Ethnography

A topic in research methodology

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"There is an initial period of bewilderment, one can even say of despair, but if one perseveres one eventually breaks through."

In the long run…an ethnographer is bound to triumph. Armed with preliminary knowledge nothing can prevent him [or her] from driving deeper and deeper the wedge if he [or she] is interested and persistent."

Evans-Pritchard, 1976/1937

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Ethnography is an overall research strategy – a methodology – employed in developing some research designs. Ethnographic research is naturalistic, and employs data collection techniques such as participant observation and interviews undertaken in the 'verstehen' tradition.

"Ethnography is an approach drawing upon anthropology, which attempts to make sense of a particular culture or group in its own terms: that is to understand the meaning the individuals in that culture of group assign to certain rituals or cultural practices …Whilst, ethnographies, that is detailed accounts produced by ethnographic methodology, are relatively rare, if not excluded … in science education, studies which draw on ethnographic approaches and perspectives are quite common."

Taber, 2014

Evans-Pritchard undertook field work among the Azande in the 1920s, and wrote:

"I tried to adapt myself to their culture by living the life of my hosts, as far as convenient, and by sharing their hopes and joys, apathy and sorrows. In many respects my life was like theirs: I suffered their illnesses; exploited the same food supplies; and adopted as far as possible heir own patterns of behaviour with resultant enmities as well as friendships. …I, too, used to react to misfortunes in the idiom of witchcraft and it was often an effort to check this lapse into unreason."

Evans-Pritchard, 1976/1937

The Azande explained all misfortune that did not have other obvious causes (incompetence, breach of a taboo, failure to observe moral rules) as due to the psychic activtiies of witches. Evans-Prichard did not accept their explanations ("Witches, as the Azande conceive them, clearly cannot exist"), but adopted their discourse norms.

In some types of research interview intended to understand the participants' construing of the world, an ethnographic style of interview may be appropriate.

A choice of research strategy should fit the background assumptions underpinning a particular study (see research paradigms):

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Emic and etic

A distinction sometimes made between etic and emic approach to describing culture. The terms are 'borrowed' from linguistics (where emic studies focus on a single culture,and etic studes make cross-cultural analyses). In anthropology, the emic approach focuses on understnading observations in terms of the meaning that partiicipants htemselves give to them, whereas etic approaches apply theoretical perspectivres form outside the culture.

For example, the following extract includes a combination of etic and emic interpretations,

"Most public religious rituals in the Micronesian atoll of Ifaluk are either therapeutic or prophylactic in nature; they are designed to maintain or restore health by exorcising malevolent ghosts (who cause illness by possessing their victims), or by preventing these ghosts from executing their intension in the fist place. It is not within the province of social science to decide whether one of the manifest, intended functions of these rituals – defeat of the ghosts – is served; the Ifaluk, of course, believe that it is. But these rituals serve other manifest functions to which the beahvioural scientists can testify. By their performance the two fears of illness and attack by ghosts are reduced (manifest intended personal function), and by assembling and acting in concert for the achievement of a common end, good fellowship is strengthened (manifest unintended social function.)…By displacing hostility from fellows to ghosts, their hostility is acceptable, and their subsequent aggressive motive can be gratified in a socially sanctioned manner in the performance of these rituals."

Spiro, 1961/1994, p.130-131 (emphases added)

Recommended podcast

'The BSA and Thinking Allowed Ethnography Award Shortlist' is an episode of the radio series 'Thinking Aloud' which is presented by Prof. Laurie Taylor and reports on "new research on how society works". As the title suggests

"The BSA and Thinking Allowed Ethnography Award Shortlist' concerns "The Ethnography award 'short list': Thinking Allowed, in association with the British Sociological Association, presents a special programme devoted to the academic research which has been short listed for our third annual award for a study that has made a significant contribution to ethnography, the in-depth analysis of the everyday life of a culture or sub culture."

The programme discusses the five ethnographies that made the 2017 prize shortlist. As well as providing a brief overview of each of the studies, the judges offer their take on the key features of ethnography. Similar editions disucss the 2016 and 2018 shortlists, and the winners.

(*Free to download from the BBC website, along with other episodes from the series).

Sources cited:

• Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (1976) Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande. Abridged with an introduction by Eva Gillies. Clarendon Press. Oxford. [Original version publsihed in 1937.]
• Spiro, M. E. (1961/1994) Social systems, personality, and functional analysis, in B. Kilborne & L. L. Langness (Eds.) Culture and Human Nature. Transaction Publishers: New Brunswick and London (p.109-144).
• Taber, K. S. (2014). Methodological issues in science education research: a perspective from the philosophy of science. In M. R. Matthews (Ed.), International Handbook of Research in History, Philosophy and Science Teaching (Vol. 3, pp. 1839-1893). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.