Ethnography Flashcards
Brief Description of Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative design in which the researcher describes and interprets the shared and learned patterns of values, behaviors, beliefs, and language of a culture-sharing group (Harris, 1968).
Is ethnography a method, product, or both
Ethnography as both a method and a product, has multiple intellectual traditions located in diverse disciplines.
What does the word ethnography literally mean?
The word ethnography literally means “writing about people.”
What are the two most commonly used ethnographic approaches?
Two of the most commonly used ethnographic approaches include realist ethnography and critical ethnography.
What is realist ethnography?
Realist ethnography is a more traditional approach, first endorsed by Van Maanen (2011) as a process where the researcher reports on layers of cultural interactions from a third-person perspective. This account of the observable and discernable characteristics of an intact culture include what the researcher saw, heard, and interpreted. The major features of the routines and interactions of the group, the social and linguistic networks, and power systems, and the cultural markings are all recorded and converged to create a description of the culture. This is seen as a relatively objective characterization of an existing group, where the researcher is essentially performing as a nonparticipant observer. Interviews still serve as a primary data source in this approach, supported by observation and detailed field notes, but the storytelling remains dispassionate.
What is critical ethnography?
Critical ethnography is an activist approach, also known as an advocacy or transformative stance (Madison, 2012). These studies are oriented to social change intended to represent marginalized populations or populations that are unable to speak for themselves. As a design critical ethnography is political in nature with aims to advance the needs, concerns, and rights of targeted populations. The researcher’s emphasis for this type of study seeks different details, emphases, and nuances; systems of power, prestige, authority and privilege are the focal points as the cultural description is presented (Madison, 2012).
What are the sequence of events in ethnography:
Researcher must determine the culture in question, obtain access to the site through a gatekeeper (or key informants), develop an initial description of the culture. The next step is to engage in prolonged engagement with the group, studying the various aspects of group culture. The interconnectedness of interview date, observations, field notes, and document/artifact analysis provides the basis for developing a rich holistic picture of the intact culture under study.
What roles do thick description and data collection tools play in ethnographic research?
Thick description is key to this type of inquiry and data collection tools must facilitate the written record of verbatim quotes, cultural markings, social structure, power distributions, group member roles, devices of language and dress, political and religious, beliefs, social relations, and the details of the group’s daily lives (Fetterman, 2012).
Explain “emic” and “etic” perspectives related to ethnographic research?
The culture-bearer’s actions form the emic perspective, while the views of the researcher comprise the etic perspective. Both are necessary to develop a holistic profile of the cultural workings of the group.
Philosophy of ethnography
Rooted in cultural anthropology, ethnography involves extended observation of a group, most often as the researcher as participant observer becoming immersed in the day-to-day lives of the participants.
Ethnographers take a range of approaches to observing the social reality depending on their specific discipline and philosophy. List three.
Ethnographers take a range of approaches to observing the social reality depending on their specific discipline and philosophy (realist, critical theory, or social construction/interpretive).
Describe realist ethnography (traditional approach) by Van Maanen (1988, 2011)
Realist ethnography (traditional approach) by Van Maanen (1988, 2011) - objective account of the situation, typically written in the third-person and reporting objectively. The ethnographer is the reporter of “facts.” The ethnographer produces the participants views through closely edited quotations and the final word on how the culture is to be interpreted.
Describe critical ethnography
Ethnographers may be interested in social change (critical ethnography) or studying populations that have been marginalized or overlooked (feminist theory, queer theory, trans theory) or on the study of cultural past of a group of people in order to uncover cultural roots, and whether and how the group has changed over time (ethnohistory). A researcher may also be interested in his or her personal experience by engaging in self-reflection to explore the cultural and contextual description and analysis of his/her life (autoethnography).
Assumptions of ethnography
The researcher needs grounding in anthropology and familiarity with regard to the meaning of the social-cultural system.
An interest in cultures, cultural understanding, and meaning-making;
Looking at the culture from the ‘inside’, with the emic perspective;
Being attentive to language practices;
Being close to the field and collecting first-hand experience.
Research focus of ethnography
Describing and interpreting a culture-sharing group.
