Test Your Ethnography Knowledge

Ethnography: A Systematic Study of People and Cultures

• Ethnography is a branch of anthropology that systematically studies individual cultures from the perspective of the subjects being studied.

• It is a type of social research that involves examining the behavior of participants in a given social situation and understanding their interpretation of such behavior.

• Ethnographers mainly use qualitative methods, though they may also employ quantitative data.

• The typical ethnography is a holistic study that includes a brief history, an analysis of the terrain, climate, and habitat.

• Ethnography has been used to study a wide range of groups and organizations, including traditional communities, youth gangs, religious cults, and various organizations.

• Ethnography relies heavily on participant observation, where the researcher participates in the setting or with the people being studied.

• Ethnography had its origin in social and cultural anthropology in the early twentieth century and spread to other social science disciplines, notably sociology.

• Data collection methods in ethnography include participant observation, field notes, interviews, and surveys.

• Ethnography is a fundamental methodology in cultural ecology, development studies, and feminist geography.

• Ethnographic research can range from a realist perspective, in which behavior is observed, to a constructivist perspective where understanding is socially constructed by the researcher and subjects.

• Ethnography is used across a range of different disciplines, primarily by anthropologists/ethnologists but also occasionally by sociologists.

• Within cultural anthropology, there are several subgenres of ethnography, including bio-confessional, reflexive, and experimental ethnographies.Overview of Ethnography in Anthropology, Sociology, Communication Studies and Other Fields

• Ethnography is a qualitative research method that involves the systematic study of people and cultures. It is commonly used in anthropology, sociology, communication studies, and other fields.

• Ethnography seeks to understand the shared and learned patterns of values, behaviors, beliefs, and language of a culture-sharing group.

• Anthropologists use ethnographic research methods to analyze the cultural practices of different societies and cultures. It is often used to study the social and cultural practices of marginalized groups.

• Postmodernists attempted to draw attention to the privileged status of the ethnographers themselves. That is, the ethnographer cannot escape the personal viewpoint in creating an ethnographic account, thus making any claims of objective neutrality highly problematic, if not altogether impossible.

• Writing Culture became a focal point for looking at how ethnographers could describe different cultures and societies without denying the subjectivity of those individuals and groups being studied while simultaneously doing so without laying claim to absolute knowledge and objective authority.

• Urban sociology, Atlanta University, and the Chicago School are associated with ethnographic research. Major influences on this development were anthropologist Lloyd Warner, on the Chicago sociology faculty, and to Robert Park's experience as a journalist.

• Scholars of communication studies use ethnographic research methods to analyze communicative behaviors and phenomena. Ethnography as a method is a storied, careful, and systematic examination of the reality-generating mechanisms of everyday life.

• Businesses make increasing use of ethnographic methods to understand consumers and consumption or for new product development.

• The ethnographic methodology is not usually evaluated in terms of philosophical standpoint (such as positivism and emotionalism). Ethnographic studies need to be evaluated in some manner.

• Autoethnography is a form of ethnographic research in which a researcher connects personal experiences to wider cultural, political, and social meanings and understandings.

• Digital ethnography allows for a lot more opportunities to look at different cultures and societies. Traditional ethnography may use videos or images, but digital ethnography goes more in-depth.

• Multispecies ethnography in particular focuses on both nonhuman and human participants within a group or culture, as opposed to just human participants in traditional ethnography.

• Relational Ethnography articulates studying fields rather than places or processes rather than processed people.

• Notable ethnographers include Clifford Geertz, Victor Turner, and Pierre Bourdieu.