Key Concepts in Ethnography
Introduction: Please Read this First
Contributors: Karen O'Reilly
Book Title: Key Concepts in Ethnography
Chapter Title: "Introduction: Please Read this First"
Pub. Date: 2009
Access Date: March 26, 2014
Publishing Company: SAGE Publications Ltd
City: London
Print ISBN: 9781412928656
Online ISBN: 9781446268308
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781446268308.n1
Print pages: 1-5
This PDF has been generated from SAGE Research Methods. Please note that the
pagination of the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book.
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[p. 1 ↓ ]
Introduction: Please Read this First
Why do we Need Another Book on
Ethnography?
Social research methods texts have been growing in number incrementally in the
past decades. It seems that every methodology, analytical approach, technique, and
stage of the research process has its own dedicated book, and ethnography is no
exception. There are books on visual ethnography, virtual ethnography, organisational
ethnography, ethnography and education, ethnography and health, writing ethnography
and so on (apparently ad infinitum). Perhaps this is precisely why a book like this one is
called for.
This book clearly and succinctly summarises a broad range of issues relevant to
ethnography. It is not quite an encyclopaedia but is more than a dictionary. It is
comprehensive yet brief. It is small and neat and easy to hold and flick through. It
covers methodological techniques, advances, debates, concepts, and research fields.
Time-honoured themes traditionally explored in qualitative methods textbooks are
included, such as key informants, access, participant observation, and rapport. Issues
sometimes excluded from older texts, such as reflexivity, writing, fieldnotes, and ethics
are also covered. But, more exciting, recent developments such as virtual and multi-
sited ethnography also have their place. No other book covers all these themes of direct
relevance to ethnography in one place.
Each concept is presented comprehensively yet critically, with examples from
ethnographic fieldwork accounts, and with references for students to follow up if they
want to pursue a topic in more depth. Cross-references to concepts covered in the book
are indicated by the use of bold. The examples are enjoyable to read and are collated
from a range of books and articles. However, I have tried to use several examples from
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a few of the same projects, so that as the student dips into the concepts over time, he or
she will gradually become familiar with the work of a few authors in some depth.
The book draws on my own reflexive-realist perspective. I am a sociologist with
intellectual ties to both social anthropology and human geography. [p. 2 ↓ ] I have
a background in qualitative and quantitative methods and have taught ethnographic
methods for a number of years to undergraduates and postgraduates from a range of
social science disciplines. This unique perspective impacts on my interpretation of the
concepts addressed. I enjoy postmodern accounts for their creativity and passion but
I am concerned that ethnographers should also remain faithful to what they set out to
do when access was first obtained. It is crucial that we conduct ethnography reflexively
with constant awareness of our role in the research enterprise. However, this does
not mean abandoning any sense that there is a real world we wish to learn about, and
which our research participants live in, experience, feel constrained by, and help create.
The book can be dipped into as required, to learn about individual concepts, or
consulted in its entirety, as a treatise on current issues and debates in ethnography.
I have indicated where concepts are linked or can be read together. It is a useful
didactic tool for teachers, who can prepare an entire session around one, or a group of,
concepts and indicated further reading. The book is for students who are learning about
ethnography as part of research methods training or in order to prepare for the field
themselves. And it is for practising ethnographers to take with them into the field (and
back), as a sort of comfort blanket, a resource to turn to in difficult times. It is meant
to be consulted at every stage of the research process, being a first port of call before
taking the ideas further in your own work or by consulting that of others. Enjoy! But first I
would like to clarify the distinction between fieldwork, the field, and ethnography.
Fieldwork, the ‘Field’, and Participant
Observation
The term ‘fieldwork’ is often confused with participant observation and ethnography,
as if they were all one and the same thing. To be clear: ethnography is a methodology,
participant observation is a method, and fieldwork refers to the period of primary
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data collection that is conducted out of the office or library. Fieldwork is also used in
survey research where it refers to the period of data collection when questionnaires are
distributed or face-to-face interviews are conducted. For ethnographers, fieldwork is the
phase of data collection when the ethnographer is ‘in the field’. The term ‘fieldwork’ also
acknowledges that there is a beginning and end to the fieldwork part of the research
process, and that this phase is distinct (at least to some extent) from other phases such
as the research design, review of the literature, analysis, and writing stages.
[p. 3 ↓ ]
Ethnographic fieldwork may involve any or all of the following elements and
considerations (all covered elsewhere in this book): gaining access, recruitment of
participants, establishing an insider role and gaining an insider (emic) perspective,
deciding the extent to which to be overt or covert, building rapport, using gatekeepers,
key informants, or research assistants, getting out, retaining an objective (etic)
perspective, and avoiding going ‘native’. It may draw on the following methods:
participation, observation, document collection, group and individual interviews, asking
questions, taking photographs, even survey research, or collection and construction of
audio tape and film. What is essential is that it remains faithful to some sort of definition
of ethnography.
What is Ethnography?
Ethnography is a methodology–a theory, or set of ideas–about research that rests
on a number of fundamental criteria. Ethnography is iterative-inductive research; that
is to say it evolves in design through the study (see analysis, coding, fieldnotes,
grounded theory, and induction). Ethnography draws on a family of methods,
involving direct and sustained contact with human agents, within the context of their
daily lives (and cultures), watching what happens, listening to what is said, and asking
questions (see interviews, participant observation, and visual ethnography). It
results in richly written accounts that respect the irreducibility of human experience
(see writing), acknowledges the role of theory (see generalisation), as well as the
researcher's own role (see reflexivity), and views humans as part object/part subject
(see also O'Reilly, 2005; Willis and Trondman, 2000). Beyond this, each ethnographer
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will choose whether or to what extent he or she wishes to consider historical and/or
macro factors, the extent to which to be critical or to engage in cultural politics (see
critical ethnography and feminist ethnography), and the range of methods employed
beyond direct and sustained contact, watching, listening, and enquiring. Similarly,
ethnography tends to be small-scale and tends not to include much in the way of
quantification, but these are not to be taken as limitations (see multi-sited).
Ethnography has its roots in British social anthropology and in American cultural
anthropology as well as (later) in the Chicago School of sociology. It has not been
possible to include much discussion here of early anthropology, its development, its
roots in biological field sciences and the salvage of native cultures, and its subsequent
crises in the face [p. 4 ↓ ] of postmodern and poststructuralist critiques. For more on
these, I direct readers to MacDonald (2001) and Faubion (2001).
References
Faubion, J. D. (2001) ‘Currents of cultural fieldwork’, In P. Atkinson,, ed. A. Coffey,, ed.
S. Delamont,, ed. J. Lofland and, ed. L. Lofland (eds), ed. Handbook of Ethnography.
London: Sage, pp. pp. 39–59.
Macdonald, S. (2001) ‘British social anthropology’, In P. Atkinson,, ed. A. Coffey,, ed.
S. Delamont,, ed. J. Lofland and, ed. L. Lofland (eds), ed. Handbook of Ethnography.
London: Sage, pp. pp. 60–79.
O'Reilly, K. (2005) Ethnographic Methods. London: Routledge.
Willis, P. and and Trondman, M. ‘Manifesto for ethnography’, Ethnography (2000), vol. 1
(1): pp. 5–16.
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