present ethnography as a distinct methodology—rooted in the professionalization of anthropology and, to a lesser degree, sociology as academic fields—with a particular set of defining attributes, paradigmatic observances, and research conventions.

Defining Ethnography

The term ethnography references both a research and an inscription (i.e., writing process to written product) practice. Ethnography is research in that it describes a methodology (distinguished from a research method in the section Ethnography as Methodology) usually conceptualized as involving participant observations within a community or field of study. 1 Thus, a person can speak of doing ethnographic research among Vermont maple sugarers (Lange, 2017 ) or among people participating in a translocal cultural phenomenon who may not even consciously identify as a group (Amit, 2000 ). At the same time, it is an inscription practice in that the products of ethnographic research—typically books like Edmund Leach’s classic Political Systems of Highland Burma (1954) or Riché J. Daniel Barnes’s Raising the Race (2016)—are referred to as ethnographies. 2

Typically, greater academic attention is given to discussions of ethnography as research. However, to the extent that evaluations of and inferences about research are derived from the resulting written account, this focus on ethnography as research may be overblown. Indeed, since at least its postmodern turn (see Clifford & Marcus, 1986 ; Marcus & Fischer, 1986 ), considerable attention has fallen on ethnography as a literary convention. Scholars have additionally argued that writing practices are integral to ethnographic data collection and analysis and therefore should not be treated separately (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 2011 ; Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005 ; Sanjeck, 1990 ). 3 Elaborating on a concept that I call ethnographic comportment , toward the close of this chapter, I argue that most researchers are guided by a “textual awareness” (Van Maanen, 2011 , p. 158)—an imagined end product that they are working toward—that influences them variously throughout all stages of an ethnographic project, from conception to publication. Nevertheless, if one is looking for a standard definition of ethnography, a research-oriented definition such as the one offered by Martyn Hammersley and Paul Atkinson (1995) is quite typical:

[Ethnography involves] participating, overtly or covertly in people’s daily lives for an extended period of time, watching what happens, listening to what is said, asking questions … [and] collecting whatever [other] data are available to throw light on the issues that are the focus of the research. (p. 1)

Such a simple, straightforward definition highlights ethnography’s resemblance to “the routine ways in which people make sense of the world everyday” (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1995 , p. 2)—thus making it appear to be something anyone can do. But to paraphrase something my colleague Carol A. Bailey once told me, no one would think of doing multiple linear regressions without statistical data analysis training, yet, quite regularly, people with no background in qualitative research claim to be doing ethnography (see also Schwandt, 2000 , p. 206n3). Commenting on the popularity of ethnography in consumer research, Patricia L. Sunderland and Rita M. Denny ( 2007 ) remarked,

A myriad of research techniques … (from the few-minute in-store intercept interview, to the one-hour “depth interview,” to the online focus group) have become redefined as “ethnographic” with barely any change in the underlying assumptions regarding method or analysis. Researchers have transformed themselves into “ethnographers” with few changes in practice beyond the name. (pp. 13–14)

Although these observations are specific to a single nonacademic arena, I argue that, even within the academy, the proliferation of ethnography warrants similar sentiments. In his book The Cosmopolitan Canopy (2011), Elijah Anderson defined folk ethnography as “a form of people watching that allows individuals informally to gather evidence in social interactions that supports their own viewpoints or transforms their commonsense understandings of social life” (p. xv). Although Anderson views this as a positive development, it concerns me that the distinction between folk ethnography and ethnography is blurring. In this chapter, I argue against the notion of ethnography as a qualitative research free-for-all, open for anyone, regardless of background or training, to undertake. As Diana E. Forsythe ( 1999 ) asserted, it is not “just a matter of common sense” (p. 130). Ethnography is a specific approach to research and writing about it, with a rich history and established yet evolving set of guiding principles. For those of us who take ethnography seriously, it involves training (usually through advanced coursework and mentorship), reflection, and accountability.

Historical Foundations of Ethnography

As a research tradition, ethnography’s roots are most firmly planted in the fields of anthropology and qualitative sociology: the former most often credited to the innovations of Polish-born, British-trained Bronislaw Malinowski and the latter usually attributed to a collection of researchers associated with the University of Chicago—commonly referred to as the Chicago School. Though these origin myths have been widely discussed and debated, and some treatments suggest ethnography began as early as the Greeks and Romans (Wax, 1971 ), I nevertheless cast ethnography as a relatively recent methodology, which came of age with the professionalization of both disciplines during the early decades of the 20th century.

In my chapter for the first edition of the Oxford Handbook of Qualitative Research , I discussed this history in great detail (see Harrison, 2014 ) and will therefore offer only a truncated version here. 4 During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, on both sides of the Atlantic, the nascent academic field of social/cultural anthropology crystallized around a reorientation away from the traditional model of armchair theorizing and toward a serious investment in ways of going about collecting and using data. 5 The various learned societies dedicated to anthropological interests that emerged during the 19th century relied primarily on the reports of colonial administrators, military officers, missionaries, traders, and other travelers for their information. The new class of professional anthropological intellectuals who came into being through these organizations prioritized the need for more formal—and less prejudiced, sensationalized, and unequivocally racist—standards of scientific reporting. In this interest, various sets of anthropological questionnaires and field guides were developed, initially for untrained travelers but, over time, increasingly toward the goal of fostering the most “precise and exacting” methods among field anthropologists (Urry, 1972 , p. 51). The most famous of these was Notes and Queries on Anthropology , which appeared in six iterations between 1874 and 1951 (Urry, 1972 ). Another effort to circumvent the limitations of untrained, biased, and otherwise disinterested reporting involved expeditions featuring teams of specialized experts—most notably the Cambridge Torres Straits expedition of 1898 (Stocking, 1983a ) and a series of privately funded and Bureau of American Ethnology–sponsored expeditions to the American Southwest occurring throughout the late 19th century (Judd, 1967 ).

Malinowski, the famed “founding father” of ethnography (Jones, 2010 ), came to anthropology after earning a doctorate in physics and mathematics from Jagiellonian University in Poland. He arrived in England—one of the key centers of anthropological thought—at precisely the right moment to benefit from the decades-long debates regarding appropriate ethnographic data collection methods that had been taking place. A year before his arrival, in a 1909 meeting of the principals from Oxford, Cambridge, and the London School of Economics, it was decided that the term ethnography would be used in specific reference to “descriptive accounts of non-literate peoples”—as distinct from the historical and comparative-based term ethnology (Radcliffe-Brown, 1952 , p. 276). We can thus mark this meeting as arguably the first collective effort to delineate ethnography as the principle data collection method within the rapidly professionalizing field. 6

Arriving in England, Malinowski immediately connected with a small circle of scholars, dedicated to anthropological interests, calling themselves the Cambridge School. This group included Alfred Cort Haddon, William H. R. Rivers, and Charles Seligman, all of whom had participated in the 1898 Torres Straits expedition. The quality of the various anthropological writing projects Malinowski had undertaken prior to landing in England—including what would become his first book, The Family among the Australian Aborigines (1913/1963)—undoubtedly facilitated his acceptance into this distinguished group. Still, Malinowski’s emergence as the most recognized figure in the development of ethnography can largely be attributed to timing. At the time of his arrival, members of the Cambridge School were already grappling with many of the ethnographic revelations that Malinowski would eventually put forward in his seminal work, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922/1966). Malinowski can be distinguished as the last member of the Cambridge School to conduct fieldwork prior to the outbreak of World War I (Stocking, 1983b , p. 82) and the first professionally trained anthropologist to carry out research according to the most recent methodological advances of the time (Kuper, 1996 , p. 7). Consequently, when Argonauts was published a few years after the war, it stood alone as an implementation and representation of the culmination of prewar Cambridge School theorizing.

Malinowski embarked on his South Pacific fieldwork in 1914—carrying with him the 1912 edition of Notes and Queries , which had been considerably revised by Rivers (Myers, 1923 ). After a 6-month “apprentice’s trail run” on the island of Mailu in southern New Guinea (Kuper, 1996 , p. 12), the young researcher would more famously carry out two extensive periods—of a year each, 1915–1916 and 1917–1918—in the Trobriand Islands. During his initial Mailu fieldwork, Malinowski realized that his research became more productive when isolated from the prejudicial influences of the European administrators, missionaries, and traders who were also present on the island. Writing about this experience in Argonauts , he recounted, “It was not until I was alone in the district that I began to make some headway” (Malinowski, 1922/1966 , p. 6). This revelation sparked one of Malinowski’s most notable contributions to the practice of ethnography, which George Stocking ( 1983b ) described as “a shift in the primary locus of investigation, from the deck of the mission ship or the verandah of the mission station to the teeming center of the village” (p. 93). Such a positional shift facilitated a corresponding adjustment to his ethnographic posture:

In this type of work, it is good for the Ethnographer sometimes to put aside camera, note book and pencil, and to join in himself in what is going on. 7 … Out of such plunges into the life of the native … I have carried away a distinct feeling that their behavior, their manner of being, in all sorts of tribal transactions, became more transparent and easily understandable than it had before. (Malinowski, 1922/1966 , pp. 21–22)

In his preface to Argonauts of the Western Pacific , esteemed anthropologist James George Frazier hailed it as a “remarkable record of anthropological research” by someone who had “lived as a native among the natives” (J. G. Frazier, 1922 / 1966 , p. vii). For his part, Malinowski was exceedingly deliberate in foregrounding his methodological “innovations.” Thus, the myth of Malinowski—as the first field researcher to voluntarily remove himself from colonial quarters, (essentially) cut off all ties with “civilization,” and immerse himself in the world of “savages” as a methodological imperative for understanding their world—soon took legs. His prescriptive methods for doing this included long-term residence by a trained researcher; learning the local language rather than relying on interpreters; collecting as much data as possible on as wide a range of activities as possible—from the spectacular and ceremonial to the everyday and mundane—and taking copious field notes; and, when possible, partaking in social activities as a participant observer.

One of the most rehearsed explanations of ethnography, contained within the pages of Argonauts , is Malinowski’s oft-cited goal of “grasp[ing] the native’s point of view” (Malinowski, 1922/1966 , p. 25). This decree to recognize and (to some degree) prioritize the subjectivity of non-Western peoples marked a transformative moment in how anthropology was practiced. No longer simply viewed as the objects of study, the perspectives of rational native actors provided the platform for developing anthropology’s relativist doctrines. By advocating for the internal logics underlying each culture, anthropology came to serve a critical role in exposing the prejudice and racism surrounding evaluations of cultural difference (Baker, 2010 ). 8 Together, Malinowski’s prescriptions amounted to a methodological manifesto (Strathern, 1987 ) that championed experiential modes of understanding, contextualization, and the distinction between ideal and actual behavior as signaling the capacity for agency within social structures.

In the most celebrated histories of anthropology, the idea of participant observation–based fieldwork, which is at the core of modern ethnography, came into being through these methodological advancements. Yet, the myth of the “Malinowskian Revolution” (Kuper, 1996 , p. 32) belies the tremendous effort and attention toward refining anthropological research methods that were taking place prior to his arrival in England, as well as across the Atlantic among Franz Boas and his students (see Harrison, 2014 ; Lassiter & Campbell, 2010 ). Although Malinowski was not singly responsible for inventing these ethnographic standards, his archetype status has been significant to their reification. Furthermore, his position during the interwar period as England’s “only master ethnographer” helped him to further cement his progenitor status (Kuper, 1996 , p. 1). 9 For most of the 20th century and now continuing into the 21st, the image of “going off” to a fieldwork site far removed from the university community one is a part of, for a minimum of 1 year, has been a rite of passage within sociocultural anthropology; and for much of this time, the importance of conducting research in non-Western societies—what some have critiqued as anthropology’s intrinsic process of Othering (Deloria, 1969 ; Magubane & Faris, 1985 )—was rationalized as “absolutely essential” to the development of an anthropological perspective (Mead, 1952 , p. 346).

Far and away the most celebrated ethnographic conventions practiced outside anthropology came from a collection of researchers associated with the University of Chicago’s department of sociology. Generally speaking, the Chicago School 10 formed through the combined influences of Malinowskian fieldwork methodologies and German phenomenological theory (Jones, 2010 ). Through their conceptualization of urban life as an assemblage of “natural areas” or “little communities,” researchers affiliated with the Chicago school, under the direction of Robert E. Park, imagined the city as a social laboratory through which to examine secular differences—primarily oriented around ethnicity and various forms of civic otherness. With an extensive background in newspaper work and having served as “a sort of secretary” to Tuskegee Institute founder and notable African American spokesman Booker T. Washington (Faris, 1967 , p. 28), Park arrived in Chicago in 1913 with keen interests in issues surrounding urban life, race relations, ethnic heterogeneity, and processes of assimilation. Soon thereafter, Park dedicated himself to training graduate students and, indeed, several of the most significant works to come out of the program during the interwar period were authored by his students (Blumer, 1998 ). 11

While ethnography has long-standing roots in sociology, its centrality to the discipline has never matched its position as the “hallmark methodology” of anthropology (Sunderland & Denny, 2007 , p. 13). From the outset, sociology’s ethnographic efforts were firmly intertwined with anthropology. 12 Thus, although Chicago sociologists gave a good deal of attention to particular aspects of methodological training, their most inspired forays into fieldwork were often characterized as a closer-to-home version of what anthropologists do. 13 We can see this in Park’s justifications for the kinds of research he was most interested in advancing. In an important essay advocating for the scientific value of researching the city, Park explained:

Anthropology, the science of man, has been mainly concerned up to the present with the study of primitive peoples. But civilized man is quite as interesting an object of investigation.… The same patient methods of observation which anthropologists like Boas and Lowie have expended on the study of the life and manners of the North American Indian might be even more fruitfully employed in the investigation of the customs, beliefs, social practices, and general conceptions of life prevalent in Little Italy on the lower North Side in Chicago, or in recording the more sophisticated folkways of the inhabitants of Greenwich Village and the neighborhood of Washington Square, New York. (Park, 1925/1967 , p. 3)

Years later, in describing his own attraction to this ethnographic tradition, Howard S. Becker ( 1999 ) explained, “You had all the romance of anthropology but could sleep in your own bed and eat decent food” (p. 8).

Still, the model of urban-based fieldwork put forth by Chicago School sociologists was an important predecessor to the way ethnography is thought of and practiced today. For much of the 20th century, anthropological field research focused on small, isolated communities where it was possible to get to know most members, map out kinship relations, and, at least, imagine that one was getting a comprehensive portrayal of society. 14 In the early 21st century, virtually all ethnographers adopt a topic-oriented approach, which focuses on one or more specified aspects of and/or social networks within what are understood to be much more complex and globally interconnected societies. As a result of the metropolitan settings of their research, urban sociologists, unlike their colleagues in anthropology, were compelled to acknowledge that they were dealing with specific dimensions of social life and/or subcultures that were situated within larger societal contexts.

The origins of ethnography as a professionalized methodological (research) and representational (writing) practice are most squarely situated within the discipline of anthropology. Recognizing these foundations in no way implies that ethnography is the exclusive purview of anthropology or, for that matter, that anthropologists should have exclusive right in determining what does and does not qualify as ethnography (Atkinson, 2017 ). Indeed, some of the most significant methodological considerations leading up to ethnography’s now-standard insistence on reflexivity (see the section Ethnographic Comportment) issued from the application of sociology’s symbolic interactionist theories to circumstances surrounding the ethnographic encounter (Berreman, 1962 ; Junker, 1960 ); and today many of the most exciting works surrounding ethnography issue from transdisciplinary spaces. I therefore echo Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston and Virginie Magnat’s ( 2017 ) call for “coalition and collaboration between like-minded ethnographers across the social-sciences, the arts, and the humanities” (p. 11). Yet these historical foundations continue to serve as methodological anchors for ethnographers.

Ethnography as Methodology

In discussing ethnography, commentators sometimes incorrectly treat it as a method rather than a methodology. The difference is significant. A method is simply a tool or technique used to collect and/or analyze data. Ethnographers typically utilize a variety of tools and techniques during the course of their research, including but not limited to establishing rapport; selecting informants; using a range of interview and/or focus group forms; making observations—both participatory and nonparticipatory—and writing field notes based on them; conducting surveys, genealogies, and domain analyses; mapping fields; transcribing texts; and coding data. 15 In contrast, methodologies are established norms of inquiry that are by and large adhered to within distinct research traditions. A methodology, therefore, involves theoretical, ethical, political, and at times moral orientations to research, which guide the decisions researchers make, including their choice of methods. Accordingly, it can be thought of as a philosophy of research practice, analysis, and description. Later in the chapter, I detail three of the most fundamental methods that ethnographers commonly utilize—namely, participant observation, field-note writing, and ethnographic interviews. However, first I outline several key attributes that, in my view, contribute to any instance of research being ethnographic and then highlight three philosophical positions—or what I call paradigms —that ethnographers orient themselves in relation to when conducting research.

Ethnographic Attributes

In this section I outline five essential priorities that distinguish ethnography. I offer these, in part, as a corrective to what I regard as the casual and commonplace misappropriation of it as a stand-in for all types of qualitative research (Kazubowski-Houston & Magnat, 2017 ). Building on my earlier definition, these attributes should be regarded as important orienting principles that scholars trained in ethnography and aware of its historicity hold in common.

Ethnography and Culture

Harry F. Wolcott asserted that the critical attribute distinguishing ethnography from other forms of qualitative research is a focus on describing and interpreting cultural behavior. In other words, at its core an ethnography must include an intentional engagement with and “working resolution” toward understanding culture (Wolcott, 1987 , p. 45). Wolcott called this ethnographic intent . The specifics of this “working resolution” may vary. Culture, according to Stephen A. Tyler ( 1969 ), provides the framework for recognizing and describing how “people make order out of what appears … to be utter chaos” (p. 6). Yet for the inquiring ethnographer, culture might be conceptualized as being revealed through people’s behaviors, the expressed ideals that guide such behaviors, or the discovery of underlying frameworks through which situational choices are made. Each of these, or some combination, can have implications for how ethnographic researchers go about their craft.

Debates over a precise definition of culture notwithstanding, ethnography has traditionally rested on a principle of cultural comparison, perhaps best reflected in the anthropological maxim of “making the strange familiar and the familiar strange.” For earlier generations of ethnographers—primarily anthropologists and sociologists (see the section Historical Foundations of Ethnography)—this was accomplished by traveling to starkly different social settings, which brought about the inevitable comparisons with the home “culture” (as the term was then understood 16 ). As the lens of ethnographic inquiry expanded to include spaces and places that did not initially appear to be particularly distinct from the ethnographer’s home (Messerschmidt, 1981 ), this comparative mode of sense-making became more implicit than explicit. The native ethnographer, for instance, conducting research in her own community, would appear to start from the same cultural foundations as the people she (participant) observes. Yet, as a trained ethnographer—someone who has read cultural theory and been exposed to several cross-cultural ethnographic studies—she makes sense of her observations in relation to the wealth of documented scholarship on cultural diversity. 17 Thus, she is less likely to generalize distinct cultural practices as the “normal way” people do things and more apt to frame her observations and understandings in conversation with foundational and recent thinking about culture.

Ethnography and Contextualization

Ethnographies prioritize contextualization, meaning that particular people and the situations they find themselves in are best understood in relation to broader factors that impact them—including, but not limited to, historical, local, political, economic, and religious factors. Anthropology, in particular, has historically recognized interconnections and mutual influences between various aspects of social life—or what anthropologists call holism . Following from this, ethnographers take an open-minded, inductive approach to what might potentially be considered data. In other fields of research where deductive reasoning —that is, the idea that truth follows from a sequence of conditional premises that can be empirically verified—is prioritized, efforts are made to silence external noises in the interest of focusing on what researchers determine are the most salient factors and variables. The inductive reasoning that guides ethnographic research starts from the assumption that such noises have consequence—they not only impact social conditions but also, at times, reflect deeper structural workings of culture.

Contextualization also impacts situational constructions of meaning. To illustrate what I mean here, I turn to the work of Clifford Geertz ( 1973 ), who famously defined ethnography as “an elaborate venture in … ‘thick description’ ” (p. 6). Referencing a thought experiment conducted by philosopher Gilbert Ryle ( 1971 ), Geertz elaborated on thick description through the example of a rapidly contracting eyelid. Whether such action amounts to an involuntary twitch of the eye or a “conspiratorial signal to a friend” (i.e., a wink) is entirely contextual. Accordingly, a thin description of behavior—“her left eye blinked”—tells us very little. Through understanding such things as the circumstances under which the blink occurred, the intention of the blinker, the prevalent social codes that may or may not mark the blink as meaningful, and whether this meaning was received and understood, we get a better sense of what is going on. Thick description, then, in the words of anthropologist Karin Narayan ( 2012 ), can be summarized as “layering meaning into closely observed details” (p. 8). Noticing and describing something as subtle and instantaneous as a blink requires careful attention to detail; it means observing social life with the same heightened sensitivity that we use when perceiving works of art (Willis, 2000 ). Yet, without proper contextualization, such descriptions have limited ethnographic value.

Ethnography as Iterative

In addition to being governed by inductive principles—meaning that research “starts from the data rather than from a hypothesis to be tested, or even from a fixed research question” (Hammersley, 2008 , p. 69)—ethnography proceeds as an iterative mode of inquiry. By this I mean that ethnographers continually re-engage with their research questions, fundamental assumptions, methods of inquiry, and accumulated data toward the goal of refining their work—which can sometimes include making a radical change in direction. Consequently, ethnographic research designs must be flexible enough to allow for the expected surprises and misadventures that arise when an individual (serving as a research instrument) engages in the daily lives of other people—who are inevitably continuing along the unforeseeable journeys that are their lives—for a prolonged period of time. Even at its most scientific, ethnography is resolutely a human science conducted in a real-world laboratory. As such, the ethnographic enterprise is saturated with circumstances, situations, and personalities that are unanticipated and often uncontrollable. Barbara Tedlock ( 2000 ) elaborated:

No matter how much care the ethnographer devotes to the project, its success depends upon more than individual effort. It is tied to outside forces, including local, national, and sometimes even international relationships that make research possible as well as to a readership that accepts the endeavor as meaningful. (p. 466)

Indeed, one of the most predictable aspects of ethnographic research is its unpredictability, so much so that statements along the lines of “I began my research intending to study X but wound up studying Y ” are now standard ethnographic writing conventions. I would go so far as to suggest that an absence of such sentiments (i.e., everything working out according to plan) is greeted with more suspicion than their presence.

Recognizing how ethnographic data and interpretation evolve simultaneously, James Spradley ( 1980 ) offered a cyclical model of ethnographic inquiry—what he calls the ethnographic research cycle —as distinct from the linear research models (i.e., define the problem, formulate hypotheses, gather and analyze data, draw conclusions) found in the other social sciences. According to Spradley ( 1980 ), each phase of ethnographic inquiry (data collection and analysis) informs new questions:

The cycle cannot wait until you have collected a large amount of data.… You need to analyze your fieldnotes after each period of fieldwork in order to know what to look for during the next period of participant observation. (pp. 33–34)

As such, a strict sequence of prescribed methods will not suffice. Ethnography achieves virtue and vitality through its lack of prescription, by continuously straddling the line between structured research design and improvised inquisitive adventure. Gary Alan Fine and James G. Deegan ( 1996 ) described ethnography as “a puzzle of mysterious design” that is “only known when the researcher has decided that it is close enough to completion” (p. 441). Through iterative processes of tacking back and forth between experiences and reflections, ethnographers piece together their research projects.

Ethnography then should be thought of as involving iterative–inductive–inscription practices . 18 It is iterative in the sense that it involves recurrently engaging with theory, data, and analysis (O’Dell & Willim, 2011 ); it is inductive in that ethnographers approach this engagement with open minds and few preconceptions about where data will lead them; and it is inscriptive in foregrounding writing as its principal mode of recording data, analyzing data, and representing social life (Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005 ).

Ethnography and Empathy

The ethnographic project is variously empathetic. Through intersubjective engagements—most notably via participant observation—ethnographers aspire to “imaginatively experience the feelings, thoughts, and situation” (Davis, 2014 , p. 6) of people they work among. As such, ethnography encourages a degree of intimacy between researcher and researched that, at its best, recognizes and appreciates their mutual implication in the production of knowledge (Lassiter, 2005 ; Sluka & Robben, 2012 ). Ethnographers’ commitments to the people and communities they conduct research among are both moral and political. Academically situated ethnographers—on the basis of their training, disciplinary identities, and institutional affiliations—are mandated to protect the interests of the people and communities they work among by following institutional and disciplinary guidelines surrounding research, most notably those pertaining to informed consent, deception , and confidentiality . 19 In addition, trained and invested ethnographers recognize their charge to reveal, unsettle, and at times undermine the institutions and forces through which social inequalities are maintained and perpetuated. Thus, ethnographers are consistently attentive to the interests of disempowered groups. When working among such groups, these commitments to social justice result in alliances and recognitions of researched communities’ roles in evaluating the quality of ethnographies (Harrison, 2018 ). In contrast, when working among power-wielding groups—what Laura Nader ( 1972 ) called studying up —ethnographers should feel some obligation to use their position and access to uncover and even disrupt the workings of power. This can take many forms. However, its absence—for example, using conventional ethnographic methods for the explicit purpose of perpetuating social inequalities—in these enlightened times 20 is simply not ethnography.

This notion of ethnographic empathy also pertains to the reception of works ethnographers produce. Ethnographic authors write toward the of goal of enabling their readers to envision themselves walking in someone else’s shoes and, what is more, to grasp people’s perspectives and understand their behaviors as resulting from alternative (or previously unrecognized) cultural logics. Ethnographers’ written accounts communicate person-to-person sentiments—inviting readers to imagine the situated interests and actions of someone else. Resembling, to some degree, how a politician might use a handful of personal stories to communicate something about the state of a nation during a national address, 21 the most evocative ethnographic writings utilize sentimentality and emotion in detailing individual’s stories and particular episodes. As such, their representational power lies in their informational richness and ability to communicate affect , as opposed to other research traditions that prioritize statistical validity or theoretical applicability. Indeed, by providing compelling testimonies, which embrace the emotionality and messiness of real life (Law, 2004 ), ethnographies do more to complicate and therefore advance existing theories than to straightforwardly confirm them.

Ethnography and Narrative

Storytelling saturates ethnography. Ethnographers collect stories from people firsthand, on their own terms, or in such close proximity to them that they powerfully reflect something about the way culturally situated actors move through their worlds (Turner, 2007 ). As researchers, we invite such stories through open-ended ethnographic interviews (see the section Ethnographic Interviews) where participants are asked to share their personal histories, their perspectives, and/or what is most meaningful to them about a given topic. Ethnographers are also told personal narratives while building rapport and deeply hanging out (Wogan, 2004 )—for example, when getting a ride home from an open-microphone event (Harrison, 2009 , p. 64) or while sharing cramped living spaces (Holmes, 2013 ). In addition, ethnographers are regularly featured actors in the stories they recount. Contemporary ethnography mandates degrees of reflexivity and transparency, both of which demand that researchers share aspects of their personal stories and provide some accounting of the research experiences that led them to know what they know. These stories—often culled from interview transcripts or field journals or pieced together from various sources (Brand, 2007 )—get recirculated, re-created, or re-placed, sometimes verbatim, in ethnographic texts.

Ethnographers are foremost writers. A primary aspect of their data collection involves writing field notes (see the section Field-Note Writing). In crafting these and other data into finished works, they indulge ethnography’s aspirations and ability to reach broad audiences and to communicate sophisticated meanings through artful storytelling and other experimental modes of academic writing. As a thickly descriptive research genre, ethnographic texts may, at times, appear to threaten too much information; however, when done well, the layered meanings activated through such dense contextualization circle back to show their relevance. Accordingly, ethnographic writing should be undertaken as a writerly endeavor—meaning that authors acknowledge the intelligence of their readers and, therefore, allow space for them to construct their own meanings and make their own sense of certain aspects of an ethnographic account. 22

The Story of the College Visit

A few years after completing my dissertation, I was invited to speak to an anthropology class at a small liberal arts college where I was giving a guest lecture. The students had read a short piece—recounting the story of a gathering in Golden Gate Park following an open-microphone event—that would become the introduction to my first book, Hip Hop Underground (Harrison, 2009 ). 23 I spent a few minutes talking about my research in relation to the passage and then opened the floor for questions. A few questions in, a young man raised his hand and began explaining how he had grown up in San Francisco, had probably “partied” on the same Golden Gate Park picnic tables that I mentioned in my piece, and was someone who considered hip-hop close to his heart. At this point, he looked away, focusing on the paper on his desk and, in thoughtful, measured tones explained that whenever he read an academic piece on hip-hop he found himself getting defensive. Mine was the first piece he had read where he did not have that feeling. “That’s ethnography,” I said.

Paradigmatic Plasticity

Throughout the course of their research and writing, ethnographers orient themselves around certain theoretical, ethical, and political commitments. At their foundation, these commitments involve questions of ontology (concerning the nature of reality), epistemology (how we know what we know), and axiology (relating to morals and values). Following Patricia Leavy ( 2009 ), I use paradigm as an umbrella term that encompasses the range of philosophical stances, assumptions, and goals that surround research endeavors. Although the philosophies guiding ethnographic research are quite often unstated, at moments when they come into conflict the results can be explosive.

The Story of the Conference Incident

Several years ago, I attended an interdisciplinary conference where, in response to a few last-minute cancelations, the organizers decided to combine two panels. This made sense at the time. First, although the panel topics were different, they overlapped under the broader theme of the conference. Second, a single panel would attract a larger audience for all of the presentations—indeed, by the time I arrived it was standing room only. Last, such a move would spare one presenter from the awkwardness of being the lone panelist in a 90-minute session. However, in deciding to combine panels, the organizers overlooked or chose to ignore the paradigmatic differences informing the respective audiences that would be drawn to each panel. This did not become an issue until the final presentation: a masterful explication on the functionality of various strategies for alleviating conflict among competing social groups. During the question-and-answer period, an audience member—who had obviously come to see presentations initially slated for the other panel—questioned the researcher’s right to reduce people’s behaviors to such all-too-neat formulations, the evidentiary basis on which his claims were being made, as well as his investment in the communities through which, in making his academic career, he appeared to be profiting from. Chaos ensued as the two parties went back and forth in a heated exchange—with the accused researcher at one point even blurting out, “You don’t know me!” Thankfully, there were only a few minutes left in the session. As the panel came to a close, various colleagues approached the two combatants to endorse their action and/or console, as appropriate.

As a research tradition, ethnography straddles multiple paradigms. With its roots in anthropology—regarded as the most humanistic of social sciences and the most scientific of humanities (Redfield, 1953 )—such paradigmatic plasticity is to be expected. Yet, as ethnographic practices have migrated to a wide range of academic disciplines and interdisciplinary spaces, the potential for paradigmatic disputes over what is and what is not “good” and/or legitimate research has become more pronounced.

By my reckoning, both parties involved in the conference incident would rightly consider their work ethnographic. Yet where activities of research (i.e., methods) may appear similar, the foundational philosophies of knowledge (i.e., epistemologies) and ideas about how it should be applied through endeavors labeled “research” can look radically different.

In considering different paradigmatic orientations surrounding qualitative inquiry, Thomas Schwandt ( 2000 ) highlighted three areas of concern that are instructive for my discussion of ethnography. I adapt them here:

Cognitive concerns surrounding how to define, justify, and legitimize claims to understanding.

Social concerns regarding (in this case) the goals of ethnography.

Moral concerns as to how to “envision and occupy the ethical space” between ethnographers and those they research in responsible, obligatorily aware, and status conscious ways (see Schwandt, 2000 , p. 200).

Before briefly outlining some of the paradigms that surround ethnography, I offer a few caveats. Whereas defining and labeling paradigmatic frameworks is useful, it would be a mistake to give too much attention to trying to fit a particular researcher or even an instance of ethnographic research neatly into one category. Ethnographic experience is perpetually ephemeral, meaning that at times ethnographers are prone to move, transform, and shape shift between different paradigmatic classifications. Attempts to categorize also tend to highlight differences over time and disciplinary space. While differences clearly exist—the above-mentioned conference incident stands as a testament to this—the need to neatly place individuals or projects in particular boxes closes down the possibility of also seeing commonalities and furthermore belies the nuanced nature and theoretic eclecticism of ethnographic inquiry. Nonetheless, in what follows, I discuss three philosophical traditions that ethnographers might move between and draw from as paradigmatic resources.

Positivism is premised on a belief in what is referred to as naive realism —that is, the notion that there is a reality out there that can be grasped through sensory perception. As such, it holds empirical data—that which is produced though direct observations—as definitive evidence through which to construct claims to truth. In doing so, positivism prioritizes objectivity, assuming that it is possible for a researcher to detach him- or herself from values, interests, or the clouding contamination of bias and prejudice. Following this formula, good research is achieved through conventional rigor—that is, dutifully following a prescribed, systematic series of steps surrounding data accumulation and analysis. In that positivism recognizes a fundamental (capital “T”) Truth, which it is believed researchers can apprehend, researchers anchored in this tradition are more prone to concern themselves with questions of transferability (i.e., can the findings from one setting be applied to another?) and generalizability (i.e., can the findings from a particular context be generalized to the whole?) on the assumption that such Truth has potential relevance for a broad range of social circumstances and cultural contexts. Although few, if any, contemporary ethnographers would define themselves as strict positivists, it is nonetheless important to discuss positivism as foundational to any social scientific enterprise. To some extent, outlining the tenets of strict positivism may be useful in explaining what most ethnographers are not. However, before dismissing it too quickly, I should point out that, particularly with regard to the mandates of certain gatekeepers of credible research reporting, ethnography is not as far removed from its positivist principles as some of its practitioners would like to think. Postpositivist orientations 24 toward valuing empirical evidence, making efforts toward detached objectivism, and deductive reasoning continue to carry weight, even if researchers are less confident about their conclusions.

Interpretivism

Interpretivism, which issues from an acknowledgment of the constructed nature of all social reality, recognizes no single all-encompassing Truth, but rather multiple (small “t”) truths that are the products of human subjectivities. Thus, cultural and contextual specifics are critical to understanding, and inductive reasoning becomes the privileged path to making sense of unwieldy social realities. Reality, which is shaped by experience, thus becomes something to be interpreted. Such interpretivism sees human action as inherently meaningful with meanings being processual, temporal, and historically unfinished. The subjectivity of the ethnographer is quite consequential here. Under any form of interpretivism, the outcomes of researcher bias are acknowledged. Sometimes efforts are made to mitigate researchers’ subjectivities. Such techniques might involve reflexive journaling, inventorying subjectivities, and other attempts to manage and track bias (Schwandt, 2000 , p. 207n11). Yet, increasingly, interpretivist approaches accept that within ethnography the human is the research instrument and, as such, cultural, social, and personal frames of reference are inescapable.

Critical Research

The critical research paradigm focuses on the workings of power, with attention to axes including (but not limited to) race, gender, ethnicity, age, class, sexuality, and differential abilities. As opposed to the positivist stance of neutrality and detachment, critical researchers distinguish themselves by their personal and sometimes emotional investment in the welfare of the individuals and communities they work among. Critical researchers are committed to using their research to empower such communities by working with them to create meaningful social change. 25 As such, they aspire to make the processes surrounding research transparent to both the communities they work among and their various audiences. Critical perspectives emerged in connection with various social movements of the 1960s and 1970s and, accordingly, are often fashioned as a form of scholar activism. Recently, participant action and collaboration have become key methodological imperatives shaping the relationships formed around various critical research projects. Through such developments, questions regarding who initiates research, controls its direction, and owns its products have become vitally important.

Ethnographers do not just take part in the daily lives of the people they conduct research among; as a consequence of their participation, they impact people’s lives and, in turn, are implicated in them. It is therefore difficult to separate cognitive, social, and moral concerns surrounding research. All are influenced by the research paradigm(s) the ethnographer observes. Paradigmatic orientations affect the entire ethnographic process, starting with the ways research is conceived of and designed, what qualifies as data, and ultimately how such data are treated.

Through the previous discussion of paradigms and essential attributes, I have drawn attention to ethnography as a research methodology, as opposed to a method. Again, this distinction is important to my effort to differentiate ethnography from qualitative field research more generally. Nevertheless, when someone mentions doing ethnographic research, a handful of research activities (or methods) come to mind. These include having sustained contact with a community of people through participant observation, writing field notes, and (usually) interviewing. In the following sections, I give each of these research conventions additional consideration.

Participant Observation

Participant observation, as the term suggests, refers to a research disposition somewhere between full participation, just like (or as) a member of a community, and strictly observing. While participant observation is often conceptualized as a location on a continuum between these two extremes—with ideally some level of balance 26 —I believe it is better thought of as a simultaneous process that oscillates between varying degrees of participation and observation. Such oscillations occur both situationally and temporally. In the case of the latter, they might take place in the context of a particular event or more generally over the course of different research phases. Participant observation has historically been championed as providing the virtues of both an insider’s (participant) and an outsider’s (observer) perspective. As a foundation of ethnographic understanding, a discussion of this insider/outsider binary is instructive even if such neat distinctions rarely, if ever, exist in the lived world.

Whereas a recognized goal of ethnography is to grasp people’s understandings of their world, since its inception the primary means of achieving this goal has been through experiential understanding. Writing in his introduction to Argonauts , Malinowski (1922/1966, p. 5) recalled that, to “get … the hang of tribal life,”

I had to learn how to behave, and to a certain extent, I acquired “the feeling” for native good and bad manners. With this, and with the capacity of enjoying their company and sharing some of their games and amusements, I began to feel that I was indeed in touch with the natives, and this is certainly the preliminary condition of being able to carry on successful field work. (p. 8)

Yet to simply grasp the native’s point of view is often not enough. Ethnographers have long recognized that “those cultural features of a particular society that are the most deeply ingrained are the least likely to be explicated and questioned by native members themselves” (Wengle, 1988 , p. xvii). As a consequence of ethnocentrism —that is, the tendency for all people to position their own cultural beliefs and practices at the center of their worldview (i.e., to see them as “normal”)—native members of a cultural group are at times blind to many of the most salient aspects of their lifeways. 27 Thus, a flexible and situated position somewhere between an insider and an outsider is typically upheld as ideal.

As a practice, participant observation involves an inherent critique of interviewing. Although interviewing is fundamental to most ethnographic projects, advocates of participant observation are quick to point out that, if the goal is to understand behaviors and worldviews in their cultural context, interviews alone will not suffice. There is usually some disjuncture between what people do and what they say they do. At one level, this can be seen as a distinction between ideal and actual behavior. In an interview setting, people are more likely to shade their representations of behaviors toward cultural ideals. For example, studies point out the tendency among Americans to underreport the amount of alcohol they consume (Rathje & Murphy, 1992 ). Whether consciously underreported or not, this pattern is likely connected to the cultural ideal against drinking too much. Yet even in circumstances where a strong cultural ideal is not in play, people’s behaviors amount to more than what they choose or are able to tell an interviewer in the context of an interview. Native language speakers, for example, would have considerable difficulty explaining the rules to their language or how they know what they know without additional linguistic training. Even in a situation where both conditions are met (someone is aware and can explain ), an interviewee must make decisions about what to emphasize and what to ignore or gloss over. Such choices might lead them to steer clear of topics that the interviewer would find salient. 28

To return to the drinking example, in particular settings where the ability to consume a lot of alcohol is linked to status, it may be likely that quantities will be overreported. Of course, such settings are usually informal, are semiexclusive, and involve peer groups—for example, the stereotypical morning after the college fraternity party. Another advantage of participant observation over interviewing alone is that it provides access to these interior spaces. Fieldworkers achieve this by locating such spaces, gaining access (including building rapport), and, notably, spending time there. The famous Hawthorne studies on worker productivity found that people tend to alter their behavior for short periods of time under the scrutiny of a researcher or observer (Landsberger, 1958 ). Such reactivity can jeopardize ethnography’s aspirations for naturalistic inquiry. Thus, an ideal, if nearly unattainable, goal of participant observation is that the researcher becomes familiar enough within the research setting that everyday life proceeds as if he or she was not there. Factors surrounding this include duration of time in a setting, resemblance between researcher and members of the researched community, and level of participation.

Duration of Time in the Setting

The general rule is that the longer a researcher stays in “the field,” the more accustomed people become to his or her presence—not to mention the greater the understanding of what is going on. Yet this is conditional. Wolcott ( 1987 ) pointed out that, “based on any one researcher’s skill, sensitivity, problem, and setting, optimum periods of fieldwork may vary” (p. 39). Nevertheless, it is worth noting that within anthropology the Malinowski-derived standard has been a minimum of 1 year in the field.

Resemblance between Researcher and Members of the Researched Community

This resemblance includes both physical and social resemblances. Greater resemblance, in theory, facilitates “life as usual,” whereas notable differences are a perpetual reminder that there is a researcher present. Some of the most recognizable differences concern race, language proficiency, decisions regarding self-presentation, and, in certain instances, age and gender.

Level of Participation

This, in part, depends on the researcher’s aspirations—for example, a researcher may aspire to a stance that, at different times, involves full participation or minimum participation (Junker, 1960 ). At the same time, and in conjunction with the previously noted factors, the various communities researchers engage have differing levels of accessibility and inclinations toward hospitality (e.g., insisting that someone “join in”); and beyond language alone, researchers have different competencies 29 —all of which can impact their level of participation.

In sum, participant observation is simultaneously the most fundamental, complex, and uncertain method of ethnographic research. Its temporal parameters can range from strictly designated fieldwork outings—for example, a few hours in the field on a weekday afternoon—to an all-consuming living experience (24 hours a day) spanning several years. Its spatial parameters can be as narrow as a Midwest college bar (Spradley & Mann, 1975 ), as broad as multiple sites across a global landscape (Wulff, 1998 ), and as amorphous as translocal (Gupta & Ferguson, 1997 ) and virtual (Nardi, 2010 ) fields of activity. 30 While a good deal of planning goes into participant observation research projects, the combination of its ill-defined parameters and the fact that it plays out in the lived world render it difficult to forecast and, consequently, a largely improvised endeavor.

Field-Note Writing

A second principal method of ethnographic research is the creation and management of ethnographic field notes. These systematic in-the-field writings are inextricably linked to participant observation in that they serve as the primary means of recording the detailed observations and insights gleaned through such experiences. Accordingly, the quality and character of field-note writing have implications on an ethnographer’s ability to accurately and effectively report research findings. 31 Historically, field notes received little methodological attention. Like ethnography more generally, their resemblance to people’s everyday activities—particularly the act of keeping a personal journal or diary—cultivated the belief that instructions to simply “write down everything you see and hear” would suffice. In the literature that has since emerged on field-note writing, there is no consensus on a single correct method. I would advise any researcher to use the available methodological prescripts as guidelines but to develop particular routines and procedures that align with their own best writing habits as well as the specific circumstances of research. Nevertheless, a handful of best practices consistently show up in the literature and together illustrate why field-note writing and keeping a diary are not one and the same.

Schedule a significant amount of time each day or soon after each fieldwork “outing” to write field notes. Details fade with the passage of time, so do not unnecessarily delay field-note writing. In a full-immersion fieldwork situation—where participant observation comprises the entirety of one’s living experience—this practice of writing field notes (i.e., articulating and reflecting on observations and experiences) can be thought of as the major nonparticipatory endeavor that the researcher consistently engages in.

Employ jottings or “scratch notes” (Sanjek, 1990 , p. 96)—that is, quickly scribbled words or phrases, written in the context of participant observing, intended to jog one’s memory when writing. A researcher should always carry a small notebook or some equivalent jot-recording technology (e.g., a small handheld recorder). Additionally, when observing/experiencing the world with the intention of documenting it through field-note writing, it is important to rely on all one’s senses and not merely vision alone. Sounds, smells, tastes, and touches can all be powerful means to creating scenes on a page.

Organize different approaches to field-note writing categorically. For example, Emerson et al. (2011, pp. 57–79) discussed four general field-note subcategories: (a) descriptions based on concrete sensory details of physical spaces, people, objects, or actions, (b) dialogues between people, (c) characterizations portraying how a person acts and lives, and (d) narratives involving either sketches (i.e., snapshots) of a setting/character or episodes illustrated through continuous action and interaction. In all of these categories, it is important for the field-note writer to distinguish between that which is concrete and/or directly observed—for example, verbatim quotes—and that which is inferred, approximated, or logically assumed (Bailey, 2017 ). Field notes can additionally take the form of methodological notes (highlighting research techniques used and/or planned), analytic notes (periodic forays into conceptual understandings that strive to approximate professional writing 32 ), and personal notes (therapeutic and potentially revealing outlets for discussing one’s relationships, feelings, and emotions).

Ethnographic Interviews

Ethnographers typically conduct interviews as a primary method of research. However, whereas participant observation is so central to ethnography that some well-practiced scholars might be forgiven for simply—and in my view, mistakenly—equating the two, interview-based research and ethnography are distinctly different (Becker & Geer, 1957 ; Lamont & Swidler, 2014 ). Ethnographers, like most qualitative researchers, conduct interviews, but, unlike participant observation, interviews alone do not come close to approximating ethnography.

Ethnographic interviewing is distinct from what I will call general interview-based research in several ways. First, ethnographic interviews typically take place after a researcher has been in the field for some period of time. Ethnographers do not enter the field assuming they know what is most important; firsthand experience in a social arena is thought to facilitate better interview questions (O’Reilly, 2012 ). It is furthermore presumed that a level of familiarity between researcher and researched, and perhaps even mutual respect, leads to better research collaborations.

Second, ethnographers understand and at times analyze interviews as speech events—meaning that an interview is more than just a transcript of questions and answers. Contextual factors including (but not limited to) place, time, body language, fluidity of dialogue, and prior relationship between interviewer and interviewee may all have a bearing on the way an interview plays out (O’Reilly, 2012 ). In fact, an ethnographer may find as much value in what a person chooses not to talk about as in what they emphasize. Additionally, the texture of statements—such things as inflection, accent, volume, and cadence—combined with context, can often alter the literal meaning of what is said.

Finally, some ethnographers consider everyday dialogue with people in the field as a form of informal interviewing. If an interview is defined as a consciously initiated verbal exchange through which a researcher—primarily via questions and answers—learns from the people they conduct research among about a given topic, we must be cognizant of the fact that, during the course of participant observation–based fieldwork, these types of exchanges take place all the time. At what point does asking someone how to take the bus downtown or inquiring, over coffee, about why someone did not join his or her sister in visiting a relative turn into an interview? The point is, with participant observation research, these distinctions are conditional and often undefined.

Participant observation, field-note writing, and ethnographic interviewing are by no means the only research methods ethnographers employ. The data collection techniques of ethnographic research are often determined pragmatically in relation to theoretical orientations, research questions, and the availability and appropriateness of various options. Ethnographers also gather and analyze pieces of material culture, make nonparticipatory behavioral observations; record videos; take photographs; engage in community mapping; conduct surveys, genealogies, and domain analyses; and examine archival documents, censuses, and various media materials, in addition to a range of other methods. Nevertheless, participant observations, the field notes they inspire, and interviewing comprise the core practices of most ethnographic researchers.

Ethnographic Comportment

As a final framework for understanding ethnography and what distinguishes it from other forms of participant observation–based field research, I introduce the idea of ethnographic comportment as a politics of positionality, which bears on an ethnographer’s conduct and demeanor throughout the research and writing process. The critical awarenesses that underly ethnographic comportment, in many respects, are extensions of ethnography’s now-standard mandate for reflexivity. Generally speaking, reflexivity in ethnography amounts to an awareness of “one’s own role in the construction of social life as [ethnographic research] unfolds” (O’Reilly, 2012 , p. 11). It involves “a continual internal dialogue and critical self-evaluation” regarding one’s positionality, assumptions, and agendas (Berger, 2015 , p. 220). The origins of reflexivity can be traced to ethnographers’ postwar rise in self-consciousness (Nash & Wintrob, 1972 ), which was fully realized with anthropology’s 1980s postmodern turn (Clifford & Marcus, 1986 ; Marcus & Fischer, 1986 ). In the early 21st century, reflexivity is thought of as both an important aspect of ethnographic knowledge production and a means to assessing research accountability and validity. Trained ethnogra phers are well aware of this—to the point, perhaps, where reflexivity becomes embodied knowledge or a part of who we are.

Ethnographic training also includes familiarity with ethnography’s history and key debates (McGranahan, 2014 ). This history began during the colonial era at a time when, according to Kathleen Gough ( 1968 ), “Western nations were making their final push to bring practically the whole pre-industrial non-Western world under their political and economic control” (p. 401). Anthropologists, particularly, are well schooled in this history and, as a foundation of contemporary disciplinary training, debate the extent to which past ethnographers were willingly and/or unwillingly complicit in furthering it (see Lewis, 2013 ). Ethnographers working in sociology observe a similar tradition of researching marginalized urban communities (Vidich & Lyman, 2000 ) and representing them in ways, or through analytical categories, that were often not consistent with their self-understandings and/or best interests.

Training in ethnography should also incorporate considerations of the power dynamics that continue to shape ethnographic encounters (Koivunen, 2010 ; Wolfe, 1996 ). These critical awarenesses inspire sensibilities that ethnographers carry with them throughout the research enterprise. I am in no position to prescribe the exact decisions and actions that follow from such awarenesses. Does the White British ethnographer researching in Ghana meaningfully grapple with the politics surrounding the favorable attention she receives as a European in Africa, or does she simply explain that Ghanaians are nice and she had no trouble building rapport? Does she struggle with the historical implications of potentially projecting her own frames of understanding onto contemporary Abron music practices or does she simply report what she understands she is seeing and move on? The choice is up to the ethnographer; however, it should be made with some understanding of and critical reflection on the enterprise she is taking part in. To summarize, ethnographic comportment involves a historical awareness and reflexive self-awareness of one’s participation in ethnography as a research tradition. Following João de Pina-Cabral’s ( 1992 ) assertion that ethnographers match what they observe “against the accumulated knowledge of [their] discipline” (p. 6), I maintain that such knowledge increasingly includes a critical outlook on both the historical and the resonating fault lines of ethnography as practiced.

At a moment when the (mis)use of ethnography as an umbrella term for any and all qualitative research threatens its integrity, researchers who are seriously invested in ethnography are reflexive of their participation in this research tradition. Accordingly, they adopt a disposition of accountability for their role in advancing rejuvenated and/or progressive forms of ethnographic practice. Throughout the process of research, ethnographers are (self-)conscious about how they comport themselves in relation to their research and the people they are researching among; they are also conscious—albeit often abstractly—of the end product that they are working toward. Such textual awareness (Van Maanen, 2011 ) influences their decision-making throughout the various, flexible, and often unforeseeable stages of an ethnographic project. When their work is finished, they hope that both their in-the-field conduct and their written ethnography will be regarded as good (see Harrison, 2018 ) and, in the best of instances, that the latter will contribute to furthering the ethnographic tradition in positive ways.

In sum, ethnographic comportment is predicated on the idea that the embodied knowledge a researcher has accrued through disciplinary and methodological training guides them, as a form of improvised analysis, throughout the ethnographic enterprise toward the goal of producing work that is valued in its own right, (usually) by the researched community, and as part of the ethnographic tradition.

At a time when the proliferation of ethnography threatens to untether it from its core commitments and fundamental modes of inquiry, I see a pressing need to reprofessionalize ethnography by calling attention to its historical foundations, outlining its central practices and research principles, and presenting new frameworks, which I believe are helpful in grasping and gauging its contemporary significance. An awareness of ethnography’s history—its complicated engagements with colonialism and progressive humanism—should inform all efforts to move it forward. Beyond key practices like participant observation, field-note writing, and ethnographic interviewing, ethnography is marked by its attention to culture as an explanatory construct, lavish contextualization, iterative modes of data collection and analysis, empathetic engagements, and abundant storytelling. In embracing these attributes, ethnographers thoughtfully observe, reflect on, and represent the complexities of social life and culturally situated perspectives of people.

Ethnographers are not particularly adept at problem solving, in large part because the knowledge they procure, produce, and distribute is expansive, conditional, and historically unfinished. While “bucolic wise men” gather at the village store and resolve gun control debates or immigration issues in minutes, the ethnographer among them is perpetually suspicious of such quick answers. She understands that her job is to listen for meaning. She may participate—to extend the dialogue or maintain her own internal dialogue as she reflects on the grounded perspectives being shared around her. Above all else, she recognizes that people on all sides of a debate have convictions, passions, and frameworks of understanding that should be respected and that, as researchers, we should aspire to better understand. Increasingly, such patience and attention to human complexities are under threat by assembly line modes of academic production that treat time and knowledge as commodities. Yet by resisting these inclinations—and offering a counter to narrow definitions of research efficiency—ethnography secures its relevance to understanding the varied ways people live their lives and means through which they know what they know.

Future Directions

How can ethnography continue to flourish within contexts of accelerating academic production? How can it maintain its patient, thoughtful, and unfinished research practices at a time when academic value is equated with efficiency, volume of output, and tangibility of results?

Given that many people in the early 21st century engage with digital/social media technologies as aspects of their daily lives, how can ethnography best attend to the intersections between virtual and physical worlds?

In contexts of increased political and methodological conservatism, where institutional review boards require completed research designs and protocols as prerequisites to approval, how can ethnographers represent their iterative and inductive modes of research in ways that comply with institutionally mandated expectations?

As the lines between ethnography and everyday life become increasingly fuzzy, what new modes of ethnographic understanding and representation should be acknowledged and embraced?

In ethnography’s postpostmodern reformulations and trajectories, how should researchers map the borders of the field (ontologically and in terms of the various interests that ethnographic studies can serve)?

Ethnography’s foundations are in writing culture, yet, historically, ethnographers are deeply implicated in the project of literatizing nonliterate societies. Given this paradox, what nonliteral forms of ethnographic representations might a contemporary, critical, and historically informed ethnographic project take? How can we move beyond writing culture ?

Here, I am using field in both the traditional sense of fieldwork conducted within a physical place/space and in the Bourdieuian sense of a field of cultural practice (Bourdieu, 1984 ).

Ethnographies can also take the shorter form of essays and professional journal articles, as well as nonliterary forms like “films, records, museum displays, or whatever” (Geertz, 1973 , p. 19n). Recognizing this—yet in the interest of avoiding cumbersome qualifications—throughout the remainder of the chapter I treat ethnography foremost as a writing practice.

Etymologically, ethnography combines ethno , meaning “culture (or race),” and graphy, meaning “to write, record, and describe.” Thus, ethnography can be thought of as the process and product of writing, recording, and describing culture.

In addition to my own writings, there is a wealth of very good work on ethnography’s history—for example, see Darnell ( 2001 ), Jones ( 2010 ), Kuper ( 1996 ), Lassiter ( 2005 ), and Stocking ( 1983a ).

Broadly speaking, the distinction between social and cultural anthropology is based on national traditions, with the former practiced in England and the latter in the United States. More specifically, British (social) anthropology has historically stressed the interrelationships between social institutions and observes foundational figures like Malinowski and Alfred R. Radcliffe-Brown, whereas American (cultural) anthropology recognizes cultural coherences as outlined through the work of Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict (Garbarino, 1977/1983 ).

In the introduction to Argonauts of the Western Pacific , Malinowski ( 1922/1966 ) included a footnote explaining that, “according to a useful habit of the terminology of science, [he] uses the word Ethnography for the empirical and descriptive results of the science of Man, and the word Ethnology for speculative and comparative theories” (p. 9, fn).

Historically, the masculine pronouns he/him/his were used as universal references to all people—in this case falsely implying that all ethnographers were men. Rather than cluttering the text with numerous [ sic ]s, I let these pass without further comment. In instances where I offer gendered pronouns, as a general (but not exclusive) rule, I use the feminine she/her/hers. Following Margery Wolf ( 1992 ), I do not do this “to privilege the female voice but to call attention to the way in which the supposedly generic ‘he’ does in fact privilege the male voice” (p. 56).

Malinowski was certainly not the first to acknowledge the importance of “native subjectivity”—in fact, several commentators have highlighted this as an area where American anthropologists greatly outpaced their British counterparts (Bunzl, 2004 ; Darnell, 2001 ; Lassiter & Campbell, 2010 ). Indeed, cultural relativism as an anthropological movement is most prominently connected with Franz Boas and his students, Margaret Mead ( 1928/1961 ), Melville Herskovits ( 1972 ), and, most famously, Ruth Benedict ( 1934/2005 ). Yet the significance of Malinowski’s powerful dictate to understand native subjectivities—as a “goal, of which an ethnographer should never lose sight” (1922/1966, p. 25)—is illustrated by the frequency with which he has been and continues to be cited.

A short list of Malinowski’s students at the London School of Economics includes Raymond Firth, E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Hortense Powdermaker, Edmund Leach, Jomo Kenyatta, Lucy Mair, Audrey Richards, and Meyer Fortes.

Howard Becker ( 1999 ) is critical of this designation, arguing that “ ‘Chicago’ was never the unified chapel … [nor] unified school of thought” that many believe it to have been (p. 10).

These include Nel’s Anderson’s The Hobo (1923/1961), Frederick Thrasher’s The Gang ( 1927 ), Louis Wirth’s The Ghetto ( 1928 ), Harvey W. Zorbaugh’s The Gold Coast and the Slum (1929), Paul Cressey’s The Taxi-Dance Hall ( 1932 ), and E. Franklin Frazier’s The Negro Family in Chicago ( 1932 ).

For example, until 1929, the department at Chicago was known as the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. Among the (other) notable anthropologists in the department during these formative years were Boas’s students, Edward Sapir and Fay-Cooper Cole; Robert Redfield, who married Park’s daughter; and Ralph Linton, who taught classes there while affiliated with Chicago’s Field Museum (Faris, 1967 ).

Commenting on the improvisational nature of anthropological ethnography, Lisa H. Malkki ( 2007 ) suggested that sociologists approach ethnography “with a different sensibility” (p. 186, n2). Additionally, there appears to be some historical reluctance within the sociological tradition to refer to their brand of field research as ethnography. In Buford H. Junker’s ( 1960 ) seminal introduction to social science fieldwork, for example, based on extensive interviews with University of Chicago student fieldworkers, ethnography is only referenced on a few occasions. In one telling passage, Junker describes the ethnographer’s task of “start[ing] from scratch by learning the language of his esoteric people” in opposition to the sociological field worker operating “in some part of an otherwise already familiar cultural milieu” (1960, p. 70).

Malinowski ( 1922/1966 ) specifically said that “one of the first conditions of acceptable ethnographic work certainly is that it should deal with the totality of all social, cultural, and psychological aspects of a community, for they are so interwoven that not one can be understood without taking into consideration all the others” (p. xvi). This idea of anthropology as a holistic science—assuming the interconnections and mutual influences between various aspects of social life—continues to be reiterated in the introductory chapters of almost all discipline textbooks.

Several very good overviews of the qualitative research methods used in ethnography exist, including Bailey ( 2017 ), Bernard ( 1995 ), Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw ( 2011 ), Gobo ( 2008 ), Hammersley and Atkinson ( 1995 ), Pawluch, Shaffir, and Miall ( 2005 ), and Spradley ( 1980 ).

Whereas historically ethnographers thought of their work as focusing on neatly bounded cultures, usually (mis)represented as being isolated from globalizing influences, 21st century ethnographers understand their work to be focused on culture as a socially orienting concept—accordingly, the term shifts from being a noun to an adjective (e.g., cultural beliefs, cultural values, cultural processes).

This is not to suggest, as others have (see Marcus & Fischer, 1986 , p. 156), that “native” ethnographers lose their capacity for radical critique as a result of their Western anthropological training (McClaurin, 2001 ).

In making this characterization, I am building on Karen O’Reilly’s ( 2012 ) description of ethnography as an iterative–inductive process .

See Christians ( 2000 ) for a thorough discussion of these three guiding pillars surrounding qualitative research ethics.

I insert this qualification to recognize an earlier (less enlightened) period when some would argue that ethnography was used as an instrument of colonial domination (see Asad, 1973 ; Deloria, 1969 ; Gough, 1968 ).

I make this comparison based on behavior, not presumed intent. I am well aware that many people view politicians as being disingenuous. I am in no way implying that ethnographers operate with insincere intentions. Thank you to Steve Gerus for bringing this similarity to my attention.

I juxtapose this understanding of writerly against the example of an instruction manual, which as a very unwriterly text does not recognize its readers’ capacity to think on their own and therefore presents information in unimaginative ways with the intention of providing little room for alternative interpretations.

This can be found in Harrison, 2009 , pp. 1–6.

For a short summary of postpositivism, see Bailey ( 2017 ).

In particular cases, where such researchers work among more powerful groups, these commitments might be toward exposing the workings of power, thus leading toward the same ends of empowering those who are marginalized.

These in-between spaces are sometimes distinguished as observing participation and participating observation (see Bernard, 1995 ; Hammersley & Atkinson, 1995 ; Junker, 1960 ).

This is sometimes referred to as homeblindness , defined as being blind to crucial dimensions of one’s own lifeways because they are taken for granted (Czarniawska, 1997 ). While I acknowledge that ethnocentrism more typically involves putting one’s culture above others, I maintain that homeblindness is a product of ethnocentrism.

Additionally, there might be countless potential reasons for an interviewee to be less than forthcoming.

For instance, someone doing an ethnography of pickup basketball games may have easier access if he or she has a background in playing basketball.

Today, many people engage the virtual, online, social media, or networked worlds consistently throughout their daily lives. To the extent that ethnographers are interested in engaging with people in everyday settings and circumstances, it would seem reasonable and even potentially quite illuminating for ethnographers to be attentive to the intersections of online and offline activities (Lane, 2016 ).

There are several excellent books that discuss field-note writing; see, for example, H. Russell Bernard’s Research Methods in Anthropology (1995); Carol A. Bailey’s A Guide to Qualitative Field Research ( 2017 ); and Robert M. Emerson, Rachel I. Fretz, and Linda L. Shaw’s Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes ( 2011 ). I strongly recommend that any novice researcher carry one of these books when embarking on fieldwork.

My definition of analytic notes is consistent with what Emerson et al. ( 2011 ) called in-process memos .

Amit, V. ( 2000 ). Introduction: Constructing the field. In V. Amit (Ed.), Constructing the field: Ethnographic fieldwork in the contemporary world (pp. 1–18). New York, NY: Routledge.

Google Scholar

Google Preview

Anderson, E. ( 2011 ). The cosmopolitan canopy: Race and civility in everyday life . New York, NY: Norton.

Anderson, N. ( 1923 /1961). The hobo: The sociology of the homeless man . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Asad, T. ( 1973 ). Anthropology and the colonial encounter . London, England: Ithaca Press.

Atkinson, P. ( 2017 ). Thinking ethnographically . Los Angeles, CA: Sage.

Bailey C. A. ( 2017 ). A guide to qualitative field research (3rd ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.

Baker, L. D. ( 2010 ). Anthropology and the racial politics of culture . Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Barnes, R. J. D. ( 2016 ). Raising the race: Black career woman redefine marriage, motherhood, and community . New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Becker, H. S. ( 1999 ). The Chicago school, so-called.   Qualitative Sociology, 22, 3–12.

Becker, H. S. , & Geer, B. ( 1957 ). Participant observation and interviewing: A comparison.   Human Organization, 16(3), 28–32.

Benedict, R. ( 1934 /2005). Patterns of culture . Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

Berger, R. ( 2015 ). Now I see it, now I don’t: Researcher’s position and reflexivity in qualitative research.   Qualitative Research, 15, 219–234.

Bernard, H. R. ( 1995 ). Research methods in anthropology: Qualitative and quantitative approaches (2nd ed.). Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

Berreman, G. D. ( 1962 ). Behind many masks: Ethnography and impression management within a Himalayan village . Ithaca, NY: Society for Applied Anthropology.

Blumer, M. ( 1998 ). Chicago sociology and the empirical impulse: Its implications for sociological theorizing. In L. Tomasi (Ed.), The tradition of the Chicago school of sociology (pp. 75–88). Brookfield, VT: Ashgate.

Bourdieu, P. ( 1984 ). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Brand, M. ( 2007 ). Making moonshine: Thick histories in a US historically black community.   Anthropology and Humanism, 32, 52–61.

Bunzl, M. ( 2004 ). Boas, Foucault, and the “native anthropologist”: Notes toward a neo-Boasian anthropology. American Anthropologist, 106, 435–442.

Christians, C. G. ( 2000 ). Ethics and politics of qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. 133–155). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Clifford, J. , & Marcus, G. E. (Eds.). ( 1986 ). Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography . Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cressey, P. G. ( 1932 ). The taxi-dance hall . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Czarniawska, B. ( 1997 ). Narrating the organization: Dramas of institutional identity . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Darnell, R. ( 2001 ). Invisible genealogies. A history of Americanist anthropology . Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Davis, K. C. ( 2014 ). Beyond the White negro: Empathy and anti-racist reading . Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Deloria, V., Jr. ( 1969 ). Custer died for your sins: An Indian manifesto . New York, NY: Macmillan.

Emerson, R. M. , Fretz, R. I. , & Shaw, L. L. ( 2011 ). Writing ethnographic fieldnotes (2nd ed.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Faris, R. E. L. ( 1967 ). Chicago sociology, 1920–1932 . San Francisco, CA: Chandler.

Fine, G. A. , & Deegan, J. G. ( 1996 ). Three principles of Serendip: Insight, chance, and discovery in qualitative research.   Qualitative Studies in Education, 9, 434–447.

Forsythe, D. ( 1999 ). “ It’s just a matter of common sense”: Ethnography as invisible work.   Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 8, 127–145.

Frazier, J. G. ( 1922 /1966). Preface. In B. Malinowski , Argonauts of the western Pacific (pp. v–x). London, England: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Frazier, E. F. ( 1932 ). The Negro family in Chicago . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Garbarino, M. S. ( 1977 /1983). Sociocultural theory in anthropology: A short history . Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.

Geertz, C. ( 1973 ). The interpretation of cultures . New York, NY: Basic Books.

Gobo, G. ( 2008 ). Doing ethnography . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Gough, K. ( 1968 ). New proposals for anthropologists.   Current Anthropology, 9, 403–435.

Gupta, A. , & Ferguson, J. ( 1997 ). Anthropological locations: Boundaries and grounds of a field science . Berkeley: University of California Press.

Hammersley, M . ( 2008 ). Questioning qualitative inquiry: Critical essays . Los Angeles, CA: Sage.

Hammersley, M. , & Atkinson, P. ( 1995 ). Ethnography: Principles in practice (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.

Harrison, A. K. ( 2009 ). Hip hop underground: The integrity and ethics of racial identification . Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

Harrison, A. K. ( 2014 ). Ethnography. In P. Leavy (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of qualitative research (pp. 223–253). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Harrison, A. K. ( 2018 ). Ethnography . New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Herskovits, M. ( 1972 ). Cultural relativism: Perspectives in cultural pluralism . New York, NY: Random House.

Holmes, S. M. ( 2013 ). Fresh fruit, broken bodies: Migrant farmworkers in the United States . Berkeley: University of California Press.

Ingold, T. ( 2014 ). That’s enough about ethnography!   HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 4, 383–395.

Jones, J. S. ( 2010 ). Origins and ancestors: A brief history of ethnography. In J. S. Jones & S. Watt (Eds.), Ethnography in social science practice (pp. 13–27). New York, NY: Routledge.

Judd, N. M. ( 1967 ). The bureau of American ethnology: A partial history. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Junker, B. H. ( 1960 ). Field work: An introduction to the social sciences . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Kazubowski-Houston, M. , & Magnat, V. ( 2017 ). Introduction to special issue: The transdisciplinary travels of ethnography.   Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 18, 379–391. doi:10.1177/1532708617737100 10.1177/1532708617737100

Koivunen, T. ( 2010 ). Practicing power and gender in the field: Learning from interview refusals.   Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 39, 682–708.

Kuper, A. ( 1996 ). Anthropology and anthropologists: The modern British school (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.

Lamont, M. , & Swidler, A. ( 2014 ). Methodological pluralism and the possibilities and limits of interviewing.   Qualitative Sociology, 37, 153–171.

Landsberger, H. A. ( 1958 ). Hawthorne revisited: Management and the worker, its critics, and developments in human relations in industry. Ithaca, NY: Humphrey.

Lane, J. ( 2016 ). The digital street: An ethnographic study of networked street life in Harlem.   American Behavioral Scientist, 60, 43–58.

Lange, M. ( 2017 ). Meanings of maple: An ethnography of sugaring . Little Rock: University of Arkansas Press.

Lassiter, L. E. ( 2005 ). The Chicago guide to collaborative ethnography . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Lassiter, L. E. , & Campbell, E. ( 2010 ). What will we have ethnography do?   Qualitative Inquiry, 16, 757–767.

Law, J. ( 2004 ). After method: Mess in social science research . New York, NY: Routledge.

Leach, E. R. ( 1954 ). Political systems of highland Burma: A study of Kachin social structure . London, England: Bell.

Leavy, P. ( 2009 ). Method meets art: Arts-based research practice . New York, NY: Guilford.

Lewis, H. S. ( 2013 ). In defense of anthropology: An investigation of the critique of anthropology. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

Lincoln, Y. S. ( 2005 ). Institutional review boards and methodological conservatism. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 165–181). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Magubane, B. , & Faris, J. C. ( 1985 ). On the political relevance of anthropology.   Dialectical Anthropology, 9, 91–104.

Malinowski, B. ( 1913 /1963). The family among the Australian aborigines. New York, NY: Schocken Books.

Malinowski, B. ( 1922 /1966). Argonauts of the western Pacific . London, England: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Malkki, L. H. ( 2007 ). Tradition and improvisation in ethnographic field research. In A. Cerwonka & L. H. Malkki (Eds.), Improvising theory: Process and temporality in ethnographic fieldwork (pp. 162–187). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Marcus, G. E. , & Fischer, M. M. J. ( 1986 ). Anthropology as cultural critique: An experimental moment in the human sciences . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

McClaurin, I. ( 2001 ). Theorizing a Black feminist self in anthropology: Towards an autoethnographic approach. In I. McClaurin (Ed.), Black feminist anthropology: Theory, politics, praxis, and poetics (pp. 49–76). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

McGranahan, C. ( 2014 ). What is ethnography? Teaching ethnographic sensibilities without fieldwork.   Teaching Anthropology, 4, 23–36.

Mead, M. ( 1952 ). The training of the cultural anthropologist.   American Anthropologist, 54, 343–346.

Mead, M. ( 1928 /1961). Coming of age in Samoa . New York, NY: Morrow.

Messerschmidt, D. (Ed.). ( 1981 ). Anthropologists at home in North America: Methods and issues in the study of one’s own society . Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Myers, J. L. ( 1923 ). W. H. R. Rivers.   The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 53, 14–17.

Nader, L. ( 1972 ). Up the anthropologist—perspectives gained from studying up. In D. Hymes (Ed.), Reinventing anthropology (pp. 284–311). New York, NY: Pantheon Books.

Narayan, K. ( 2012 ). Alive in the writing: Crafting ethnography in the company of Chekhov . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Nardi, B. ( 2010 ). My life as a night elf priest: An anthropological account of World of Warcraft . Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Nash, D. , & Wintrob, R. ( 1972 ). The emergence of self-consciousness in ethnography.   Current Anthropology, 13, 527–542.

O’Dell, T. , & Willim, R. ( 2011 ). Irregular ethnographies: An introduction.   Ethnologia Europaea, 41, 5–13.

O’Reilly, K. ( 2012 ). Ethnographic methods (2nd ed). New York, NY: Routledge.

Park R. E. ( 1925 /1967). The city : Suggestions for the investigation of human behavior in the urban environment. In R. E. Park , E. W. Burgess , & R. D. Mckenzie (Eds.), The city (pp. 1–46). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Pawluch, D. , Shaffir, W. , & Miall, C. ( 2005 ). Doing ethnography: Studying everyday life . Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Canadian Scholars’ Press.

Pina-Cabral, J. D. ( 1992 ). Against translation: The role of the researcher in the production of ethnographic knowledge. In J. D. Pina-Cabral & J. Campbell (Eds.), Europe observed (pp. 1–23). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. ( 1952 ). Historical note on British social anthropology.   American Anthropologist, 54, 275–277.

Rathje, W. , & Murphy, C. ( 1992 ). Rubbish! The archaeology of garbage . New York, NY: HarperCollins.

Redfield, R. ( 1953 ). Relations of anthropology to the social sciences and humanities. In A. L. Kroeber (Ed.), Anthropology today (pp. 728–738). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Richardson, L. , & St. Pierre, S. A. ( 2005 ). Writing: A method of inquiry. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 959–978). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Ryle. G. ( 1971 ). The thinking of thoughts: What is “Le Penseur” doing? In G. Ryle , Collected papers: Vol. II, Collected essays 1929–1968 (pp. 480–496). London, England: Hutchinson.

Sanjek, R. (Ed.). ( 1990 ). Fieldnotes: The makings of anthropology . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Schwandt, T. A. ( 2000 ). Three epistemological stances for qualitative inquiry: Interpretivism, hermeneutics, and social constructionism. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. 189–213). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Sluka, J. A. , & Robben, A. C. G. M. ( 2012 ). Fieldwork in cultural anthropology: An introduction. In A. C. G. M. Robben & J. A. Sluka (Eds.), Ethnographic fieldwork: An anthropological reader (2nd ed., pp. 1–47). Malden, MA: Wiley–Blackwell.

Spradley, J. P. ( 1980 ). Participant observation . Fort Worth, TX: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Spradley, J. P. , & Mann, B. J. ( 1975 ). The cocktail waitress: Woman’s work in a man’s world . New York, NY: Wiley.

Stocking, G. W., Jr. (Ed.). ( 1983 a). Observers observed: Essays on ethnographic fieldwork . Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Stocking, G. W., Jr. ( 1983 b). The ethnographer’s magic: Fieldwork in British anthropology from Tylor to Malinowski. In G. W. Stocking Jr. (Ed.), Observers observed: Essays on ethnographic fieldwork (pp. 70–120). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Strathern, M. ( 1987 ). Out of context: The persuasive fictions of anthropology.   Current Anthropology, 28, 251–281.

Sunderland, P. L. , & Denny, R. M. ( 2007 ). Doing anthropology in consumer research . Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.

Tedlock, B. ( 2000 ). Ethnography and ethnographic representation. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Sage handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. 455–486). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Thrasher, F. M. ( 1927 ). The gang: A study of 1,313 gangs in Chicago . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Turner, E. ( 2007 ). Introduction to the art of ethnography.   Anthropology and Humanism, 32, 108–116.

Tyler, S. A . (Ed.). ( 1969 ). Cognitive anthropology: Readings . New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Urry, J. ( 1972 ). Notes and queries on anthropology and the development of field methods in British anthropology, 1870–1920.   Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 45–57.

Van Maanen, J. ( 2011 ). Tales of the field: On writing ethnography . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Vidich, A. J. , & Lyman, S. M. ( 2000 ). Qualitative methods: Their history in sociology and anthropology. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. 37–84). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Wax, R. H. ( 1971 ). Doing fieldwork: Warning and advice . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Wengle, J. L. ( 1988 ). Ethnographers in the field: The psychology of research . Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.

White, W. ( 1929 ). I investigate lynchings.   American Mercury, 16, 77–84.

Willis, P. ( 2000 ). The ethnographic imagination. Cambridge, England: Polity Press.

Wirth, L. ( 1928 ). The ghetto . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Wogan, P. ( 2004 ). Deep hanging out: Reflections on fieldwork and multisited Andean ethnography.   Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 11, 129–139.

Wolcott, H. F. ( 1987 ). On ethnographic intent. In G. Spindler & L. Spindler (Eds.), Interpretive ethnography of education: At home and abroad (pp. 37–57). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Wolf, M. ( 1992 ). A thrice-told tale: Feminism, postmodernism, and ethnographic responsibility . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Wolfe, D. (Ed.) ( 1996 ). Feminist dilemmas in fieldwork . Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Wulff, H. ( 1998 ). Ballet across borders: Career and culture in the world of dancers . Oxford, England: Berg.

Zorbaugh, H. W. ( 1929 ). The gold coast and the slum . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Institutional account management
• Rights and permissions
• Get help with access
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst

• < Previous

Home > ETDS > Doctoral Dissertations > 114

Doctoral Dissertations

Off-campus UMass Amherst users: To download campus access dissertations, please use the following link to log into our proxy server with your UMass Amherst user name and password.

Non-UMass Amherst users: Please talk to your librarian about requesting this dissertation through interlibrary loan.

Dissertations that have an embargo placed on them will not be available to anyone until the embargo expires.

CONVERSATIONS WITH THE COMMUNITY: AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF TWO CASE STUDIES HIGHLIGHTING COMMUNITY-RESEARCH PARTNERSHIPS IN SPRINGFIELD, MA

Vanessa Martinez , University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow

Author ORCID Identifier

Open Access Dissertation

Document Type

dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Degree Program

Anthropology

Year Degree Awarded

Month degree awarded, first advisor.

Jean Forward

Second Advisor

Krista Harper

Third Advisor

Kathryn Tracy

Subject Categories

Civic and Community Engagement | Community-Based Learning | Community-Based Research | Community Health and Preventive Medicine | Other Anthropology | Public Health Education and Promotion | Social and Cultural Anthropology

This dissertation is both qualitative and collaborative. It emphasizes the participant observation and ethnographic documentation of two community-researcher partnerships on community-level health interventions in Springfield, MA. Drawing upon critical theories and reflexive methods, I explore and analyze the process of building and sustaining researcher-community partnerships in an era of limited funding. Two Springfield, MA-based projects – one on healthy cooking/eating, and the other on contingency management – serve as case studies to provide a concrete picture of the complex relationships of researcher-community collaborations. I use ethnographic storytelling to provide a multi-dimensional look at two different community-research partnerships on health disparities work. I have chosen ethnography as my primary methodology because I am interested in gaining a broad understanding of Springfield as a post-industrial city – a city with both a complex support system of public health services and a community suffering from poor health outcomes. My dissertation explores the following questions: What are the factors that contribute to successful community-research partnerships? What are the challenges to creating and sustaining good community-research collaborations? And what recommendations or strategies can build social and cultural capacity for these types of partnerships? My experience on-the-ground highlighted a gap in the literature on community-research partnerships. I discuss the need for expanding the list of collaborators to include community college faculty and students, funding agents, and grassroots community leaders – not just service agencies standing in as representatives of the community. Given my personal and professional experience over the last twelve years, I believe that, in the end, successful community-research partnerships must build on the strengths already in the community in order to create a lasting impact in the community. For Springfield, that means bringing "everyone to the table," , in other words, a diverse group of people who all have a vested interest in improving the health of Springfield residents.

https://doi.org/10.7275/3wn0-7656

Recommended Citation

Martinez, Vanessa, "CONVERSATIONS WITH THE COMMUNITY: AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF TWO CASE STUDIES HIGHLIGHTING COMMUNITY-RESEARCH PARTNERSHIPS IN SPRINGFIELD, MA" (2014). Doctoral Dissertations . 114. https://doi.org/10.7275/3wn0-7656 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/114

Since August 29, 2014

Included in

Civic and Community Engagement Commons , Community-Based Learning Commons , Community-Based Research Commons , Community Health and Preventive Medicine Commons , Other Anthropology Commons , Public Health Education and Promotion Commons , Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons

Advanced Search

• Notify me via email or RSS
• Collections
• Disciplines

Author Corner

• Submission Guidelines
• Login for Faculty Authors
• Faculty Author Gallery
• Submit Dissertation
• University Libraries
• UMass Amherst

This page is sponsored by the University Libraries.

© 2009 University of Massachusetts Amherst • Site Policies

Privacy Copyright

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

Research Guides

Ethnographic Case Studies

Jeannette Armstrong; Laura Boyle; Lindsay Herron; Brandon Locke; and Leslie Smith

Description

This research guide discusses ethnographic case study. While there is much debate over what, precisely, delimits a case study , the general consensus seems to be that ethnographic case studies differ from other types of case studies primarily in their focus, methodology, and duration. In essence, ethnographic case studies are case studies “employing ethnographic methods and focused on building arguments about cultural, group, or community formation or examining other sociocultural phenomena” (Schwandt & Gates, 2018, p. 344), typically with a long duration, per the demands of ethnographic work. In essence, ethnographic case studies are case studies “employing ethnographic methods and focused on building arguments about cultural, group, or community formation or examining other sociocultural phenomena” (Schwandt & Gates, 2018, p. 344), typically with a long duration, per the demands of ethnographic work. Indeed, in its very situatedness, ethnography has a “case study character” and is “intimately related” to case studies (Ó Rian, 2009, p. 291); though there is currently a move to extract ethnographic work from overly situated contexts and use extended case methods, “[e]thnographic research has long been synonymous with case studies, typically conceived of as grounded in the local and situated in specific, well-defined and self-contained social contexts” (Ó Rian, 2009, p. 290). Because ethnography, in practice, is often a kind of case study, it’s useful to consider ethnography and case studies each in their own right for a fuller picture of what ethnographic case study entails.

Ethnographic research is one approach under the larger umbrella of qualitative research. Methodologically, it is, “a theoretical, ethical, political, and at times moral orientation to research, which guides the decisions one makes, including choices about research methods” (Harrison, 2014, p. 225), that is at its crux “based upon sharing the time and space of those who one is studying” (Ó Rian, 2009, p. 291)–a situated, nuanced exploration seeking a thick description and drawing on methods such as observation and field notes. According to …an ethnography focuses on an entire culture-sharing group and attempts to develop a complex, complete description of the culture of the group. Creswell and Poth (2018), an ethnography focuses on an entire culture-sharing group and attempts to develop a complex, complete description of the culture of the group. In doing so, ethnographers look for patterns of behavior such as rituals or social behaviors, as well as how their ideas and beliefs are expressed through language, material activities, and actions (Creswell & Poth, 2018). Yin (2016)  suggests that ethnographies seek “to promote embedded research that fuses close-up observation, rigorous theory, and social critique. [Ethnographies foster] work that pays equal attention to the minutiae of experience, the cultural texture of social relations, and to the remote structural forces and power vectors that bear on them” (p. 69).

Case study research, meanwhile, is characterized as an approach “that facilitates exploration of a phenomenon within its context using a variety of data sources” (Baxter & Jack, 2008, p. 544). The aim of case studies is precise description of reconstruction of cases (Flick, 2015). The philosophical background is a qualitative, constructivist paradigm based on the claim that reality is socially constructed and can best be understood by exploring the tacit, i.e., experience-based, knowledge of individuals. There is some debate about how to define a The philosophical background is a qualitative, constructivist paradigm based on the claim that reality is socially constructed and can best be understood by exploring the tacit, i.e., experience-based, knowledge of individuals. “case” (e.g., Ó Rian, 2009), however. As Schwandt and Gates (2018) write, “[A] case is an instance, incident, or unit of something and can be anything–a person, an organization, an event, a decision, an action, a location”; it can be at the micro, meso, or macro level; it can be an empirical unit or a theoretical construct, specific or general; and in fact, “what the research or case object is a case of may not be known until most of the empirical research is completed” (p. 341). The two authors conclude that given the multifarious interpretations of what case study is, “[b]eyond positing that case study methodology has something to do with ‘in-depth’ investigation of a phenomenon . . . , it is a fool’s errand to pursue what is (or should be) truly called ‘case study’” (p. 343, 344).

Baxter, P., & Jack, S. (2008). Qualitative case study methodology: Study design and implementation for novice researchers. The Qualitative Report, 13 (4), 544-559.

Creswell, J. W., & Poth, C. N. (2018). Qualitative inquiry & research design: Choosing among five approaches (4th ed.). Los Angeles, CA: SAGE.

Flick, U. (2015). Introducing research methodology . Los Angeles, CA: SAGE.

Rian, S. (2009). Extending the ethnographic case study. In D. Byrne & C. C. Ragin (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of case-based methods (pp. 289–306). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Schwandt, T. A., & Gates, E. F. (2018). Case study methodology. In N. K. Dezin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of qualitative research (5th ed.; pp. 341-358). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Yin, R. K. (2016). Qualitative research from start to finish (2nd ed.). New York, NY: The Guilford Press.

Key Research Books and Articles on Ethnographic Case Study Methodology

Fusch, G. E., & Ness, L. R. (2017). How to conduct a mini-ethnographic case study: A guide for novice researchers. The Qualitative Report , 22 (3), 923-941.  Retrieved from https://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol22/iss3/16

In this how-to article, the authors present an argument for the use of a blended research design, namely the Ethnographic Case Study, for student researchers. To establish their point of view, the authors reiterate recognized research protocols, such as choosing a design that suits the research question to ensure data saturation. Additionally, they remind their reader that one must also consider the feasibility of the project in terms of time, energy, and financial constraints.

Before outlining the benefits and components of the Ethnographic Case Study approach, the authors provide detailed narratives of ethnographic, mini-ethnographic (sometimes referred to as a focused ethnography ), and case study research designs to orient the reader. Next, we are introduced to the term mini-ethnographic case-study design, which is defined as a blended design that is bound in time and space and uses qualitative ethnographic and case study collection methods. The benefits of such an approach permit simultaneous generation of theory and the study of that theory in practice, as it allows for the exploration of causality.

Ethnographic Case Study research shares many characteristics with its parent approaches.  For example, subjectivity and bias are present and must be addressed. Next, data triangulation is necessary to ensure the collected qualitative data and subsequent findings are valid and reliable. Data collection methods include direct observation, fieldwork, reflective journaling, informal or unstructured interviews, and focus groups. Finally, the authors discuss three limitations to the ethnographic case study. First, this design requires the researcher to be embedded, yet the duration of time may not be for as long when compared to full-scale ethnographic studies.  Second, since there are fewer participants, there should be a larger focus on rich data as opposed to thick data, or said differently, quality is valued over quantity. Third, the researcher must be aware that the end-goal is not transferability, but rather the objective is to gain a greater understanding of the culture of a particular group that is bound by space and time.

Gregory, E. & Ruby, M. (2010) The ‘insider/outsider’ dilemma of ethnography: Working with young children and their families in cross-cultural contexts. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 9 (2), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1177/1476718X10387899

This article focuses on the dilemma of insider and outsider roles in ethnographic work. It challenges the notion that a researcher can be both an insider and an outsider at the same time. There is no insider/outsider status; it is one or the other–not both.

It is easy to make assumptions about one’s status as an insider. It is not uncommon for a researcher to assume that because one is working amongst his/her “own” people sharing a similar background, culture, or faith that she/he is an insider. Likewise, a researcher may assume that it will be easy to build rapport with a community with which he/she has commonalities; however, it is important to keep in mind that the person may be an insider but the researcher may not have this same status. When the person enters into the protective space of family or community as a researcher, it is similar to being an outsider. Being a researcher makes one different, regardless of the commonalities that are shared. It is not the researcher’s presumed status of “insider” or “outsider” that makes the difference; rather, researcher status is determined by the participants or community that is being studied. It is wise for researchers to understand that they are distinctively one of “them” as opposed to one of “us”. This is not to say that researchers cannot become an “insider” to some degree. But to assume insider status, regardless of the rationale, is wrong. Assuming common beliefs across cultures or insider status can lead to difficulties that could impact the scope or nature of the study.

In conclusion, regardless of the ethnographic design (e.g., realist ethnography, ethnographic case study, critical ethnography), it is important for the researcher to approach the study as an “outsider”. Although the outsider status may change over time, it essential to understand that when one enters a community as a researcher or becomes a researcher within a community, insider status must be earned and awarded according to the participants in the community.

Ó Rian, S. (2009). Extending the ethnographic case study. In D. Byrne & C. C. Ragin (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of case-based methods (pp. 289–306). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

In this chapter, Ó Rian valorizes the problems and potential hiding within the vagaries of ethnographic “case” boundaries, arguing that “whereas the fluid and multi-faceted aspects of the ethnographic case pose dilemmas for ethnographers, they can also become resources for ethnographers in exploring theoretical and empirical questions” (p. 292). Indeed, he views the idea of firm case boundaries as a weakness, as “definitions of the case will rule in and out certain social processes,” and suggests ethnography’s flexibility can deal with this problem well because it permits researchers to “question the boundaries of the case as the study proceeds,” leading to a “de- and re-construction of the case that . . . places ethnography at the centre of a resurgent contextualist paradigm of social inquiry . . . that is increasingly self-consciously exploring its own theoretical and methodological foundations” (p. 304). Most of the chapter delves into these possibilities for exploration, offering an insightful (if occasionally difficult to follow) perspective on how they have been proceeding.

The chapter offers considerations that might be particularly helpful to researchers undertaking ethnographic case studies who are struggling to connect their cases, so firmly rooted in a particular context and their own personal experiences and observations, to a bigger picture. Ó Rian elucidates the reflexive strategies various ethnographers have adopted as they’ve sought “[t]o achieve a link between context-specific data and meso- or macro-level generalizations,” categorizing these strategies into three “interlocking extensions of case study research” (p. 292): personal extensions (related to “the shaping of the boundaries of the case by the ethnographer’s location within the field and . . . how ethnographers can convey their personalized experiences and tacit learning to readers” [p. 292]), theoretical extensions (which bridge the gap between the situated worlds being explored and “the larger structures and processes that produced and shaped them” [p. 292]), and empirical extensions (“creative efforts to experiment with the empirical boundaries of the ethnographic case” [p. 292] by bringing in, for example, historical context, social networks, etc.). The crux of his argument is that ethnographic researchers have a prime opportunity to push against the boundaries of their context and “extend their cases across space, time and institutional structures and practices” so that the ethnographer is “multiply, if perhaps a bit uncomfortably, situated” (p. 304), and also to include an “emphasis on the ongoing process of theoretical sampling within the process of the ethnographic study, with close attention to be paid to the paths chosen and rejected, and the reasons for these decisions” (p. 304). These kinds of extensions offer an opportunity for theories to “be refined or reconstructed” as the researcher attempts to locate their personal experience within a broader framework, allowing “[t]he case study . . . to challenge and reconstruct the preferred theory” while also connecting the case to a larger body of work, particularly because theory “carries the accumulated knowledge of previous studies” (p. 296).

Ó Rian’s in-depth descriptions of how other researchers have varyingly handled these personal, theoretical, and empirical extensions might be a bit overwhelming to novice researchers but overall can offer a way to “locate their cases within broader social processes and not solely within their own personal trajectories” (p. 294)–while also helping to situate their reflections and extensions within a larger body of literature replete with researchers struggling with similar questions and concerns.

This chapter offers an  in-depth, generally accessible (but occasionally overwhelming) overview of case studies of all sorts and integrates an extensive review of relevant literature. The authors provide an informed perspective on various considerations and debates in the case study field (e.g., varying definitions of what a “case” is construed to be; interpretive vs. critical realist orientations; the relative benefits of and techniques involved in different types of approaches), helping novice researchers locate and better describe their own approach within the context of the field. The information is quite detailed and delves into a wide variety of case study types, suggesting this chapter might best be first skimmed as an initial introduction, followed by more careful readings of relevant sections and perusal of the key texts cited in the chapter. The breadth of this chapter makes it a helpful resource for anyone interested in case-study methodology.

The authors do not specifically explore ethnographic case studies as a separate type of case study. They do, however, briefly touch on this idea, locating ethnography within the interpretive orientation (comprising constructivist approaches offering “phenomenological attention to lived experience” [p. 344]). The authors also cite researchers who distinguish it due to its “[employing] ethnographic methods and focus on building arguments about cultural, group, or community formation or examining other sociocultural phenomena” (p. 344). Ethnographic case study is placed in contrast to case studies that use non-ethnographic methods (e.g., studies “relying perhaps on survey data and document analysis”) or that “are focused on ‘writing culture’” (p. 344).

Two aspects of this chapter are particularly useful for novice researchers. First, it is worth highlighting the authors’ discussion of varying definitions of what a “case” is, as it can provide an interesting reconceptualization of the purpose of the research and the reason for conducting it. The second noteworthy aspect is the authors’ detailed descriptions of the four main case study uses/designs ( descriptive, hypothesis generation or theory development, hypothesis and theory testing , and contributing to normative theory ), which the authors beautifully align with the respective purposes and methods of each type while also offering insight into relevant conversations in the field.

Further Readings

Moss, P. A., & Haertel, E. H. (2016). Engaging methodological pluralism. In D. H. Gitomer & C. A. Bell (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Teaching (pp. 127–247). Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association.

Simons, H. (2014). Case study research: In-depth understanding in context. In P. Leavy (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of qualitative research (pp. 455–470). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Recent Dissertations Using Ethnographic Case Study Methodology

Cozzolino, M. (2014). Global education, accountability, and 21st century skills: A case of curriculum innovation . Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (Order Number 3648007)

This dissertation is self-described as an ethnographic case study of a small, public, suburban high school in Pennsylvania. In this study, the researcher investigates the school’s process of integrating global education into its curriculum by implementing a school-wide initiative (Global Studies Initiative or GSI) as well as a program of study (Global Studies Credential or GSC). Cozzolino asserts that her framework has been shaped by both social constructivism and critical/Freirean pedagogy. From the constructivist view, she views knowledge as constructed through social interaction, and thus she sought to understand the world in which the research participants work, learn, and experience large parts of their lives. It is here that she situates the first three research questions that entail looking at the the GSI and the GSC in terms of their features, rationales, and implementations. The fourth question involves understanding the students’ views and perceptions of the GSC and here the author takes up a critical and Freirean pedagogy to honor and hear the voices of the students themselves.

The study design is therefore an embedded single-case study in that it is bound by the place (Olympus High School) and by its population. Furthermore, it is also a case within a case, as it seeks to understand the students’ perspectives of the global programming. The case study is ethnographically rooted through the multiple ethnographic data sources such as participant-observations and a prolonged engagement at the research site. Cozzolino embedded herself in the research site over a five-year period and became an active and invested member of the school community, thereby establishing a sound rationale for an ethnographic case-study approach.

The author concludes that there were some competing priorities about the overall initiative from stakeholders inside and outside the school district. This resulted in a less than ideal implementation of the program of study across the curriculum. Nonetheless, the students who were enrolled in these courses reported it to be a worthwhile experience. While Cozzolino presents specific recommendations for the improvements at Olympus High, she also offers implications for several other groups. First, she provides advice for implementation to other educational institutions that aim to integrate a global focus into their curriculum. Next, she gives recommendations for local, state, and national policy changes. Finally, she gives suggestions for engaging all parties in fruitful discourse to achieve their ultimate goal of implementing a meaningful and valuable global education curriculum.

Hamman, L. (2018). Reframing the language separation debate: Language, identity, and  ideology in two-way immersion . Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (Order Number 2089463322)

This study explored the issues of surrounding language separation in two-way immersion (TWI) classrooms. The author looked at how classroom language practices and teacher ideologies influenced the student experience and how the students’ understanding of what it means to be bilingual is influenced in a classroom that purports to be equitable in terms of language use.

The study is theoretically grounded in sociocultural, critical, and postcultural theories and adapted Lemke’s ecosocial system to conceptualize TWI classroom. Hamman also drew upon translanguaging theory and dynamic bilingualism to provide a framework for a more modern and nuanced perspective of bilingualism, bilingual learning, and bilingual students.

The author combined a single-case study approach with ethnographic methods to “engage in close analysis of classroom language use and the discursive negotiation of identities and ideologies, while situating these analyses within a rich understanding of the sociolinguistic context of this TWI classroom” (p. 78-79). She employed various ethnographic methods such as taking fieldnotes, conducting participant observations, interviewing, and memoing. The study is “bound” in that it takes place in one 2nd-grade classroom with one teacher and 18 students over the course of one year.

Hamman concludes that student perspectives on language separation should be considered, since this forced separation of language influenced how they thought of their developing bilingualism and identity as bilinguals. Furthermore, the study envisages a linguistic “middle ground” to strict separation that allows for appropriate and meaningful spaces for linguistic negotiation. Finally, this dissertation asserts that the strict separation of languages codifies a monoglossic ideology mindset and limits learners’ possibilities for learning and making connections across languages.

Kim, S. (2015). Korean migrant youth identity work in the transnational social field: A link between identity, transnationalism, and new media literacy . Retrieved from University of Missouri-St. Louis Institutional Repository Library. https://irl.umsl.edu/dissertation/158/

This doctoral dissertation takes an ethnographic case study approach to explore the identity formation of transnational Korean youth. The researcher, herself a Korean immigrant to the U.S. navigating complex identity processes, focuses on these research questions: “1) what are the contexts in which migrant youth negotiate their identities? 2) how do youth understand and negotiate their sense of belonging? 3) how do youth’s [sic] cultural and literacy practices inform and shape their identities? 3i) how do youth make use of transnational new media for their identity work? 3ii) how do literacy practices potentially shape their identities?” (p. 7).

Drawing on Leander and McKim (2013), the author conceptualizes her study as a “connective ethnography” (p. 36) encompassing multiple spaces, both digital and physical, in which “space” comprises a variety of relationships, instead of a more traditional ethnography bounded by physical space. The “case study” aspect, meanwhile, refers to the four specific participants in which she chose to focus. She chose Korean immigrants in St. Louis, in general, due to their mobility between the U.S. and Korea, their high use of digital communication and information technology, and their limited access to the cultural resources of Korea in a Midwestern city. From an initial 32 possible participants purposively selected, the researcher chose four focal participants based on their Korean ethnicity, biliteracy in Korean and English, age (between 11 and 19 years old), residence in the U.S. (for at least 2 years), and their use of digital communication technologies. Data sources included an initial screening survey, an identity map each participant created, informal recorded conversations, recorded interviews in either English or Korean, field notes from the researcher’s interactions with the youth in various settings (home, school, community centers), and “literacy documents” (evidence of literacy practices from participants’ school and home, emails to the researcher, or activities in digital spaces). She used social semiotic multimodal discourse analysis and what she describes as “grounded theory thematic analysis” to analyze the data.

This is a reflective, thoughtful, and interesting dissertation. The author carefully notes the relationship between the data sources and her research questions, specifically addresses steps she took to ensure the validity of the data (e.g., triangulation via multiple data sources and theoretical frameworks, member checks, and feedback from her professors and other researchers), and discloses her own positionalities and biases. Her discussion includes not only a clear thematic exploration of her findings but also offers specific practical suggestions for how her findings can be applied and extended in the classroom.

Internet Resources

Abalos-Gerard Gonzalez , L. (2011). Ethnographic research . Retrieved from https://www.slideshare.net/lanceabalos/ethnographic-research-2?from_action=save

Created by Lance Gerard G. Abalos, teacher at the Department of Education-Philippines, this SlideShare, Ethnographic Research , explains that, regardless of specific design, ethnographic research should be undertaken “without any priori hypothesis to avoid predetermining what is observed or that information is elicited from informants . . .hypotheses evolve out of the fieldwork itself” (slide 4). It is also suggested that researchers refer to individuals from whom information is gathered as ‘informants’ is preferred over the term ‘participants’ (slide 4).

According to Abalos, “It is not the data collection techniques that determine whether the study is ethnographic, but rather the ‘socio-cultural interpretation’ that sets it apart from other forms of qualitative inquiry” (slide 6). A social situation always has three components: a place, actors, and activities (slide 8) and it is the socio-cultural interpretation of the interactions of these three that is the focus of the ethnographic research.

Ethnographic questions should guide what the researcher sees, hears, and collects as data (slide 9). When writing the ethnography, it is essential to ‘bring the culture or group to life’ through the words and descriptions used to describe the place, actors, and activities.

Abalos describes three types of ethnographic designs:

• Realist Ethnographies : an objective account of the situation, written dispassionately from third-person point of view, reporting objectively on information learned from informants, containing closely edited quotations (slide 11-12).
• Ethnographic Case Studies : researchers focus on a program, event, or activity involving individuals rather than a group, looking for shared patterns that develop as a group as a result of the program, event, or activity (slide 13).
• Critical Ethnographies: incorporating a ‘critical’ approach that includes an advocacy perspective, researchers are interested in advocating against inequality and domination (slide 14).

As ethnographic data is analyzed, in any design (e.g., realist, case study, critical), there is a shift away from reporting the facts to making an interpretation of people and activities, determining how things work, and identifying the essential features in themes of the cultural setting (slide 22). “The ethnographer must present the description, themes, and interpretation within the context or setting of the culture-sharing group (slide 23).

Brehm, W. (2016, July 21). FreshEd #13 – Jane Kenway . Retrieved from http://www.freshedpodcast.com/tag/ethnography/ (EDXSymposium: New Frontiers in Comparative Education).

Jane Kenway is with the Australian Research Council and is an emeritus professor at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. In this podcast, she explains “traditional’ forms of ethnography and multi-sited global ethnography, which are her area of specialization. She considers “traditional” ethnography to have three components: space, time, and mobility.

Insider/outsider stance is explained within the context of spatiality, community, and culture of space specific to ‘traditional” ethnography. Researchers are outsiders who are attempting to enter a space and become insiders, then leave the space once the research is completed. Research is conducted over an extended period of time in one place/space. As a result, researchers will get to know in an extremely intimate manner the ways of life of the community or group. “Work is supposed to be a temporality of slowness. In other words, you don’t rush around like a mad thing in a field, you just quietly and slowly immerse yourself in the field over this extended period of time and get to understand it, get to appreciate it bit by bit.” (minute 7:56).

“Traditional” ethnographers are not necessarily interested in mobility over time or exploring who enters and exits the site. Most ethnographers are only interested in the movement that occurs in the space that is being studied during the time that they are in the field. It is about looking at the roots of the space, not necessarily about looking at the movements into and out of the space.

Multi-sited global ethnography tries to look at the way bounded sites can be studied as unbounded and on the move, as opposed to staying still. It considers how certain things (e.g., things, ideas, people) are  followed as they move. The researcher moves between sites, studying change that is encountered in different sites. From this perspective, the interested lies in the connections between sites. Multiple sites with commonalities can also be studied at the onset, without the need to physically follow.

Paulus, T. M., Lester, J. N., & Dempster, P. G. (2014). Digital Tools for Qualitative Research. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE.

While this text is not solely about ethnographic case studies, it is rich with countless ideas for utilizing digital tools to aid in the multiple facets of qualitative research. In Chapter 5 of their text, entitled Generating Data, the authors dedicate a section to exploring Internet archives and multimedia data. They state that, “in addition to online communities, the Internet is rich with multimedia data such as professionally curated archives, ameteur-created YouTube and Vimeo videos and photo-sharing sites” (p. 81). They provide three specific examples, each explained below: The Internet Archive, CADENSA, and Britain’s BBC Archives.

The Internet Archive ( https://archive.org ) is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more. The site also contains a variety of cultural artifacts that are easily available and downloadable. CADENSA ( http://cadensa.bl.uk ) is an online archive of the British Library Sound and Moving Image Catalogue. And finally, the BBC Archives ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/ ) is a particularly useful site for researchers interested in reviewing documentary film and political speeches.

Wang, T. (2016, September). Tricia Wang: The human insights missing from big data. [Video file]. Retrieved from  https://www.ted.com/talks/tricia_wang_the_human_insights_missing_from_big_data

In this TED Talk, Tricia Wang discusses her ethnographic work with technology and advocates for the need to save a place for thick data as opposed to relying only on big data. She argues that while companies invest millions of dollars in generating big data because they assume it will efficiently provide all the answers, it routinely does not provide a good return on investment. Instead, companies are left without answers to the questions about consumer preferences and behaviors, which leaves them unprepared for market changes.

In turn, Wang coins the term thick data, which is described as “precious data from humans, like stories, emotions, and interactions that cannot be quantified” (Minute 11:50). Wang suggests that this thick data may only come from a small group of individuals, but it is an essential component that can provide insights that are different and valuable. As an example, while working for Nokia, her ethnographic experiences in China provided her with new understandings on the future demand for smartphones. However, her employer did not take her findings seriously, and as a result, they lost their foothold in the technology market. She posits that a blended approach to collecting and analyzing data (i.e. combining or integrating thick data analysis with big data analysis) allows for a better grasp on the whole picture and making informed decisions.

Her conclusions for a blended approach to data collection also have implications for blending ethnographic and case-study approaches. While Wang took more of an ethnographic approach to her research, one could envision what her work might have looked like if she had used an Ethnographic Case Study approach. Wang could have clearly defined the time and space boundaries of her various ethnographic experiences (e.g. as a street vendor, living in the slums, hanging out in internet cafés). This would have allowed her to infer causality through the generation of thick data with a small sample size for each location and bound by each group.

Ethnographic Case Studies Copyright © 2019 by Jeannette Armstrong; Laura Boyle; Lindsay Herron; Brandon Locke; and Leslie Smith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

15 Great Ethnography Examples

Ethnography is a research method that involves embedding yourself in the environment of a group or community and recording what you observe. It often involves the researcher living in the community being studied. This leads to a much richer understanding of the people being examined than doing quantitative research.

The thing I love about ethnography is that it paints a thorough picture of people’s lives. It is, in its own way, the most raw, honest, and detailed form of academic research.

In my previous blog posts, I have discussed my admiration for thick description as a way to pierce beyond stereotypes and view the world through the lens of our subjects.

And there’s no doubt that ethnographic research has helped us learn so much more about how people navigate their cultural circumstances.

Below are some examples of ethnography – both abstract (with the hope that it helps students think about some ways they can do ethnography) and real-life (with the hope that you will read some inspiring ethnographic studies).

Ethnography Examples

To start, here are some ways you could potentially do ethnography:

• Ethnography of Indigenous People: There are many examples of ethnographic studies that look at indigenous cultures and how they’re similar or different to Western culture. Beware of the trap of colonialism during this work.
• Mundane Ethnography: Remember, ethnography doesn’t have to happen in a far off land. You can do autoethnography where you study yourself , or a study of somewhere very banal, like your workplace or home.
• Educational Ethnography: There is a rich history of teachers and researchers using ethnographic methods in classrooms to explore how learning happens.
• Ethnography in a Shop: Be the ethnographer within a supermarket by interacting with the people there on a daily basis (maybe as the cashier) and observe how people interact and collide within the space.
• Working-Class and Immigrant Ethnography: Many sociologists use ethnographic methods to take an inside look at how people on the margins of society grapple with global concepts like capitalism, globalization, and race.
• Digital Ethnography: Since the rise of the internet, there have been many researchers interested in the digital lives of people. Some of my favorite studies have revealed how we create our identities online.

My Favorite Ethnographic Research Books

1. learning to labour.

Author: Paul Willis

One of my favorite ethnographic works, Learning to Labour follows working-class ‘lads’ in the British Midlands as they participate in counter-cultural and ‘anti-social’ behaviors.

The most fascinating aspect of this book is the rich elucidation of how these working-class boys reject narratives of upward mobility and revel in rejecting mental work at school. But at the same time, they create their own value hierarchies.

In fact, the boys don’t even leave school when they are legally allowed, despite giving a veneer of being anti-school. Instead, they remain there, because there is their own social and even educational value they can get out of it. They prize the manual labor they do in class and, after leaving school, continue to prize physical labor in the workplace while deriding and dismissing mental labor.

2. Being Maori in the City

Author: Natacha Gagné

When indigenous people live in urban environments, their authenticity as indigenous peoples is often brought into question.

Thus, Gagné’s examination of Maori identity in Auckland presents a valuable insight into how people continue to live out their indigenous identities in a changing, urbanized, and colonized landscape.

Gagné spent two years living with Maori people in Auckland and highlights in the book how their identity continues to be central to how they interact both with one another and with broader society.

3. Ethnography of a Neoliberal School

Author: Garth Stahl

While a wide range of academic research has looked at how neoliberalism can affect education, an ethnographic approach allows Stahl to demonstrate how it turns up as lived experience.

Neoliberalism is an approach to governance that focuses on the corporatization of society. In education, this means that schools should be run like companies.

There is no better example, of course, than charter schools .

In my favorite chapter, Stahl demonstrates within one anonymized charter school how teachers are increasingly subjected to performance quotas, KPIs, and governance that narrow down the purpose of education and give them very little freedom to exercise their expertise and provide individualized support to their students.

4. Coming of Age in Samoa

Author: Margaret Mead

Margaret Mead’s groundbreaking ethnography, Coming of Age in Samoa , had implications for two important reasons:

• It highlighted the importance of feminist perspectives in ethnographic research.
• It challenged a universalizing stage-based conceptualization of human development.

Mead’s work was conducted at a time when the Western world was in a moral panic about adolescents’ stress and emotional behaviors. The prevailing idea – promoted mainly by male psychologists – was that most of those behaviors were a natural part of the developmental cycle.

Mead, however, saw that female Samoan adolescents had much different experiences of adolescence and would not have fitted into the western mold of how a female adolescent would behave or be treated.

The Samoan society’s liberal ideas around intimacy and the lower levels of academic stress placed on the girls meant they lived very different realities with far less stress and social pressure than their Western counterparts.

5. Ghetto at the Center of the World

Author: Gordon Mathews

Mathews’s Ghetto at the Center of the World explores a multiethnic high-density housing complex in Hong Kong.

While seen by many locals as a ghetto (despite its relative safety!), Mathews shows how the motley group of residents, migrants, and tourists in the building live rich lives at what appears to be ground zero of globalization.

For the people in the building, globalization has offered opportunities but hasn’t solved all their problems. Each person that Mathews follows has their own story of how they navigate a globalized world while maintaining hope for a better future.

Additional Influential Ethnographic Studies

• Argonauts of the Western Pacific – This study was notable because it presented a turn toward participant observation in ethnography rather than attempts at fly-on-the-wall objectivity.
• The Remembered Village – A study of caste systems in India, this study is most notable for its methodological influence. Srinivas, the author, lost his field notes, but he continued on with presenting his findings, causing widespread controversy about its methodological merits.
• Space and Society in Central Brazil – This study explores the experiences of the Panará indigenous people of Brazil as they attempt to secure protected space from the colonialization occurring around them. It’s notable for its insights into how the Panará people organize themselves both culturally and spatially.
• White Bound – This book follows two groups, a white anti-racist group and a white nationalist group, and explores how each deals with whiteness. While the groups have fundamentally different goals, even the anti-racist group continue to contribute to white privilege .
• City, Street and Citizen – Suzanne Hall’s study of the mundane city street explores how multiethnicity is played out in globalized cities. It is a fascinating look at how lives take place within shared spaces where social contact occurs.

Ethnography is, in my humble (and of course subjective) opinion, the most exciting form of primary research you can do. It can challenge assumptions, unpick social norms, and make us all more empathetic people.

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 15 Animism Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 10 Magical Thinking Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ Social-Emotional Learning (Definition, Examples, Pros & Cons)
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ What is Educational Psychology?

3 thoughts on “15 Great Ethnography Examples”

Thanks very much for that. I am an early childhood teacher, already published on the topic of bilingual and multilingual children in our sector. One of my lecturers has suggested an ethnographic study of some of our immigrant children. Not sure where to start with that, but this has put me in the right frame of mind. Thanks again

Dear Chris,

Any suggested topic on ethnographic research i can start with here in the hospital where i am working. I am a nurse for cardiovascular patients undergoing open heart surgeries.

As you’re in a high risk setting, you might be best asking your managers at the workplace about this one. You could also consider an autoethnography where you do a study on yourself within the settings.

Best of luck with the study.

Regards, Chris

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *