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Ethnographic Research

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15 views16 pages

Ethnographic Research

Uploaded by

SAMIA BATOOL
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH

Prepared By
Dr. Fauzia Malik
This chapter will provide information on:
• What is specific about ethnographic research
• How the ethnographic research process proceeds
• What are the methodological and ethical principles
of ethnographic research
• How to do ethnographic fieldwork
• How to analyze and interpret ethnographic
research materials
• How to write and evaluate ethnographic research.
WHAT IS ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH?
• Ethnographic research takes a cultural lens to the
study of people’s lives within their communities
(Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007; Fetterman,
2010).
• The roots of ethnography lie in anthropological
studies that focused on studying social and cultural
aspects of small communities in foreign countries.
• The researchers lived among the inhabitants with
the purpose of understanding the culture that
these people shared.
• Ethnographic research can take place in many
types of communities including formal and
informal organizations such as workplaces,
urban communities, fan clubs, trade fares,
shopping centres, and social media.
• In addition, the research is often performed in
the native language of the researcher.
• The main aim of the ethnographers, however,
remains about the same: to observe and
analyze how people interact with each other
and with their environment in order to
understand their culture
The emic and etic perspectives
• Ethnographers seek to gain an emic perspective, or
the ‘native’s point of view’ of a specific culture
(Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007). This means that
they try to look at the culture under study from the
inside; through the meanings that the members of
that culture live with.
• Etic perspective means that the researcher looks at
the culture mostly with theoretical conceptions.
• Although researchers tend to combine emic and
etic perspectives at some point of their research.
Different versions of ethnographic research

• Critical ethnographies (Castagno, 2012)


• and feminist ethnographies (Pillow and Mayo, 2011)
• Autoethnography (Adams, Jones and Ellis, 2014) refers to an approach
where the researcher’s personal and reflective perspective is part of the
analysis.
• The expansion of the Internet and social media has boosted researchers
to perform virtual ethnography or netnography (see e.g. Hine, 2010).
Virtual ethnography rests on the argument that the ethnographer should
experience the social life of the research subjects regardless of how
those experiences are mediated. Related to this, ethnography can be
global, multi-sited and mobile in the sense that researchers follow
people around physical and virtual places (Epstein, Fahey and Kenway,
2013).
METHODOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES

• There are three methodological features of


ethnographic research, which have differing
philosophical backgrounds.
Naturalism

• According to naturalism, the aim of research is to capture the objective


nature of naturally occurring human action (Lincoln and Guba, 1985;
Hammersley, 1992: 43–54).
• The argument is that this can only be achieved through intensive, first-
hand contact and not through what people do in experimental and
artificial settings, or by what people say in interviews.
• This is why ethnographers carry out their research in natural settings,
which exist independently of the researcher.
• They also try to explain social events and processes in terms of their
relationship to the context in which they occur.
• According to naturalism, objective description requires you to minimize
your influence on the activities of the people that are studied.
Understanding

• A counter argument to naturalism entails that you can explain human action
only if you have an understanding of the culture in which action takes place
(Rosen, 1991).
• This is rather obvious if you study something that is completely alien to you.
However, some ethnographers argue that it is just as important when you
are studying more familiar settings. Indeed, when a setting is familiar, the
danger of misunderstanding is especially great. You should not assume that
you already know other people’s perspectives, because specific groups and
individuals develop distinctive world views. This is especially true in large
complex societies; therefore, it is necessary to learn the culture of the group
that you are studying before you can give explanations for the actions of its
members.
• This is why participant observation, conversations and open interviews are
central to ethnographic research.
Induction
• Ethnographers argue in favour of inductive and discovery-based
research processes focusing on ‘local interpretations’ (Geertz, 1973;
Fetterman, 2010).
• It is argued that if the researcher approaches a community with a set of
predefined theoretical models, concepts or propositions, they may fail
to discover the distinctive and contextual nature of it. This is why
ethnographers typically start their research with just a general interest
in a community, group of people, type of social action, or a practical
problem.
• The research problem will then be refined, and sometimes even
changed, as the research project proceeds.
• Similarly, theoretical ideas are developed over the course of the
research process. These are regarded as valuable outcomes of the
research, not as its starting points.
Ethics
• One of the strengths of ethnographic research, but also one of its challenges, is the reflection
on the relationships that the researchers build with the participants in their studies. Carrying
out ethnographic research differs from many other qualitative research approaches. Doing
ethnographic research means getting to know people , gaining their trust, and perhaps
committing oneself to long-term friendship relations. Or, as van Maanen (2011) puts it, in your
research project you are ‘part spy, part voyeur, part fan, part member’.
• All research is supposed to protect the people who participate in the study. This includes letting
them know the risks of the research, protecting their identities and, more generally, paying
extra attention to the decisions that you make during the research process (Vanderstaay, 2005).
You need to make your research goals and objectives clear to the members of the community
under study, and gain the informed consent of these people prior to starting your research
project.
• Ethics in research also includes ensuring that the study participants are given the opportunity to
decide whether you can use their real names or pseudonyms in your research. You also need to
discuss whether participants would want to read and comment on the drafts of the research
report. Overall, you must be sure that your research does not harm or exploit individuals or
groups of people that you are studying. For more details, see Chapter 6 for research ethics.
HOW TO CONDUCT ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH

• Choosing the field site


• Doing fieldwork
• Participant observation
• Ethnographic interviews
• Site documents
• Field notes
• Analyzing and interpreting ethnographic data
WRITING AND EVALUATION OF ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH

• The word ethnography literally means ‘a portrait of a people’,


which reminds us that ethnography is about representing the
field (van Maanen, 1995). Wolcott (2005), in turn, suggests that
ethnography concerns both the processes of accomplishing the
research and the research report itself, which is often written in
the form of prose rather than in the form of a more traditional
academic research report. He argues further that these two are
so closely tied to each other that the research process deserves
to be called ethnography only when the end product, the
research report, follows the conventions of ethnographic
representation, which means an emphasis on cultural
interpretation.
Using the narrative form

• Ethnographic writing includes a lot of detailed


description presented in narrative form (Fetterman,
2010). Watson (1994), Rosen (2000) and De Rond
(2008) are good examples of this. The purpose of
description is to let the reader know what happened in
the field, what it was like from the participants’ point of
view to be there, and what particular events or
activities were interesting and worth exploring further.
A detailed description and quotations are essential
qualities of ethnographic accounts.
Situating yourself in the text
• One of the major decisions that an ethnographer needs to make is how to situate themselves in
the ethnographic text that forms the research report. Van Maanen (2011) discusses three modes
of positioning in detail.
• In realist writing, the researcher is absent from the analysis and the text, the aim of which is to
present realistically and objectively what happened in the field. Here, the researcher writes in
passive mode without giving any personal accounts.
• In confessional writing, the ethnographer opts for a personal style, presenting emotional
reactions, unexpected occurrences, and one’s own expectations and experiences of the fieldwork.
• Impressionist writing involves the researcher offering tales in which they have participated in the
field. Here, the overall story of the research report makes visible both the culture being studied
and the researcher’s way of knowing the culture.
• Since the ethnographic research process and the evidence presented engages the researcher
intensively, it is best to use the first person form when writing the research report. Ethnographic
writing is best described as evocative, descriptive and lively. It is academic writing, but it also
requires creativity in rendering scenes, sights, smells, feelings, experiences and people as lifelike
as possible. Help the reader to be in the field just as you were, and to feel and understand what it
was like.

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