Secondary Data Analysis , Fieldwork , Observation / Participant Observation , and Informal and Semi-structured Interviewing DRAFT (original) (raw)

Ethnographic Method in Anthropological Research

Cogito. Multidisciplinary Research Journal, 2011

As a very often repeated observation says, in order to find out what anthropology is, one must see what anthropologists do, and what they do is mainly ethnography. Ethnography can be understood both as a process and as a product. As a process, it is for the anthropologist the same thing laboratory research is for the scientist and survey for the sociologist, the method par excellence. It has to meet three main requirements: long time residence among the members of the studied culture, linguistic proficiency and must be conducted in the form of participant observation. Understood as a product, ethnographic monograph must be holistic and to adopt the emic perspective, as opposed to the etic one.

Ethnographic Methods: Reinforced in Collaboration

2014

Written as an essay for a module on ethnographic methodology for my master´s in Anthropology, I bring this here in case it is useful for anyone looking for a short introduction to different methods used in anthropology. Five methods are discussed in this essay: participant observation, experimental research design, structured interviews, unestructured interviews, and photography.

Ethnography: challenges and opportunities

Evidence Based Nursing, 2017

Table 1 Approaches to participant observation 7 Method Approach Complete observer Covert approach, the researcher is detached and invisible to the participants. Observer-as-participant Overt approach, researcher role is to undertake research with brief exposure to collect observation data, often used for exploration in follow-up interviews. Participant-as-observer Overt approach, the researcher aims to integrate into the setting and their role within the context of the study is acknowledged. Complete participant Covert approach, the researcher is fully immersed and integrated into the setting, referred to as going native, without disclosing themselves as a researcher.

Ethnographic Studies

Music in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. An Encyclopedia. SAGE, 2014

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82 I Shifting Ethnographic Paradigms and Practices: Unleashing From Colonialism

This paper demonstrates realist ethnographic paradigms and practices of engaging an extended period of time to collect the information of distinctive socio-cultural structures or institutions of alien tribal or indigenous societies and describing their cultural ways of life patterns in positivistic manner detaching them from the research process. It argues that the interpretive or hermeneutic wave of ethnography deconstructs this Western hegemonic research tradition giving birth to the interpretation of socio-cultural world of the researched attaching meaning to what they say and do. It further argues that the emergence of critical reflexive ethnographic tradition is the dramatic shift that challenges the colonial ethnographic practices giving space to the self as reflexive research participant. It helps to contest the colonial assumptions of structured and objective visualization of the world and authoritative representation of the other. The ethnographic tradition is further shifting towards promoting epistemic pluralism under postmodern ideologies employing multiple logics and genres to represent the self and the other. Auto/ ethnography that embodies the postmodern notions facilitates the researchers to release from the cage of colonialism serving to adopt multiple ways of knowing indigenously being self-reflexive participants in the research process. Ethnography is a specific form of qualitative inquiry. It enables us to research the realities embedded in a socio-cultural setting. It helps to understand the cultural world of the researched from their perspectives. Further, it intends to capture detailed and in-depth description of everyday life practices of people (Hoey, 2014). In so doing, it attempts to generate the realities from within how people in a particular socio-cultural setting behave, say, act or react, interact with each other, and perform their daily activities. Generally, it is understood that ethnography is a research process or method and product with cultural interpretation of the researched and the researchers' interpretation. However, the

Ethnography

Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology, 2013

Introduction Ethnography is a qualitative research method that has evolved out of ethnology within the broader field of cultural and social anthropology. With the emphasis in research conducted within mainstream psychology on positivistic quantitative research, ethnographic research within the field of psychology has been slow to gain stature as a viable and rigorous form of qualitative research within naturalistic settings. Definition Ethnography is a research methodology that seeks to explore and describe emic or etic knowledge about specific cultural groups and cultural phenomena, and thus contributing to the understanding of the social and cultural life of humans. The concept of ‘culture’ is defined broadly to include any group that share and engages within a common psychosocial experience, within a given space. What constitutes a given space – the field – is also defined broadly to include any geographical space, large or localized, or any virtual space, ...