How to Do Ethnographic Research: A Simplified Guide

How to Do Ethnographic Research: A Simplified Guide



The following section was authored by Barbara Hall and is intended to provide general, simplified information about how to conduct and write up the results of ethnographic research. The information that follows falls into three general areas: guidance through the steps necessary to plan and conduct an interesting and appropriate ethnographic term project, even in a class that does not devote much or any time to teaching ethnographic methodology, help in making sense of what is learned through the research, both with regards to the fieldsite in question and to anthropological theory, and assistance in rendering the both research process and what was learned through it accessible to readers through established conventions for writing ethnographic research papers.
The pages below are arranged in a loose order which can take you step-by-step through the research and writing process involved in ethnography. Novice ethnographers are encouraged to read through the following in its entirety before beginning a project.


Objectivity, Ethnographic Insight and Ethnographic Authority
Students learning about ethnography for the first time are often tempted to promise fervently to be "objective" in their research and to learn what is "really" happening in the field. However, anthropologists have long since acknowledged that ethnographic research is not objective research at all. The following are some of the reasons for this conclusion:
Ethnography is an interpretive endeavor undertaken by human beings with multiple and varied commitments which can and do affect how the research is done and reported. We all have backgrounds, biographies, and identities which affect what questions we ask and what we learn in the field, how our informants let us in to their lives, and how our own interpretive lenses work.

Not all fieldsites are "foreign" for ethnographers in the same way. Some ethnographers are native to the communities in which they study, whereas some enter as complete strangers with no obvious common ground. Even though they may learn somewhat different things, both kinds of researchers are legitimately able to undertake ethnographic research.

Ethnography is not replicable research (like many kinds of science).

Ethnography is not based on large numbers of cases (like quantitative research).
How can any research done under such circumstances, which is not even pretending to be objective, have any worth at all? In other words, how can we claim ethnographic insight into cultural practices? What is the basis of ethnographic authority under these conditions? Anthropologists have seriously considered these charges, and concluded that there are several ways in which insight and authority in ethnographic research can be persuasively claimed:

Anthropologists generally subscribe to some form of cultural relativism, meaning that we believe that there is no one standpoint from which to judge all cultures and ways of being in the world. Because of this, we are conditioned to see various perspectives as "positioned" (Abu-Lughod 1991), and the things that we learn in the field as "partial truths" (Clifford 1986). Therefore, there is not one single truth in a research situation to be uncovered; there are many.
Ethnographers are expected to be "reflexive" in their work, which means that we should provide our readers with a brief, clear picture of how the research we have done has been or could have been affected by what we bring to it. This can take the form of revealing details of our own experience or background to readers up front.
Ethnographers should have more than one way to show how we arrived at the conclusions of our research; we expect to have a collection of fieldnotes, interviews, and site documents (where possible) which work together to support our claims. This is called triangulation.
Ethnographic research takes place in depth and over a great deal of time, often months or years for professional ethnographers. Ethnographic conclusions are, therefore, arrived at only after lengthy consideration.
Sanjek (1990) recommends that readers and writers of ethnography focus on what he calls the "validity" of ethnography. In this way, we can judge the clarity with which decisions regarding the application of theory to data are explained as well as follow ways in which events in the text are persuasively linked in making the conclusions presented there.
Guiding Questions
One of the first things we need early on in order to conduct a successful ethnographic project is an appropriate guiding question. Having a guiding question before beginning fieldwork is a good idea because it gives you some way to focus your attention productively in early visits to your fieldsite. Of course, this question might change in the course of the research as more is learned; this happens often and can be a step towards especially insightful research!
Guiding questions are aimed at the basic point of ethnography: gaining the world view of a group of people. Common formats for guiding questions might be:
How do members of a particular group perceive of or understand a certain social or cultural phenomenon? (This is often seen through behavior of some kind.)
Example: How do sexually active high school students in rural American conveive of and negotiate the use of birth control?

How is a certain social or cultural practice socially constructed among members of a certain group?
Example: How is arranged marriage socially constructed among matchmakers in contemporary Japan?
Modern ethnographies focus on a central guiding question that connects the local fieldsite to larger anthropological questions about how culture works. Guiding questions should encode larger questions regarding culture or social practice within them. Since everyone is cultural, the ways of life of all groups - familiar, unfamiliar, rich, poor, popular, unpopular - are potential ethnographic topics. While many ethnographies have focused on the poorest or most disenfranchised populations in societies, students are encouraged to "study up" as well. This refers to studying powerful groups and institutions. How and why do these groups gain, maintain, and exercise power? Note that since groups of people are not homogenous or static, it is often most effective to study a social process at work over time.
In choosing a guiding question, be sure first that it is answerable through ethnographic research. It may be helpful to review the description of ethnography provided in this site to make sure that your question is appropriate. Remember that quantitative research, public policy research, and journalism may seem similar but are importantly distinct from ethnography; examples of the kinds of questions these consider are included there. It is also a good idea to show the guiding question to the professor for help in deciding whether or not it is appropriately anthropological and able to be addressed by ethnographic means.


Fieldsites
Traditionally, anthropologists have undertaken ethnographic research in small, bounded villages while living among the village's relatively few inhabitants. These ethnographers may have been one of few non-natives in that part of the world and may have been one of the first non-natives that the villagers had ever seen. It may have taken these researchers a year or more in the field to gain the language skills necessary for communication before becoming able to fashion appropriate guiding questions. These long stretches away from their homelands may have been very stressful.
Today, however, fieldsites can be nearly anywhere. Research may still focus on village life, but it is also increasingly likely to take place in urban locales or in the native language of the ethnographer. Sometimes the "group" among whom one wants to study does not live in one location, and our main fieldsite will be a workplace (like a bank) or a religious center (like a mosque) or a generic meeting room where some group meets regularly (like a library meeting room where Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, but also other things also take place) or even in cyberspace (like a chat room). "Multi-sited" fieldwork, which allows ethnographers to engage in research in more than one locale for comparative purposes, is also possible.
It is possible to choose a fieldsite first and then to make a guiding question appropriate to the site. It is also possible to start with a question about a certain cultural process and to find a site where that question might be appropriate. Either method for setting up a project can work, as long as the site and the question are relevant to one another. In other words, be careful that your research questions hit on something important about social and cultural life and practices in the group you have chosen.
Once a potential fieldsite has been selected, ethnographers must negotiate entry. This involves getting permission to visit the site for research purposes from members and often from a person in authority in the site or groups as well. If this proves difficult or questions arise about how to best approach a group, students should consult their professors for advice or assistance. Sometimes it is possible for a professor to help a student gain entry by providing official assurances regarding the project and its purposes to complement that which students provide.

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reference: www.sas.upenn.edu






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