The Ethnographic Studies - Essay Example

? Ethnography is the study of people in naturally occurring settings or ‘fields’ by means of methods which capture their social meanings and ordinaryactivities, involving the researcher participating directly in the setting, if not also the activities, in order to collect data in a systematic manner but without meaning being imposed on them externally. (Brewer 2004, 10) Being one of the most significant methods available for conducting qualitative research ethnography has always been at the centre of academic discussions to the extent it forwarded with slightly different opportunities for researcher to conduct studies of specific cultures, organizations and so on. The deployment of ethnography as a method to capture the realm of culture enables the researcher to dissect even the most subtle meanings associated with actions and interactions that often take place within that respective realm. It focuses on observation of specific actions and interactions within specific and natural settings rather relying solely on data collected through different external methods (Tuckman 1999). It helps to make sense of the deeper meanings that are motivated both from historical and political corner points and which rule the ruse in the daily lives. It also enables the researcher to simultaneously participate in the daily lives as well as to keep distance from the same in order to make sense of the subjective meanings attached to the actions by the subjects (Geertz 1995). In this paper I shall attempt to provide a critical overview of ethnographic research with regard to the possibilities it offer in social research. I have basically attempted to club the merits, demerits and instances of ethnographic research in singular edifice in the form of this paper. Thus I have attempted to draw from specific works in order to understand the relevance of the advantages and disadvantages and how the latter are overcome and through what additional methods. Being inductive in nature than deductive ethnographic research is more flexible and reserves sufficient room to incorporate elements that are difficult to manage and control and that emerge, even spontaneously, during the course of the study. The most significant use of making ethnographic analysis is that it helps the researcher to closely observe and understand the internal dynamics of the local daily lives in the cultural locale being studied. The use of observation and interviews in ethnography helps the researcher to stick to the natural settings (Wilson 1977). The opportunities for the researcher to observe the behaviour and human relations, actions and interactions within their usual environment helps the researcher to “contextualize” her research (Brewer 2004: 154); it also plays a crucial role in the very process of laying foundation for the particular research. Gay and Airasian, during the course of their study about educational research generally in the European context, observes that “in ethnographic research, as opposed to other forms of social researches, hypothesis is formed after the initial phase of field visits, observation and so on” (25). This is a very crucial factor since it keeps the researcher away from any form of preoccupations about the research as such and the research questions and widens the scope of the project. In addition to the above this contextual specificity saves the researcher a great deal from generalizing the outcomes of the specific research. According to Pawson (1999), as a result of the constant interaction with subjects in their usual settings, there are constant and unexpected twists and turns in the ethnographic research which prevent it from becoming “a neat series of sequential stages” (32). Thus ethnography could better be understood as incorporating great amounts of flexibility incorporating a “multiple series of actions in a rather flexible manner” (Ibid 33). While this remains so the question of research design occupies an important place in this research framework and ordering the research in a systematic manner is one of the most preliminary and significant steps in ethnographic research. Research design refers to the strategic plan of a research project that lays out the larger structure of the whole research (Krausz and Miller 1974: ix). Although this is an essential part of all types of research enterprises, familiarity with the field settings from very close quarters allows the researcher engaged in en ethnographic research to have a more practical, flexible and logical design which largely suits the cultural conditions within which the study is conducted. This is another factor that helps the researcher to deploy and adjust methods according to the specific conditions prevailing in the settings being studied. However the most important advantage of using ethnography in a research emerges from the closeness it allows between the researcher and the field settings. As mentioned earlier this closeness enables the researcher to identify even the most subtle and nuanced elements in the conditions being studied. Further a close familiarity with the daily occurrences equips the researcher with sufficient knowledge and information to challenge the wider assumptions. For example, Osella and Osella (2000) had shown how ethnography have helped them to challenge certain basic assumptions about questions of mobility. Osella and Osella (2000), who studied about social mobility and questions of identity in the context of emerging modernity in Kerala, India, have suggested that ethnography allows a close observation of subjects so that the dynamics of power and its reflections could be rather easily be made sense of (59). More sophisticated uses of depending on ethnography emerge from the possibilities of extending the same method further to assume the forms of its critical and reflexive forms. For instance Critical and reflexive ethnography engages with meanings, social practices and material relations at the same time as accounting for the researcher’s positionality (Naples 2003; Madison 2005; Harvey 1990). Reflexive ethnography helps the investigator to visit the field to compare the result of previous study or studies. In our previous example Osella and Osella, for instance, have contextualised their discussion against the backdrop of previous studies that have similarly studied about questions concerning social mobility and identity in the context of caste reform movements and modernity in different time periods. The authors have used their study to examine the results of a previous ethnographic analysis conducted in the mid 20th century and have drawn a comparison of it with the actual picture that persist in the contemporary society of Kerala. Definitely there exist major paradigms of change, both social and those concerns with the academic theoretical spectrum, between the time periods that mediate such revisits (Geertz 1995). According to Geertz ““When everything changes, from the small and immediate to the vast and abstract—the object of study, the world immediately around it, the student, the world immediately around him, and the wider world around them both— there seems to be no place to stand so as to locate just what has altered and how” (Geertz 1995:2). This in one sense constitutes one of the major challenges of ethnography and ethnographic revisit as well; to make a definite differentiation between movements of the outside world and researcher’s own position within the same world. Such a differentiation should be drawn without actually affecting the knowledge that the two worlds – the internal and the external world – do not exist without depending upon each other. The possibility to revisit also helps to address important questions like reliability and validity of ethnographic research. That another researcher can repeat the same research in the same settings opens definite opportunities to not only to check the reliability of another previous study by comparing the two results yielded but also to understand the validity of the outcomes of the preceding research by comparing it with the actual conditions that prevail in the society. I shall discuss the significance of critical ethnography later in this paper to the extent it helps to overcome some of the major disadvantages, especially those concerned with the questions of subjectivism, associated with ethnography as such. Before that, however, I shall discuss some of the pragmatic limitations often associated with ethnographic research. A main problem often associated with ethnographic studies pertains to the time duration. This descriptive research often takes much more time than what would otherwise have taken under the different quantitative and qualitative research methodologies. This duration mainly emerges from the time required first to conduct the fieldwork and then to write or describe what was studied. Nevertheless the time consuming nature of ethnographic research is not without its own advantages. Of the previous examples, the study conducted by Osella and Osella (2000) is a clear instance of this aspect where the author explicitly states how the huge amount of time they had spent in the field “have not only helped them to familiarize with the field settings but also to keep themselves away from hasty conclusions about the larger trends” (26). Thus the duration factor, despite carrying visible problems in carrying out long term researches, definitely carries major possibilities as well. Another practical problem so commonly identified with ethnographic studies in his context is with regard to the depth it has offered while concentrating on a singular cultural realm. While it concentrates on a singular culture or an organization it observations and research outcomes often fail the capacity for generalization. However as Denzin (1989), Walsham (1995) and many others have argued that just as generalizations are drawn from specific instances or cases or other related data of any particular group or culture it is possible to draw generalizations from specific ethnographic analyses as well. A major criticism invoked against ethnography is the possible element of subjectivism involved in the studies; that the observations and interactions conducted by the researcher and the interpretations yielded out of the same are subject to the personal biases of the researcher itself brings considerable harm for the validity of the ethnographic research. While it is definitely true as a persisting possibility that a researcher may always come under biases as we mentioned earlier the rigour applied while evolving a suitable research design and the theoretical apparatus that the researcher carries to the field may always considerably save one from this trap very well. A major saving plan in this context may essentially emerge from attaining a level of objectivity while carrying out research. This is highly inevitable in any form of ethnography since empathizing (Evans-Pritchard 1950) or non-empathizing (Geertz 1973) with the subjects may always lead the researcher to mix her observations with her own subjective feelings, intuitions and ethical conclusions. This could be resolved by consciously remaining objective during the period of the project. Another major component worth mentioning in this respect is that of critical ethnography. The main advantage of critical ethnography is that it understands ethnography primarily as an emerging process which constantly engages, in a rather direct manner, with the people being studied allowing more visibility for subjects who are rather oppressed under the specific relations of power that charectarise the cultural settings being studied. According to Thomas (1993) critical ethnography “opens to scrutiny otherwise hidden agendas, power centers, and assumptions that inhibit, repress, and constrain” (3). Critical ethnography disrupts the tendency to objectify and silence, and allows the less visible subjects to become more apparent (Behar 1993). This way the criticism of subjectivism is far removed precisely because of the fact that explorations to the power centres and local power relations, by default, requires the investigator to abandon the subjective impressions; it further demands her to raise interrogate even the most basic commonsensical assumptions that guide daily lives. References Brewer, John D. 2004. Ethnography. Ballmore, Buckingham: Open University Press. Behar, Ruth. 1993. Translated woman: Crossing the border with Esperanza's story. Boston: Beacon. Denzin, N. 1989. Interpretive Interactionism. London: Sage. Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1950. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Gay, L.R and Airasian, P. 1992. Educational Research. New Jersey: Merril Prentice Hall. Geertz, C. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. Geertz, Clifford. 1995. After the Fact: Two Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Harvey, Lee. 1990. Critical Social Research. London: Macmillan. Krausz, E. and Miller, S. 1974. Social Research Design. London: Longman. Madison, Soyini D. 2005. Critical ethnography: method, ethics, and performance. New York, London: Sage. Naples, Nancy. 2003. Feminism and method: Ethnography, discourse, and activist research. New York: Routledge. Osella, Filippo and Caroline Osella. 2000. Social Mobility in Kerala: Modernity and Identity in Conflict. London: Pluto. Pawson, R. 1999. “Methodology.” In S. Taylor (ed.) Sociology: Issues and Debates. London: Macmillan. Thomas, J. 1993. Doing Critical Ethnography. London: Sage Publications. Tuckman, B.W. 1999. Conducting Educational Research. Orlando: Harcourt Brace College Publishers. Walsham, G. 1995. “Interpretive Case Studies in IS research: Nature and Method.” European Journal of Information Systems. 4 (1 May, 1995). 74-81. Wilson, S. 1977. The use of ethnographic techniques in educational research. 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