Defining Activities and Principles of Ethnography - Essay Example

Running Head: DEFINING ACTIVITIES AND PRINCIPLES OF ETHNOGRAPHY With Reference To A Published Ethnographic Study To Illustrate The Points,Discuss Understanding Of The Defining Activities And Principles Of Ethnography [Writer's Name] [Name of Institute] Defining Activities And Principles Of Ethnography Introduction - Ethnography Ethnography is a technique of learning and educating concerning a person or collection of people. Usually, ethnography engages the learning of a tiny cluster of topics in their own surroundings. Moderately than glancing at a diminutive set of variables and a great quantity of topics ("the big picture"), the ethnographer tries to acquire a thorough consideration of the conditions of some subjects being premeditated. Ethnographic accounts, then, are evocative and deductive; expressive, since specification is so critical, and interpretive, because the ethnographer should establish the importance of what she examines devoid of collecting extensive, numerical knowledge (Fetterman, 1989, Pg 5-6). "In it's most characteristic form it involves the ethnographer participating, overtly or covertly, in people's daily lives for an extended period of time, watching what happens, listening to what is said, asking questions - in fact, collecting whatever data are available to throw light on the issues that are the focus of the research. Equally, though, as we shall suggest later, there is a sense in which all social researchers are participant observers; and, as a result, the boundaries around ethnography are necessarily unclear" (Hammersley and Atkinson, 1995, Pg 1-2) One difficulty with the notion of ethnography is that it may seem a residual category. It is associated with the study of people not ourselves, and with the use of methods other than those of experimental design and quantitative measurement. Clearly not everything that is not experimental design and quantitative measurement should be considered ethnography, but a positive definition is not easy to provide. A major reason for the difficulty is that good ethnography has been produced under a great variety of conditions, by a great variety of persons, some of it before there was a profession to train such people, and professional training has been very much a matter of the transmission of a craft and of learning by doing-by personal experience (Gubrium & Holstein, 1997, Pg 67). It has not helped that some people talk as if the key to ethnography were a psychological experience, rather than the discovery of knowledge. It is clear that ethnography involves participation and observation. The earliest work that we recognize as important ethnography has generally the quality of being systematic in the sense of being comprehensive. To be sure, any and all early accounts of travelers, missionaries, government officials and the like that may contribute information and insight about the culture of the peoples of the world have been welcomed and gleaned for what they could provide (Agar, 1986, Pg 6-7). The Ethnographic Method It commences with assortment of a civilization, analysis of the writings affecting the ethnicity, and recognition of variables of concern -- normally variables supposed as important by associates of the society. The ethnographer then goes about gaining entry, which in rolls sets the phase for cultural immersion of the ethnographer in the society. It is not strange for ethnographers to exist in the society for months or even years. The middle phases of the ethnographic technique engross increasing informers, using them to increase yet additional informants in a succession procedure, and collection of information in the shape of observational transcription and conference footage. Statistical examination and hypothesis progress come at the conclusion, although suppositions might come out from civilizing fascination and theory-expression by associates of the society. (Fetterman, 1989, Pg 22-23) However, the ethnographic researcher strives to avoid theoretical preconceptions and instead to induce theory from the perspectives of the members of the culture and from observation. The researcher may seek validation of induced theories by going back to members of the culture for their reaction. Assumptions In Ethnography Ethnography presumes the chief study attention is principally pretentious by community cultural considerations. The methodology practically guarantees that widespread cultural understandings will be recognized for the research concentration at hand. Explanation is appropriate to position immense weight on the fundamental significance of such cultural understandings. There is an opportunity that an ethnographic attention will miscalculate the role of cultural awareness and undervalue the contributory role of purposeful forces. Ethnography presumes an aptitude to classify the related community of concentration. In some settings, this can be complicated. Community, recognized organization, relaxed group, and individual-level awareness might all play a contributory role in the subject under learning, and the significance of these might differ by time, place, and concern. There is an opportunity that an ethnographic attention may misjudge the role of community culture and undervalue the contributory role of personality psychological or of sub-community (or for that subject, extra-community) forces. Ethnography presumes the researcher is competent of considerate the cultural mores of the population under investigation, has mastered the language or technological terminology of the culture, and has founded findings on complete familiarity of the culture. There is a risk that the researcher might bring in bias toward viewpoints of his or her individual culture. Whereas not intrinsic to the method, cross-cultural ethnographic study runs the jeopardy of wrongly pretentious that given procedures have the similar meaning crossways cultures. (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1995, Pg 206-207) Ethnographic Principles Following are three methodological principles that are used to provide the rationale for the specific features of the ethnographic method. They are also the basis for much of the criticism of quantitative research for failing to capture the true nature of human social behavior; because it relies on the study of artificial settings and/or on what people say rather than what they do; because it seeks to reduce meanings to what is observable; and because it reifies social phenomena by treating them as more clearly defined and static than they are, and as mechanical products of social and psychological factors (M. Hammersley, 1990). The three principles can be summarized under the headings of naturalism, understanding and discovery: Naturalism Early ethnographers and others following the custom have recognized the importance of understanding the significance and the cultural norms of the people in the everyday settings in which they take place, calling it Naturalism. Conducting an experiment in a laboratory with a very rigid and controlled environment, naturalist social scientist go direct into the field with the people who they like to do research with. An ethnographer if conduct research in such manner, they are referred as participant observers. They are participants in the activities for those been researched depending on the extent to which the research is undertaken by the researcher, while simultaneously observing and recording the activities taking place within the surroundings. The ethnographers are more interested in the rich descriptions for everyday life rather than testing the scientific truth concern as seen while doing the research. Their method is to richly describe the social actions and the setting in which they take place. Naturalism is like orthodoxy without any rational foundation, it is a research program rather being considered as a worldview (Hammersley and Atkinson, 1995, Pg 211-213) A research program is a set of methodological disposition that's has it standing prior to any theory. It is based on such assumptions that one make regarding to what one trust as evidence before inquiring the best evidence or method. So one can say that research program is a set of assumptions on the evidences that one regard as basics. A research program cannot be adopted or discarded because of evidence, as one is changing the belief s on the evidences one has regarded as basic as it is based on evidence. The new evidence now hat one has accepted or rejected cannot become basic, as it is your trust or distrust that is based on the other evidence. Therefore, the only reason one believe that the evidence is basic or not, is purely pragmatic. It is just like picking up a research program that most interest you or which seems more attractive, without any evidential reasoning. If naturalism is considered a research program, than there will be no basis that it is a program that every person should adopt. We cannot call this a deficiency for naturalism, infact it is one shared with every other research program that are being conducted. . But this goes to some way to disarming the present presumption in support of naturalism (Atkinson, Amanda, Sara, John, Lyn, 2001, Pg 130-131). One can only convince people to dump naturalism either by proving that it is self-defeating or by giving realistic reasons to give it up, like by giving its unappealing consequences. Thus, the whole argument is dependent on setting up the fact that naturalism is only a research program. The researchers also assert that it provide no basis that each right thinking person would adopt any specific research program (Hammersley, 1995, Pg 213). Understanding The central argument here is that individual's actions change from the actions of physical objects, and from that of other animals too. They do not provide fixed responses or learnt responses to stimulate but rather build responses, actions or interpretations to stimulate. This argument sometime show a complete rejection on the conception of causality as not relevant to the social world and on insistence that are build on freely by the human actions and society. While other disagree that causal relations found in the social world, but are different from the mechanical causality that is typical to the physical phenomenon. This point of view explains the individual action effectively if one gain up thorough understanding on the cultural standpoint on which it is based. This is essential to a social setting that is alien to one, as one finds things puzzled. The ethnographers believe that it is equally important when one is researching in the settings that are familiar. There are higher chances for the dangers of misunderstanding when one is working in a familiar environment. Another argument is that one cannot assume that one knows and understand others perception of the same society as individuals have their distinctive views. One can largely see such in big complex societies, as each one has their perception of understanding be it any ethnic, occupational or any particular group. It is very necessary to understand the culture and setting of the group one is researching as it provides valuable explanations for certain behaviors as argued by the ethnographers. This shows the main reason for the participant observation and unstructured interviewing as conducted by the ethnographic method (Agar, 1986, Pg 93-94). Discovery Ethnographic thinker provides another concept of research process as inductive research or discovery based, rather being restricted to the explicit hypothesis. One argues that if one approaches the phenomenon with a set of hypotheses, one may loose the focus to discover the true phenomena, blinded by the assumptions that are built by the hypothesis. The ethnographers however show their most interest in social phenomena, practical issues and problems. The focus has now been narrowed down and sharpened with even changing substantiality with time. On the parallel the theoretical ideas frame the explanations and descriptions over the course of research conducted. Finding such ideas can be regarded as valuable outcomes for research (Fetterman, 1989, Pg 49-50) Ethnography As Culture Ethnography is the procedure of relating a culture or means of life from a folk peoples standpoint. Another given name for it is field research.The people's standpoint is the thought of a cosmos in a jewel, each person a mirror image of their culture in that the entire gestures they have, displays, signs, songs, proverbs, and the whole thing else has some unspoken, implicit connotation for others in that culture. It's the work of ethnography to set up the concealed deductions that differentiate, for instance, a wink and a waggle in any known culture. Plentiful funding prospects survive both in a foreign country and locally for ethnographic research. In terms of method, generally speaking, the term "ethnography" refers to social research that has most of the following features (M. Hammersley, 1990). (a) Folk's actions is considered in day-by-day circumstances, somewhat than under investigational conditions fashioned by the researcher. (b) statistics are collected from a variety of sources, but surveillance and/or comparatively casual conversations are frequently the most important ones. (c) The move toward facts collection is formless in the logic that it does not engage following throughout a comprehensive plan set up at the starting; nor are the groups used for understanding what people say and do pre-given or permanent. This does not signify that the research is haphazard; merely that originally the statistics are composed in as unprocessed a form, and on as broad a front, as practicable. (d) The point is regularly a lone setting or group, of comparatively little scale. In life history research the viewpoint might even be a solitary personality. (e) The examination of the statistics engages explanation of the significance and functions of human events and largely takes the shape of verbal metaphors and clarifications, with quantification and numerical analysis playing a secondary function at most. (Hammersley and Atkinson, 1995, Pg 214-215) As a situation of methods, ethnography is not distant detached from the kind of advancement that we all use in daily life to make wisdom of our environment. It is not as much of particular and less theoretically complicated than advancements like the research or the social assessment; although all social research techniques have their historical births in the customs in which human beings grow information about there world in daily life. Positive And Negative Aspects Of Using Ethnographic Methodology One of the significant compensation of ethnographic style is that the investigator require not imagine that they are entirely intentional or impartial. Like the majority ethnographers, I distinguish that I am a prejudiced examiner, and that the subjects I select to investigate, places I go, people I convene, issues I ask, and the conclusions which I sketch from my information are all achieved by my own individual understanding and perspectives. Contained by ethnography, such a posture is satisfactory as it is greatly less so within divisions of deliberation exterior Naturalism. Though a lot of ethnographers observe their honesty about prejudice as a benefit of the method, others see examiner partisanship as their major censure of the legality of ethnographic investigation. In the natural scientist's view, all researchers, as human beings, are slanted by nature and consequently still in the mainly strictly proscribed investigational surroundings the researcher has at slightest consequence upon the result and the mode it is deduced. So instead of considering partisanship as a flaw of the process, ethnographers make their partisanship recognized open so that their readers can better interpret the effects and possible biases (Fetterman, 1989, Pg 97-98). Ethics In Ethnographic Research Ever since ethnographic research takes place amid real individuals, there are numerous of particular moral apprehension to be conscious of before commencement. In a nutshell, examiners ought to build their investigation objectives obvious to the associates of the society where they take on their study and achieve the knowledgeable approval of their advisors to the study in advance. It is in addition significant to study whether the cluster would favor to be named in the printed details of the research or specified a alias and to present the consequences of the study if informers would like to interpret it. the majority of all, researchers should be certain that the study does not damage or take advantage of those among whom the research is made. Example - Ethnographic Research To assist Intel grow a bottomless consideration of how expertise is sighted and used by people in diverse cultures, Intel's people and practices Research team encompasses of social scientists, designers, and engineers whose activities around the globe to discover how people in diverse cultures live and labor. In conducting their fieldwork, the group concern a selection of ethnographic and other social science and plan research tools and methods, from thoroughly interviews, to story paneling, contribution in activities, and annotations of people as they go about their every day customs. The group distributes the imminent gleaned all the way through fieldwork with Intel's commerce units, produce development groups and strategists, to notify the way and aim of technology products for a range of worldwide markets. The job of the people and practices Research group enhance and balance customary market research systems, for example reviews and focus group studies. Such systems can be used to recognize drifts and explain what people are doing, but not of necessity why. Social researchers and designers excavate deeper, discover people's values, ambitions, desires and inspirations. By paying concentration to such particulars, this research aids to makes wisdom of people's relations to expertise; it puts those relations into situation. This comprehensive understanding is necessary to scheming products that community will want to purchase and utilize. These innovative technologies symbolize temporary reactions to actual human requirements recognized in the course of ethnographic research in globe by Intel. In the extended term, the objective of the people and practices Research group is to assist Intel envisage completely fresh technologies, or experiences that expertise could sustain, that improve imitate the circumstances and culture in which they are used. For instance, the PC as we be acquainted with, it was constructed from the foundations with a Western deposition of principles and restraints. It was intended to work in a surroundings where electricity is obtainable incessantly, by users who fall into a convinced elevation and size array, which appreciate the perception of a counter, a desktop, and workflow, which know English language and can use a typical keyboard. In brief, there are plentiful culturally loaded suppositions constructed into the on hand model of the PC. The objective of Intel's people and practices Research group is to carry on to assist make sure that the products Intel builds up will convene the assorted requirements of people in a diversity of cultures (Journal of Community & Applied Technology, 2005, Pg 1-15). Envisaging Homelessness: A Study In And Estrangement How does any person create his or her home in the municipality This query is value posturing since it distinguishes not merely that homeless people contribute to room with the people with homes, but that both position of people effort out a modus mean surrounded by the provisos of what it means to be a contemporary city resident. To live in a municipality is to live in a community of people who are aliens to each other. By the identical determination, this estrangement, which is at the hub of the city approach, facilitates one to anticipate no further than this from one's associate citizens. This is the case since, in a planet of stealers and hustlers, the performances of estrangement (e.g. evading eye-contact, keeping aloofness, reluctance to untie conversation) are self-protection (Blanc, 2003, Pg 123-125). Ethnographic research has exposed photography to be helpful in cheering people to talk regarding their neighborhood in demonstrating the background of utilization amongst homeless people in making easy community and empowerment between young homeless people outlining the lives of boxcar travellers around the globe and in viewing the state of affairs of homeless people through their portrayal. The reward and the complexities of utilizing photography as a device to assist ethnographic research have been placed out in a number of current newspapers. Ethnographic research and methodologies is chiefly used in such case where one recognizes the requirement of studying not just the uniqueness of the homeless but the realistic customs in which they support, sustain and mend the effects of their social and material conditions (Anderson & Christian, 2003, Pg 108-110). Conclusion The ethnographic view makes the most, as a director to study for sociologist. The whole thing has to be anywhere. The significance of all being someplace is that what one is learning is captivating consigns somewhere exact. Not in the globe in common, or in "a social setting." but in this place, right at this point, and whatsoever is factual of this place is going to influence it. So take a closer glance, and continue looking, at the features of the place: the bodily features...and the communal features....And, in maintaining with the anthropological concern in connecting individual, societal, and educational stages, append the cultural features (Atkinson, Amanda, Sara, John, Lyn, 2001, Pg 489-490). The ethnography of daily life is particularly attractive when grouping are in a situation of alteration --when their limitations and the ethical policies linked with them are in chaos. By this viewpoint, the entrance into civilizing examination is the life of a human being. We can start with her or his life in the workplace or at home, but the ethnographer follows that person across spheres, hunts for model, lets the borders of those spheres describe themselves all the way through surveillance. This concentration into the life of informers-- inspection and footage --is what differentiates developed ethnography from the application of separate qualitative methods (Gubrium & Holstein, 1997, Pg 119-120). The ethnographic donation I have in my intellect here would go further than these in its notice to cultural representations that come out from surveillance of manifold surroundings, the substantial perspective of these surroundings, and the activities of communications in these surroundings in accumulation to the more official discussions on particular subjects. Ethnography's deliberation is both to presentation and to the accounts people present of those actions. Therefore, even study spotlights the problems of employment and family rapidly turn out to be ethnography of every day life. Bibliography Agar M.H.; Speaking Of Ethnography, Beverly Hills, CA, Sage Publications, 1986. Pg 2-16, 86-97. Anderson, I., & Christian, J. (2003). Causes of homelessness in the UK: A dynamic analysis. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 13. Pg 105-118. Blanc, M.; Review of S. Fitzpatrick, P. Kemp, & S. Klinker. Single homelessness: An overview of research in Britain. European Journal of Housing Policy, 2, (2002). Pg 123-125. Fetterman D.M.; Ethnography: Step By Step, Newbury Park, Calif, Sage Publications, 1989. Pg 5-15, 22-25, 48-56, 91-122, 138-161. Gubrium, J.F. & Holstein J.A.; The New Language of Qualitative Method. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pg 65-123. Hammersley M. and Atkinson P.; Ethnography: Principles in Practice. Routledge, London, 1995. Pg 11-16, 201-223. Journal of Community & Applied Technology, The Role of Ethnographic Research In Driving Technology Innovation, March 2005. Pg 1-15. Paul A. Atkinson, Amanda Jane Coffey, Sara Delamont, John Lofland, Lyn H Lofland; Handbook of Ethnography, Sage Publications Ltd, (February 15, 2001), ISBN: 076195824X. Pg 129-135, 422-506. Read More