Transcript Chapter 2

ETHNOGRAPHY
Ethnography 1
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ETHNOGRAPHY:
DEFINITION AND BACKGROUND
The purpose of ethnography is to describe and interpret the shared and learned
patterns of values, behaviors, beliefs, and language of a culture-sharing group
(Harris, 1968)
Agar (1980) notes that ethnography is both a process and an outcome
of the research
Ethnography involves extended observations of the group in which
the researcher is immersed in their daily lives
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ETHNOGRAPHY:
DEFINITION AND BACKGROUND
Ethnography begin in the early 20 th century in comparative
anthropology
Today subtypes of ethnography include structuralism and
symbolic interactionism that have different theoretical
orientations and aims
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TYPES OF ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDIES:
REALIST ETHNOGRAPHY
The approach is the traditional approach to ethnography
The account of the situation is objective and written in the third
person
The ethnographer remains in the background and reports the facts
The details of daily life often provided
The ethnographer produces participant views through closely edited
questions and has the final word on how culture will be interpreted
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TYPES OF ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDIES:
CRITICAL ETHNOGRAPHY
The goal is the advocacy and the emancipation of marginalized groups
The orientation in the study is value-laden The status quo is challenged
The concerns of power and control are addressed
The issues of power, empowerment, inequality, dominance, repression,
hegemony, and victimization are studied
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ETHNOGRAPHY RESEARCH
PROCEDURES (WOLCOTT 1999)
Determine if ethnography is the appropriate research design for the
problem
Identify and locate a culture-sharing group to study
Select cultural themes to study about the group (e.g., enculturation,
socialization, learning, domination)
Begin by examining people in interaction in ordinary settings
Culture is inferred by the researcher by looking at what people do and say and the
potential tensions between what they do and ought to do, and their artifacts
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ETHNOGRAPHY RESEARCH
PROCEDURES
(WOLCOTT 1999)
Determine the type of ethnography (realist or critical)
Gather data where the group works and lives (field work)
Gather information where the group lives and works
Respect the individuals at the research site
Collect many sources of data
Analyze the data for a description of the group focusing on a single
event and then moving into overall themes
The final product is a wholistic portrait of the group that
incorporates both the views of the participants (emic) and the views
of the researcher (etic)
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ETHNOGRAPHY EXAMPLE: (HAENFLER 2004)
Overview of the study
The study described the core values of the straight edge (sXe) movement that
emerged on the east coast of the US in the early 1980s from the punk subculture
The study involved White middle-class males from ages 15-25
The movement was linked with the punk music genre
Security made a large X on each hand before they entered punk concerts to show
they were underage
The sXers adopted a clean living ideology
The ethnography examined how subculture group members expressed opposition
individually and as a reaction to other subcultures
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ETHNOGRAPHY EXAMPLE:
HAENFLER (2004)
Overview of the methodology
The author participated in the movement for 14 years and attended more than 250
concerts
The data consisted of 28 interviews with men and women, newspaper stories, music lyrics,
web pages, and sXe magazines
The author provided a detailed description of the subculture
T-shirt slogans
Song lyrics
Use of the symbol X
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ETHNOGRAPHY EXAMPLE:
HAENFLER (2004)
Overview of the findings:
The author described the cultural group
The author identified five themes
Positivity/clean living
Reserving sex for caring relationships
Self-realization
Spreading the message
Involvement in progressive causes
The author concluded the article with a broad understanding of the sXers’ values
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ETHNOGRAPHY EXAMPLE: HAENFLER (2004)
Features of ethnography
The study focused on a culture-sharing group and their core values
The author first described the group and themes about the group, and ended with a
suggestion of how the subculture worked
The author positioned himself by describing his involvement in the subculture and
his role of the group for many years
The author used a critical ethnographic perspective to examine the issue of
resistance to opposition
The author concluded with comment about how the subculture resisted the
dominant culture
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THE PURPOSE STATEMENT:
AN ETHNOGRAPHIC EXAMPLE
This article examines how the
work and the talk of stadium
work and the employees
talk
stadium
reinforce
certain
meanings of baseball in
employees
society, and it reveals how
meanings of baseball
this work and talk create and
maintain ballpark culture.
(Trujillo, 1992, p. 351)
Elements of
Ethnography
•Culture-sharing
group
•Language and
cultural behavior
•Cultural beliefs
ballpark culture
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THE CENTRAL QUESTION
An ethnography example (Haenfler, 2004)
No central question was posed in the article
A possible central question: What are the core values of the straight edge movement, and how
do members construct and understand their subjective experiences of being a part of the subculture?
The central question identifies a culture-sharing group
The central question begins by asking for a description of core values
The central question uses the description of the core values to build an
understanding of the experiences that are presented as themes in the study
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COLLECTING DATA:
OBSERVATIONS
Select a site to be observed
Identify a gatekeeper who can give you access to the site
Identify who will be observed and for how long
Determine your role as an observer
Complete participant (going native)
Participant observer
Complete observer
You can vary roles (e.g., be an outsider at the beginning and become an insider
over time)
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ETHNOGRAPHY:
OVERALL RHETORICAL STRUCTURE
Types ethnographic tales
Realist tale: conveys a scientific or objective perspective
Confessional tale: researcher focuses in on the experiences of the fieldwork rather than on
the culture
Impressionistic tale: a personalized account of the fieldwork case in dramatic form
Critical tale: focuses on large social, political, symbolic, or economic issues
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ETHNOGRAPHY:
OVERALL RHETORICAL STRUCTURE
(VAN MAANEN, 1998)
Types ethnographic tales
Formalist tale: used to build, test, generalize, and exhibit theory
Literary tales: ethnographers write like journalists and borrow fiction-writing
techniques from novelists
Jointly told tales: the study is jointly authored by fieldworkers and informants
that open up shared discursive narratives
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ETHNOGRAPHY:
EMBEDDED RHETORICAL STRUCTURE
Figures of speech (e.g., troupes)
Ways of depicting scenes
Thick descriptions
Dialogue
Ways of telling a “good story”
Develop “rules” about how the culture-sharing group works
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ETHNOGRAPHY CHALLENGES
The researcher must be grounded in cultural anthropology and the
meaning of a social-cultural system
The researcher needs extensive time in the field to collect data
The researcher must be aware that the audience for the work may
be limited because of the narrative story-telling approach to
writing that is often needed
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ETHNOGRAPHY CHALLENGES
The researcher must be aware of the danger of going native
The researcher must be sensitive to the needs of the individuals
being studied including
The researcher must be aware of his or her impact on the people
and places studied
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