Ethnography

[|Ethnography]
** Ethnography ** Focus: Describing and interpreting a culture-sharing group. Design: Describing and interpreting the shared patterns and culture of a group. Applications: When the researcher wants to learn on the whole: Language, culture, power resistance, and how the group works. ** What is ethnography? ** ** Definition ** Ethnography is a qualitative research design that describes and interprets the shared patterns of values, behaviors and beliefs or culture of a group of individuals (Creswell, 2010). The researcher resides within the culture in order to extract the authentic accounts from the participants through close observations and interviews of native group members. Fetterman (2010) tells us that ethnography is the telling of a “credible, rigorous, and authentic story" (p. 1). Ethnography is rooted in cultural anthropology which began with studies of large groups of primitive cultures. Modern day ethnography research can represent a group of individuals as small as a group of special education students or teachers who share a cultural behavior.  ** Participants and Focus of an Ethnographic Study **   The participants in an ethnographic study tell the stories of their everyday lives from inside the boundaries of the culture. From the point of view of natives within the group, this type of study places a cultural lens through which the reader views their life experiences surfaces. The focus for ethnography is to observe, describe and interpret human thoughts and behaviors through authentic accounts of their daily experiences (Fetterman, 2010).   ** Results ** Ethnography provides a voice for the people of a culture or subgroup of individuals. The results of this type of qualitative study generate a clear picture of the everyday realities of a group of people inside the cultural margins. **Types of Ethnographic Research Design** Additional Information for Beginning Ethnographers: About ethnography [|Doing ethnographies] (Concepts and Techniques in Modern Geography) Blogs about Ethnography [] Digital tools for data collection in an ethnographic study [] ** Notable Ethnographers ** **Mead, Margaret**Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) //Growing Up in New Guinea// (1930) //The Changing Culture of an Indian Tribe// (1932)//Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies// (1935)//And Keep Your Powder Dry: An Anthropologist Looks at America// (1942)Male and Female (1949) //New Lives for Old: Cultural Transformation in Manus, 1928-1953// (1956)//People and Places// (1959; a book for young readers)//Continuities in Cultural Evolution// (1964)//Culture and Commitment// (1970)//Blackberry Winter: My Earlier Years// (1972; autobiography) **audio lecture:**
 * Realist Ethnography reports an objective account of the information that is usually written in the third person. It is a narration of what is seen and hear (Creswell, 2007).
 * Critical ethnography focuses on empowering and exposing inequalities of a group. Addresses power and control within a cultural setting (Creswell, 2007).
 * Confessional ethnography-
 * Life history frames a participants life history within the influence of the culture (Wolcott, 2008).
 * Autoethnography is an ethnographic description written by a member of the culture ("Definitions of anthropology," 2002).
 * Feminist ethnography studies a group of individuals through a lens that asks the question of who’s truth were decisions made from (Fetterman, 2010)?
 * Ethnographic novels- ethnographic description written as a story that may be about an ethnographer's experience or about some event or problem ("Definitions of anthropology," 2002).
 * Visual ethnography -digital video or photos used to create the descriptions. Here is a link to an Ethnographic video project. []

// 1977. //[|//The Future as Frame for the Present//]//. Audio recording of a lecture delivered July 11, 1977. //

**David Maybury-Lewis** //Akwe-Shavante Society// (1974) //Dialectical Societies: The Ge and Bororo of Central Brazil// (1979) //Prospects for Plural Societies: 1982 Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society// (1984) //The Attraction of Opposites: Thought and Society in the Dualistic Mode// (1989) Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World (1992) //The Savage and the Innocent// (2000) //Indigenous Peoples, Ethnic Groups, and the State// (2001) //The Politics of Ethnicity:Indigenous Peoples in Latin American States// (2003) ** Bronisław Kasper Malinowski ** //The Trobriand Islands// (1915)Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922)//Myth in Primitive Psychology// (1926)//Crime and Custom in Savage Society// (1926)//Sex and Repression in Savage Society// (1927)The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia (1929)//Coral Gardens and their Magic: A Study of the Methods of Tilling the Soil and of Agricultural Rites in the Trobriand Islands// (1935)//The Scientific Theory of Culture// (1944)"Freedom & Civilization" (1944)//Magic, Science, and Religion// (1948)//The Dynamics of Culture Change// (1945)//A Diary In the Strict Sense of the Term// (1967) ** Richard Price ** Price, R. (1995). Executing ethnicity: The killings in Suriname. //Cultural Anthropology// //(10)// 437-471. ** Procedures and Methods ** Ethnographic studies use a direct, first-hand observation of daily participation which can include participant observation. Another common method is interviewing, which may include conversation with different levels of form and can involve small talk to long interviews. The researcher transcribes the accounts of the participants to discover and record connections of cultural accounts of kinship, historic past about the lives of their descendants and marriage rituals using diagrams and symbols (Wolcott, 2005). ** When to use an ethnographic study: ** (Schensul, 2005) ** Design ** The design that this type of qualitative research uses is situated within the context of the members of a cultural-sharing group. The focus of the research investigates the experiences, problems or concerns of the group members as they exist within their daily life activities. In an ethnographic study, the research design positioning one self so that data can be collected through participant observation. Participant observation is where the researcher is immersed in the daily lives of the culture and records the behaviors as well as conducts interviews to further explain the cultural existence of the group. Ethnographers study the first hand accounts of their subjects through a cultural-sharing lens (Creswell, 2007). "Ethnographic research involves intimate and reciprocal involvement with community members" **Data collection and Analysis one in the natural setting and is consider to be fieldwork in nature** (Schensul, 2005)**.**
 * Differences among people such as ethnicity, age.
 * Different behaviors, cultural beliefs, attitudes, norms
 * Relationships
 * Processes
 * Structures such as policies, norms, rules.
 * Historical factors or variables in **background**
 * **Statuses in areas such as he**alth, educational, economic, political.

Collection:

Analysis: ** Validation ** To validate an ethnographic study requires the researcher to use several different methods to collect data. For example, by using a data combination such as observations and interviews, the researcher increases the credibility of the conclusions. The researcher will analyze and evaluate the data to find validations between the sets of conclusions drawn from all of the data collected about the group (Richardson, 2000). ** Value of this type of study to various academic disciplines ** Because ethnography has its roots in anthropology, it seamlessly lends itself to cultural studies. Both anthropology and sociology use ethnographic data to analyze populations in a given culture(Wolcott, 2008). Ethnography provides a descriptive look into the daily lives of individuals. An ethnographic approach is versatile it deepens content analysis by collecting descriptive narrative data, as well as providing a way to quantify the data numerically (Creswell, 2007). This sociological type of research provides insight into the patterns of human behavior and interactions. It outlines the processes of the human condition inside the cultural context, allowing disciplines such as education and psychology to better understand human behavior and develop programs that mirror the needs of different individuals and groups. ** References **
 * Participant observation
 * Questionnaires can be used to aid the discovery of local beliefs or perceptions. In the case of longitudinal research, where there is continuous long-term study of an area or site, they can act as valid instrument for measuring changes in the individuals or groups studied.
 * Interviews of participants
 * Document analysis
 * Data is collected and analyze to draw conclusions about the a behavior or experiences of a culture-sharing group.
 * Ethnographers begin "thick description" a term popularized by Geertz (1973). Geertz notes that it is not a power, something to social events, behaviors, institutions, or processess can be causally attributed; it is a context, something within which they can be intelligibly described (Merriam, 2009).

Agar, Michael (1996) //The Professional Stranger: An Informal Introduction to Ethnography//. Academic Press. Atkinson, P.(1990) //The ethnographic imagination: Textual constructions of reality.// London: Routledge. Creswell, J.W. (2007). //Qualitative inquiry & research design: Choosing among five approaches.// Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. **LeCompte**[|?] Mead, M.(1961). //Coming of age in Samoa: A psychological study of primitive youth for Western civilization//. New York: Marrow. Mead, M.(1977). Maybury-Lewis, D. (1992). //Millennium: Tribal wisdom and the modern world.//New York: Viking Press. Richardson,L. (2000). Evaluating ethnography. //Qualitative Inquiry, 6//(2), 253-255. Schensul, J. (2005, July). //What is Ethnography?//. Retrieved from [] Wolcott, H. (2005). //Ethnography a way of seeing//. New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Merriam, S.B. (2009). //Qualitative research: A guide to design and implementation.// San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons.

[|The Future as Frame for the Present]. Audio recording of a lecture delivered July 11, 1977. , M., & Schensul, J. (1999). //Designing and conducting ethnographic research//. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Referring links: [|(u03a1) Five Approaches to Qualitative Research]