Ethnography : an introduction to definition and method

Ethnography, emerging from anthropology, and adopted by sociologists, is a qualitative methodology that lends itself to the study of the beliefs, social interactions, and behaviours of small societies, involving participation and observation over a period of time, and the interpretation of the data collected (Denzin and Lincoln, 2011; Reeves, Kuper and Hodges, 2008; Berry, 1991). In its early stages, there was a desire by researchers to make ethnography appear scientific, and with this in mind a manual was produced for people in the field, with a set of Instructions as to how ethnography should be 'done' (Denzin and Lincoln, 2011). As such it was seen to be more accurate than the descriptions of travellers, although not in the sense that scientific experiment or quantitative measurement is deemed accurate. A feature of positivism, the scientific approach, is that results can be tested, and the researcher is separate from the research. This was seen by ethnographers as failing to capture aspects of the way humans behave, the setting being artificial (Atkinson and Hammersley, 1994). On the other hand a naturalist approach is more interpretive, cannot be verified by tests, and the researcher's own interpretation is part of U1e process (Mackenzie, 1994). The goal of ethnography then was to give an analytical description of other cultures (Barbour, 2007), an exploration of a particular phenomenon, rather than the testing of an hypothesis (Atkinson and Hammersley, 1994). The data consisted of unstructured accounts and the analysis, which provided interpretation of meaning, was done by the researcher, using observation, description and explanation (Reeves, Kuper & Hodges, 2008).