What is ethnographic research

Analytic or outside) approach to describing communities and c ethnographic research involves a detailed description of the whole of. As a result of the time spent living ities, ethnographers have been able to produce thick written ptions known as ethnographies that communicate the information found porary ethnographic research has the added dimension of not only people outside of the county of origin of the researcher, but also better understand those who reside within the county of origin. Raphic research looks at what may be considered ordinary or mundane living within a community, for example shopping malls, corporations, towns,Cities, cyberspace, garbage, libraries, parks, etc. Contemporary ch also differs from classic ethnographic research in that have limited amounts of time in which to conduct research. Because detail is so crucial, and interpretive because the determine the significance of what he or she observes without , statistical information. Researcher who has been trained in ethnographic field methods and ctives, then, carries out ethnographic research. Before going to the of study, those engaging in ethnographic studies conduct library and al research to learn some of what is already known about the place they are interested in so as not to enter the “field” researcher then spends time with the group of people under study to get. Traditional ethnographic research es at least a year in the field to get a clear understanding of the group;. Rapid ethnographic assessments, like many of the ethnographic d out by the national park service, are also do people see things differently? Importance of ethnographic kuhn suggests that what people see depends on what “ and conceptual experience has taught” them. Rice of ia university give an excellent example of how what we look at and see can be different things, depending on who perceives a situation two to three people and mentally place an apple on a table in t any prior discussion, each group member should take a moment dually write down what it is he or she a few minutes, compare notes. What about the type of apple on the table, did anyone there was a difference between a golden delicious and a macintosh? In ethnographic 1 —african nation founders 1500– ns before ging people for trade was african heritage lost? 3 free articles raphic research: a key to the march 2009 traditional market researchers, who use highly targeted questions to extract information from customers, corporate ethnographers observe and listen in a nondirected way. The ethnographic work at my company, intel, and other firms now informs functions such as strategy and long-range raphy is the branch of anthropology that involves trying to understand how people live their lives.

Ethnographic research study

Unlike traditional market researchers, who ask specific, highly practical questions, anthropological researchers visit consumers in their homes or offices to observe and listen in a nondirected way. Ethnographic research showed so much potential that intel set up a business unit to concentrate on processors and platforms for home ly, intel ethnographers have veered into strategic questions. But people often can’t articulate what they’re looking for in products or services. By understanding how people live, researchers discover otherwise elusive trends that inform the company’s future strategies. It is designed to explore cultural phenomena where the researcher observes society from the point of view of the subject of the study. Franz boas (1858-1942), bronislaw malinowski (1858—1942), ruth benedict and margaret mead (1901-1978), were a group of researchers from the united states who contributed the idea of cultural relativism to the literature. Boas's approach focused on the use of documents and informants, whereas, malinowski stated that a researcher should be engrossed with the work for long periods in the field and do a participant observation by living with the informant and experiencing their way of life. Known as the father of history had significant works on the cultures of various peoples beyond the hellenic realm such as nations in scythia, which earned him the title "barbarian lover" and may have produced the first ethnographic of ethnography[edit]. Characterized by van maanen (1988), it reflects a particular instance taken by the researcher toward the individual being studied. Ethnography: is a kind of ethnographic research in which the creators advocate for the liberation of groups which are marginalized in society. Critical researchers typically are politically minded people who look to take a stand of opposition to inequality and domination. The ethnography can be of the entire group or a subpart of involves engaging in extensive field work where data collection is mainly by interviews, symbols, artifacts, observations, and many other sources of researcher in ethnography type of research looks for patterns of the group's mental activities, that is their ideas and beliefs expressed through language or other activities, and how they behave in their groups as expressed through their actions that the researcher ethnography, the researcher gathers what is available, what is normal, what it is that people do, what they say, and how they work. Perhaps how the group works need to be described, or a critical ethnography can expose issues such as power, hegemony, and advocacy for certain groups (qualitative inquiry and research design, 95). Types of information typically needed in ethnography are collected by going to the research site, respecting the daily lives of individuals at the site and collecting a wide variety of materials. Field issues of respect, reciprocity, deciding who owns the data and others are central to ethnography (qualitative inquiry and research design, 95).

The researcher begins to compile a detailed description of the culture-sharing group, by focusing on a single event, on several activities, or on the group over a prolonged period of a working set of rules or generalizations as to how the culture-sharing group works as the final product of this analysis. The final product is a holistic cultural portrait of the group that incorporates the views of the participants (emic) as well as the views of the researcher (etic). Ethnographic method is different from other ways of conducting social science approach due to the following reasons:An ethnographer conducting field interviews, valašské muzeum v přírodě. It is conducted in the settings in which real people actually live, rather than in laboratories where the researcher controls the elements of the behaviors to be observed or is personalized. It is conducted by researchers who are in the day-to-day, face-to-face contact with the people they are studying and who are thus both participants in and observers of the lives under is multifactorial. It is conducted by a researcher who intends to interact with people they are studying for an extended period of time. It is conducted by a researcher whose interpretations and findings may be expounded on by the study’s participants while conclusions are still in the process of is holistic. It is conducted so as to yield the fullest possible portrait of the group under can also be used in other methodological frameworks, for instance, an action research program of study where one of the goals is to change and improve the situation. The goal is to collect data in such a way that the researcher imposes a minimal amount of personal bias in the data. Secondary research and document analysis are also used to provide insight into the research topic. 14] in the 21st century, anthropology focuses more on the study of people in urban settings and the use of kinship charts is seldom order to make the data collection and interpretation transparent, researchers creating ethnographies often attempt to be "reflexive". Reflexivity refers to the researcher's aim "to explore the ways in which [the] researcher's involvement with a particular study influences, acts upon and informs such research". Ethnographic research can range from a realist perspective, in which behavior is observed, to a constructivist perspective where understanding is socially constructed by the researcher and subjects. Research can range from an objectivist account of fixed, observable behaviors to an interpretive narrative describing "the interplay of individual agency and social structure. 18] critical theory researchers address "issues of power within the researcher-researched relationships and the links between knowledge and power.

The physical entity that is the novel contains a specific image in the perspective of the interpreting individual and can only be expressed by the individual in the terms of "i can tell you what an image is by telling you what it feels like. Ethnographic method is used across a range of different disciplines, primarily by anthropologists but also occasionally by sociologists. Anthropology and social anthropology were developed around ethnographic research and their canonical texts, which are mostly ethnographies: e. 23] ethnographers study and interpret culture, its universalities, and its variations through the ethnographic study based on fieldwork. Aw malinowski among trobriand of the ethnographic collection of the međimurje county museum in croatia. Typical ethnography attempts to be holistic[7][8] and typically follows an outline to include a brief history of the culture in question, an analysis of the physical geography or terrain inhabited by the people under study, including climate, and often including what biological anthropologists call habitat. Ethnography developed, anthropologists grew more interested in less tangible aspects of culture, such as values, worldview and what clifford geertz termed the "ethos" of the culture. For example, if within a group of people, winking was a communicative gesture, he sought to first determine what kinds of things a wink might mean (it might mean several things). Then, he sought to determine in what contexts winks were used, and whether, as one moved about a region, winks remained meaningful in the same way. Geertz, while still following something of a traditional ethnographic outline, moved outside that outline to talk about "webs" instead of "outlines"[30] of cultural anthropology, there are several subgenres of ethnography. Beginning in the 1950s and early 1960s, anthropologists began writing "bio-confessional" ethnographies that intentionally exposed the nature of ethnographic research. Writing culture helped bring changes to both anthropology and ethnography often described in terms of being 'postmodern,' 'reflexive,' 'literary,' 'deconstructive,' or 'poststructural' in nature, in that the text helped to highlight the various epistemic and political predicaments that many practitioners saw as plaguing ethnographic representations and practices. That is, the ethnographer cannot escape the personal viewpoint in creating an ethnographic account, thus making any claims of objective neutrality highly problematic, if not altogether impossible. 36] this exploration of the relationship between writer, audience, and subject has become a central tenet of contemporary anthropological and ethnographic practice. In certain instances, active collaboration between the researcher(s) and subject(s) has helped blend the practice of collaboration in ethnographic fieldwork with the process of creating the ethnographic product resulting from the research.

Urban sociology, atlanta university (now clark-atlanta university), and the chicago school, in particular, are associated with ethnographic research, with some well-known early examples being the philadelphia negro (1899) by w. But even though many sub-fields and theoretical perspectives within sociology use ethnographic methods, ethnography is not the sine qua non of the discipline, as it is in cultural ication studies[edit]. In the 1960s and 1970s, ethnographic research methods began to be widely used by communication scholars. As 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), also agar (1980) note that ethnography is both a process and an outcome of the research. Studies such as gerry philipsen's analysis of cultural communication strategies in a blue-collar, working-class neighborhood on the south side of chicago, speaking 'like a man' in teamsterville, paved the way for the expansion of ethnographic research in the study of rs of communication studies use ethnographic research methods to analyze communicative behaviors and phenomena. Ethnographic work in communication studies seeks to explain "how" ordinary methods/practices/performances construct the ordinary actions used by ordinary people in the accomplishments of their identities. 39] often this type of research results in a case study or field study such as an analysis of speech patterns at a protest rally, or the way firemen communicate during "down time" at a fire station. American anthropologist george spindler was a pioneer in applying the ethnographic methodology to the pologists such as daniel miller and mary douglas have used ethnographic data to answer academic questions about consumers and consumption. Companies make increasing use of ethnographic methods to understand consumers and consumption, or for new product development (such as video ethnography). Where focus groups fail to inform marketers about what people really do, ethnography links what people say to what they do—avoiding the pitfalls that come from relying only on self-reported, focus-group ting ethnography[edit]. Ethnographic methodology is not usually evaluated in terms of philosophical standpoint (such as positivism and emotionalism). Which is a method dedicated entirely to field work, is aimed at gaining a deeper insight of a certain people's knowledge and social raphy's advantages are:It can open up certain experiences during group research that other research methods fail to s that are taken for granted can be highlighted and can tap into intuitive and deep human understanding of and interpretations of (by the ethnographer) the accounts of informants (those who are being studied), which goes far beyond what quantitative research can do in terms of extracting raphy allows people outside of a culture (whether of a primitive tribe or of a corporation's employees) to learn about its members' practices, motives, understandings, and r, there are certain challenges or limitations for the ethnographic method:Deep expertise is required: ethnographers must accumulate knowledge about the methods and domains of interest, which can take considerable training and ivity: the ethnographer is an outsider and must exercise discretion and caution to avoid offending, alienating or harming those being : negotiating access to field sites and participants can be time-consuming and difficult. And cost: research can involve prolonged time in the field, particularly because building trust with participants is usually necessary for obtaining rich : ethnographers bring their own experience to bear in pursuing questions to ask and reviewing data, which can lead to biases in directions of inquiry and ptive approach: ethnography relies heavily on storytelling and the presentation of critical incidents, which is inevitably selective and viewed as a weakness by those used to the scientific approaches of hypothesis testing, quantification and alan fine argues that the nature of ethnographic inquiry demands that researchers deviate from formal and idealistic rules or ethics that have come to be widely accepted in qualitative and quantitative approaches in research. Many of these ethical assumptions are rooted in positivist and post-positivist epistemologies that have adapted over time but are apparent and must be accounted for in all research paradigms. These ethical dilemmas are evident throughout the entire process of conducting ethnographies, including the design, implementation, and reporting of an ethnographic study.

Essentially, fine maintains that researchers are typically not as ethical as they claim or assume to be — and that "each job includes ways of doing things that would be inappropriate for others to know". Is not necessarily casting blame at ethnographic researchers but tries to show that researchers often make idealized ethical claims and standards which in are inherently based on partial truths and self-deceptions. 47] based on these assertions, fine establishes three conceptual clusters in which ethnographic ethical dilemmas can be situated: "classic virtues", "technical skills", and "ethnographic self". Debate surrounding the issue of ethics arose following revelations about how the ethnographer napoleon chagnon conducted his ethnographic fieldwork with the yanomani people of south there is no international standard on ethnographic ethics, many western anthropologists look to the american anthropological association for guidance when conducting ethnographic work. 49] the code of ethics recognizes that sometimes very close and personal relationship can sometimes develop from doing ethnographic work. 49] the association acknowledges that the code is limited in scope; ethnographic work can sometimes be multidisciplinary, and anthropologists need to be familiar with ethics and perspectives of other disciplines as well. 50] the eight-page code of ethics outlines ethical considerations for those conducting research, teaching, application and dissemination of results, which are briefly outlined below. Research-when conducting research anthropologists need to be aware of the potential impacts of the research on the people and animals they study. Of results-when disseminating results of an ethnography, "[a]nthropologists have an ethical obligation to consider the potential impact of both their research and the communication or dissemination of the results of their research on all directly or indirectly involved. 55] research results of ethnographies should not be withheld from participants in the research if that research is being observed by other people. The kindly ethnographer" – most ethnographers present themselves as being more sympathetic than they are, which aids in the research process, but is also deceptive. When ethnographers find they intensely dislike individuals encountered in the research, they may crop them out of the findings. The honest ethnographer" – if research participants know the research goals, their responses will likely be skewed. Therefore, ethnographers often conceal what they know in order to increase the likelihood of acceptance by participants. The precise ethnographer" – ethnographers often create the illusion that field notes are data and reflect what "really" happened.

As ethnographers' skills in observation and collection of data vary by individual, what is depicted in ethnography can never be the whole picture. The unobtrusive ethnographer" – as a "participant" in the scene, the researcher will always have an effect on the communication that occurs within the research site. Following are commonly misconceived conceptions of ethnographers:"the candid ethnographer" – where the researcher personally situates within the ethnography is ethically problematic. The chaste ethnographer" – when ethnographers participate within the field, they invariably develop relationships with research subjects/participants. These relationships are sometimes not accounted for within the reporting of the ethnography, although they may influence the research findings. The literary ethnographer" – representation is a balancing act of determining what to "show" through poetic/prosaic language and style, versus what to "tell" via straightforward, 'factual' reporting. The individual skills of an ethnographer influence what appears to be the value of the research. Denzin, ethnographers should consider the following eight principles when observing, recording, and sampling data:The groups should combine symbolic meanings with patterns of e the world from the point of view of the subject, while maintaining the distinction between everyday and scientific perceptions of the group's symbols and their meanings with the social methodology should highlight phases of process, change, and act should be a type of symbolic concepts that would avoid casual es of studies that can use an ethnographic approach[edit]. Of ethnography: a form of ethnography that involves conducting ethnographic studies on the ipant observation. From 'reading over the shoulders of natives' to 'reading alongside natives', literally: toward a collaborative and reciprocal ethnography", in journal of anthropologcal research, 57(2):137-149. Of the most influential ethnographies and anthropology raphic praxis in industry , michael (2003) a synthesis of ethnographic on of anthropology, american museum of natural history - over 160,000 objects from pacific, north american, african, asian ethnographic collections with images and detailed description, linked to the original catalogue pages, field notebooks, and photographs are available archive of african raphic material collection from northern anatolia and caucasus -photo zealand museum images of objects from pacific sity of pennsylvania's "what is ethnography? University library southeast asia raphy for the masses 2cv's practical application of ethnography in market polar research institute arctic material culture , otis tufton (1905). A non-profit sity of california san ative research raphic ative research and collection-based resources to aid in conducting, finding, using, synthesizing, and teaching qualitative research in the health raphic raphyresources for ethnographic ipant ative research ethnographic study of the role of humor in health care lance r. 2005isbn: ces for ethnographic raphy is a scientific research strategy often used in the field of social sciences, particularly in anthropology and in some branches of sociology, also known as part of historical science that studies people, ethnic groups and other ethnic formations, their ethnogenesis, composition, resettlement, social welfare characteristics, as well as their material and spiritual raphic david garson from north carolina state university, a short overview of the subject with a glossary of terms, a faq, and a to use ethnographic methods and participant emerald, a journal publisher, in their research zone for practicing authors. Synthesis of ethnographic michael genzuk of the university of southern california, this is a good overview of this research methodology.

In ng at marshall term ethnography has come to be equated with virtually any qualitative research project where the intent is to provide a detailed, in-depth description of everyday life and practice. The use of the term “qualitative” is meant to distinguish this kind of social science research from more “quantitative” or statistically oriented research. Quantitative and qualitative, while often complementary, ultimately have different that you can view and download my detailed guide to ethnography and ethnographic fieldwork, including lists of questions and tips for fieldwork notes. If you would like to use and cite my work on this subject, this is the best way to an ethnographic approach to social research is no longer purely that of the cultural anthropologist, a more precise definition must be rooted in ethnography’s disciplinary home of anthropology. Thus, ethnography may be defined as both a qualitative research process or method (one conducts an ethnography) and product (the outcome of this process is an ethnography) whose aim is cultural interpretation. Specifically, he or she attempts to explain how these represent what we might call “webs of meaning” (geertz again), the cultural constructions, in which we raphers generate understandings of culture through representation of what we call an emic perspective, or what might be described as the “‘insider’s point of view. The emphasis in this representation is thus on allowing critical categories and meanings to emerge from the ethnographic encounter rather than imposing these from existing models. An etic perspective, by contrast, refers to a more distant, analytical orientation to ethnographic understanding is developed through close exploration of several sources of data. To develop an understanding of what it is like to live in a setting, the researcher must both become a participant in the life of the setting while also maintaining the stance of an observer, someone who can describes the experience with a measure of what we might call “detachment. Typically ethnographers spend many months or even years in the places where they conduct their research often forming lasting bonds with people. Due to historical development and disciplinary biases, in the past most ethnographers conducted their research in foreign countries while largely ignoring the potential for work right here at home. Increasing numbers of cultural anthropologists, however, have begun doing fieldwork in the communities where they themselves live and iews provide for what might be called “targeted” data collection by asking specific but open-ended questions. In most cases, an ethnographic interview looks and feels little different than an everyday conversation and indeed in the course of long-term participant-observation, most conversations are in fact purely spontaneous and without any specific chers collect other sources of data which depend on the specific nature of the field setting. Although often not tied to the site of study, secondary academic sources are utilized to “locate” the specific study within an existing body of the past twenty years, interest has grown within anthropology for considering the close relationship between personal history, motivation, and the particulars of ethnographic fieldwork (e. Personal and professional experiences, together with historical context, lead individual researchers to their own particular methodological and theoretical approaches.

Unfortunately, the autobiographical dimension of ethnographic research has been downplayed historically if not discounted altogether. This is mostly understandable given a perceived threat to the objectivity expected of legitimate science, to reliability of data, and to integrity of our methodology, if we appear to permit subjectivity to intervene by allowing the ethnographer’s encumbered persona to appear instead of adhering to the prescribed role of wholly dispassionate anthropologists today point to bronislaw malinowski, author of such landmark ethnographies as argonauts of the western pacific (first published in 1922), as a kind of founding father to ethnographic fieldwork, the practice of “participant-observation. These “off the record” writings document the tacit impressions and emotional experiences without which we cannot, as ethnographers, fully appreciate and understand the project of our research itself. First of these is that, at its heart, ethnographic writing is a means of expressing a shared interest among cultural anthropologists for telling stories – stories about what it means to be human. Do you get told what the good life is, or do you figure it out for yourself”? Stories told here are parts of a larger moral story about what constitutes the good life at a time of economic uncertainty coupled with shifting social categories and cultural meanings. This stirring portrait of starting over in the heartland of america will initiate fruitful discussion about where we are going next as an emerging postindustrial book based on ethnographic research available from vanderbilt university ll university's anthropology r timeline tweets by @hoey_ations on selected workscreating healthy community in the postindustrial citycapitalizing on distinctiveness: creating wv for a new economyopting for elsewhere: lifestyle migration in the american middle classroy rappaportpursuing the good life: american narratives of travel and a search for refugeamerican dreaming: refugees from corporate work seek the good lifetherapeutic uses of place in the intentional space of purposive communitygrey suit or brown carhartt: narrative transition, relocation and reorientation in the lives of corporate refugeesnationalism in indonesia: building imagined and intentional communities through transmigrationimagining possibilities for healthy appalachian communities in an emerging postindustrial landscape.