History Bump

Ethnography taken literally is “writing culture”, and specifically, the attempt to write culture with an eye to the difference between insider and outsider perspectives. Ethnography depends on an epistemology about (among other things) the interpretation of culture: cultural artifacts and cultureways will be interpreted differently by those outside the culture than it will by those within it.

I have been thinking about this, and conclude that in ethnographic epistemology, each individual also operates from a worldview or framework (ideo-epistemology), which assumes a methodology (shared) of cultureways or ways of behaving and reasons for behaving, and plays out in specific behaviors, which are the method of acting out the cultureways. Cultureways define and determine the appropriateness of individual behaviors, and the worldview sets the stage for cultureways.

Writing about the individual experience of the culture (the method and the methodology) and cultural beliefs (epistemology) is complicated by the fact that not all of these are observable (particularly the reasons behind them) or even fully known or articulated by the individuals acting them out. In other words, you can’t “Just Watch” or “Just Ask” people why they do things and get a full picture.

The methodology of Ethnography, then, is driven by a desire to understand, not just what is done but how what is done is experienced by the participant. Ethnographic methodology is a conversation or range of proposals about the best way to do this, and the best way to evaluate the results.

Ethnography plays out in a series of data collection – and- analysis moves that are often called “Ethnographic Method”, but should really be called “Ethnographic Field Methods”. Field methods range from “objective” observation to participant-observation to participant-report (through interviews, autobiographical texts, oral histories, and so on), and include the ways that qualitative data will be transcribed, coded, and analyzed. In Anthropology (the originating discipline), results have to be measured in the context of ethnographic methodology, including tests of the sensitivity of the researcher to his or her own biases and observer interruption of the culture, as well as validity and veracity.

This is my take on ethnography in Anthropology. I haven’t addressed specific positions – Ant. Ethnography is currently very strongly postmodern in its sensibility, but I’m not really trying to address anything but this terminology and how it plays out. I hope this rant explains why I was willing to accept and agree with Elisa’s characterization of Ethnography as methodology. I hope too that the differentiation between ethnographic Field Methods, which are adopted by and adapted to a wide range of disciplines, and the methodology that underpins those methods and gives them validity (which is frequently left behind), explains why their use doesn’t in itself provide any anchor for a researcher to point to and say “this is my methodology”.

PS
I found an interesting paper on -social accounting? (whatever that is) online, in which the author says things about ethnography as methodology and borrowing into other disciplines, but he asks that it not be quoted without permission, so I'll only provide the URL:
http://les.man.ac.uk/IPA/papers/7.pdf