ETHNOGRAPHY

What is Ethnography

Ethnography is the science of ethnos, meaning nation, people, or culture (Sarantakos, 2013, p. 218). The word ethnography comes from Greek words ethnos refers to people, race, or cultural group, while graphe means writing; thus, the literal meaning of ethnography is “writing culture.” It is regarded as the science of cultural description—a method that involves describing and interpreting a cultural or social group or system with the aim of understanding it from the native’s point of view. Ethnography places the researcher directly within the setting being studied, making it a form of field research. Examples include street ethnography, church ethnography, or cricket ethnography. As Berg (1995, p. 86, as cited in Sarantakos, 2013, p. 218) explains, ethnography is “the practice [that] places researchers in the midst of whatever it is they study.”

Definition of Ethnography

According to John D. Brewer (2005. p.6) defined “Ethnography is the study of people in naturally occurring settings or ‘fields’ by methods of data collection which capture their social meanings and ordinary activities, 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.”

Three well known classical ethnographic studies

1. Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead

2. The Neur by E. E. Evans-Pritchard

3. Argonauts of the Western Pacific by Bronislaw Malinowski

What is Visual Ethnography

Ethnography is the study and interpretation of social organisations and cultures in everyday life. It is a research-based methodology, and when this research is conducted using photography, video or film, it is called visual ethnography.

For a deeper understanding of visual ethnography, refer to The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods, Volumes 1 & 2, edited by Lisa M. Given (2008, pp. 934–935).

Visual Ethnography

Visual ethnography uses photography, motion pictures, hypermedia, the web, interactive CDs, CD–ROMs, and virtual reality as ways of capturing and expressing perceptions and social realities of people. These varied forms of visual representation provide a means for recording, documenting, and explaining the social worlds and understandings of people. It is important, however, to emphasize that visual ethnography is not purely visual. Rather, the visual ethnographer simply pays particular attention to the visual aspects of culture as part of his or her ethnographic efforts.

Until recently, mainstream social scientists have been steadfast in their belief that the written word is a superior form for representing most types of data. Qualitative researchers use narrative accounts, inter- views, fieldnotes, and the like, all of which are textually based. Quantitative researchers depend on the written word in their survey instruments to collect their data; although some researchers generate numeric data directly from observations, this approach remains quite rare in the social sciences overall.

The social sciences do, nonetheless, take the verbal self-report as both true and a primary source; after all, such an account can be reduced to text. Ethnographers pay more attention than most to verbal (as opposed to written) information. But here too the decided preference favours self-reports and words reducible to text. Yet every culture is composed of countless nonverbal images, signs, and symbols; these can be described in words, but one might question whether describing a sunset actually transmits the same aesthetic understandings as when one witnesses a sunset. Approaches to the visual in anthropology and sociology, as each applies itself to questions of culture and meaning, have developed in rather different ways and have evolved using different understandings of the visual.

The History of Visual Ethnography

Historically, visual ethnography began in the post- positivist tradition where researchers provided photographs to support fairly traditional anthropological accounts in ethnographic studies. Photographs were little more than props used as visual aids in these endeavours; the “true” ethnography was the written narrative accounts of the researchers’ observations. This process grew into what has come to be called visual anthropology and was fairly common through- out the 1920s, in studies such as those by Bronislaw Malinowski, and through to the late 1950s.

Concern about the use of visual ethnography began to emerge, however, during the 1960s and through the early 1980s, centering on whether visual images and recordings could be expanded and used to viably support the observational research undertaken in the social sciences beyond anthropology. The concern of many social scientists of the time was that visual data were too subjective, unrepresentative, and nonsystematic.

Beginning in the mid- to late 1970s, visual anthropologists began to focus their attention on ethnographic film and video, and they also began to question the idea of visual realism that had been the longtime anchor of visual aids in anthropological investigations. Visual sociologists who had also been developing their use of photography from the perspective of a realist paradigm began to react to feminist and postmodern critiques and shifted toward more reflexive and self- identifying orientations in their research, including the use of photography and film.

By the late 1980s and into the 1990s, the social sciences began to hear calls for a redefining of the relationship between researcher, informant, and participant in the form of collaborative and participatory approaches and research frameworks. These notions began to be incorporated into the emerging visual ethnography and to combine with the notion that the meaning of a photograph is constructed by the maker and the viewer—that both possess social understandings and interests in this photographic act. Thus, the photograph was a means by which its maker could express his or her feelings and under- standings about something and could inform others both through the image and with further explanation and sharing. This creation, use, and sharing of meaning seemed to approach the same basic tenets of symbolic interaction that words had been associated with previously.

Methods of Ethnography Research

Ethnographic study tends to rely on a number of particular data collection techniques such as naturalistic observation, documentary analysis and in-depth interviews. When these methods are used it marks the ethnographer’s application of study of people in a naturally occurring setting or ‘field’, in which the researcher participates directly where there is an intent exploration of meanings of these setting, their behavior and activities from the inside.

Ethnography primarily relies on fieldwork as its core method, using various techniques to ensure data integrity through the careful selection and sampling of a place, people, or program. While the ideal research site may not always be accessible, the next crucial step involves deciding how to sample members of the target population, based on useful sources of information and identifying who and what to study to better understand community life. However, resource limitations and deadlines can affect the duration of data collection. A key aspect of ethnographic research is the ethnographer’s entry into the field, often facilitated by an introduction from a respected community member—such as a chief, director, teacher, or gang leader—who lends credibility and eases access to participants. A strong internal reference not only enhances data quality but also helps the fieldworker maintain independence and avoid unnecessary interference. To conduct fieldwork effectively, ethnographers use participant observation and interviewing, along with techniques like questionnaires, projective methods, outcropping, proxemics, kinesics, and folktales, to gather comprehensive insights. They are briefly discussed below:

1. Participant Observation: Participant Observation involves actively engaging in the daily lives of the people being studied while maintaining enough professional distance to observe and record data effectively. It requires the ethnographer to immerse themselves in the culture, learn the language, and observe behavioral patterns over time. Long-term residence allows the researcher to understand the community’s core beliefs, fears, hopes, and expectations. This foundational method supports and enhances more refined techniques like projective methods and questionnaires, offering context and meaning to their results, especially when outcomes are unexpected. The method demands sustained, close contact through classroom observation, informal interviews, occasional teaching, community interaction, and even long-distance communication or social gatherings. Ethnographic understanding is a cyclical process, combining deep exploration with surface-level observation to vividly portray the cultural landscape.

2. Interviewing: This is one of the most important data gathering techniques which explains and puts into a larger context what the ethnographer sees and experiences. He requires verbal interaction and language is the commodity of discourse. General interview types includes structured, semi-structured, informal and retrospective interview formally structured and semi-structured interviews are verbal approximations of & questionnaire with explicit research goals. These interviews are most useful at the middle and end stages of a study for the collection of data about a specific question or hypothesis whereas informal interviews are most common in ethnographic work which seem to be casual conversations but useful in establishing and maintaining a healthy rapport and offer the most natural situations or formats for data collection and analysis. The interviews also contain survey or grand tour questions, specific questions, open-ended or closed-ended questions, protocols and strategies, informant questions, etc.

3. Questionnaires: These are close to the approximations of structured interviews and they are perhaps the most formal and rigid form of exchange in the interviewing spectrum-the logical extension of an increasingly structured interview. However, these are qualitatively different from interviews because of the distance between the researcher and the respondent. Questionnaires do not have interactive nature.

4. Projective Techniques: These supplement and enhance fieldwork. They are helpful for gathering cultural and psychological information from group members. The participant’s responses usually reveal individual needs, fears, inclinations and general worldview. The Rorscharch ink blot tests are a classic projective technique and many anthropologists adopt these tests to fit the local context. As such these techniques can be clues to lead to further inquiry or one of several sources of information to support an ongoing hypothesis and only the ethnographer’s imagination limits the number of possible projective techniques.

5. Outcroppings: Outcropping is used in understanding the nuances of inner-city ethnography. Buildings, skyscrapers, burnt-out schools, worn out hospitals, malls, street art, urine traces in city streets, garbage, etc., tell us a lot about a city and the way it lives. The ethnographer takes note of such outcroppings to make an educated guess about the condition of a city, for example, estimating the relative wealth or poverty of a locality. Such outcroppings are used in a larger context in ethnographic research.

6. Proxemics and Kinesics: Proxemics is the analysis of socially defined distance between people. For example, the seating arrangement at a meeting can reveal social meaning. Kinesics focuses on body language. Sensitivity to body language can also be instrumental in ethnographic research. For example, a clenched fist, a student’s head on a desk, a scowl, a blush, a student sitting at the edge of a chair etc., provide useful information to the observant fieldworker.

7. Folktales: Folktales provide significant knowledge in both literate and non literate societies. Folktales are more often than not used as carriers of cultural norms and customs through generations. Such tales are created from situations, figures, surroundings which are local and relevant. Though the stories are not real the contents have incidences, subtleties, tinges which give an indication to the ethnographer of the real happenings in the profane, sacred, emotional and logical lives of people.

8. Ethnographic Equipments: Pen and paper, notepads, computers, laptops, voice recorders, cameras etc., are the tools of ethnography which are the extensions of human instrument, aids to memory and vision. These useful devices can facilitate the ethnographic mission by capturing the rich detail and flavour of ethnographic experience and then help to organise and analyse the data.

Observation by the researcher is to the target audiences in their real-life environment. The data (mainly descriptive in nature or verbal or symbolic materials) obtained through intensive observation or open- ended interaction or unstructured interview or questionnaires or opinionnaires. Generally, Ethnography research involves with qualitative data which are detailed, dense descriptions, inquires in depth etc. such data are based on inductive approach. Intensive observation helps to get ‘first-hand information’ to the Ethnography researcher about some cultural events in-depth and detailed manner. Data obtained through intensive and participant observation generally include-

I. Detailed and immersive description.

II. Develop empathic understanding.

III. Open and flexible.

IV. It refers to the extensive field work where gathering of data is obtain through open ended interaction, direct interview, symbols and coadding, participant observation etc.

After that the Ethnography researcher assumes that all cases like people of the community or group of individuals under study are special and unique character and research uses Purposeful Sampling method in which all samples are selected purposefully. This type of research is mainly information rich and illuminative.

Next step will be Data analysis procedures which involve cultural aspect, cultural behaviour and meaning of human activity. This research mainly confined to verbal expression but its required then statistical test and numerical aptitude play a secondary role. Data gathering, data analysis and data interpretation play an important role in the study of Ethnography research. Ethnography research locates to describing the culture of a group or group of individuals in very intensive detailed and complex manner. The Ethnography researcher observes mental activities, knowledge, reading, custom, marriage, clothing, fooding and other cultural activities. These cultural aspects are express to the researcher in their real-life situation. In Ethnography research the researcher wants to gather available information, normal and abnormal information, what they say and how they work. Cultural ethnographer or ethnographer today gets a high value on doing Ethnography study. 

The significance of ethnographic method in social research

Ethnography plays a vital role in social research by enabling an in-depth, contextual understanding of human behavior, social interactions, and cultural practices. Unlike other research methods, ethnography emphasizes immersive fieldwork, allowing researchers to observe and interpret social phenomena from the insider’s point of view.

1. Ethnographic Immersion in Everyday Life: According to Hammersley and Atkinson (2007, p. 3), ethnography involves the researcher participating, overtly or covertly, in people’s daily lives for an extended period of time, watching what happens, listening to what is said, and/or asking questions through informal and formal interviews, collecting documents and artefacts – in fact, gathering whatever data are available to throw light on the issues that are the emerging focus of inquiry.

2. Ethnographic Participation: Ethnographic participation involves close, sustained engagement with the community being studied. It requires the researcher to be physically and socially present in the field, participating in the daily lives of others to understand their perspectives, meanings, and social dynamics. According to Emerson et al. (2011), this immersion allows the ethnographer to see "how people lead their lives, how they carry out their daily rounds of activities, what they find meaningful, and how they do so" (p. 3). Immersion also leads to a process of partial resocialization, where the researcher experiences events alongside participants and is shaped by the social norms and moral expectations of the group (p. 4). Importantly, participation helps the ethnographer grasp the fluidity and complexity of social processes, revealing multiple truths rather than a singular objective reality (p. 4–5).

3. Writing Fieldnotes: Writing fieldnotes is the companion process to participation and is foundational in transforming lived experiences into analyzable data. Fieldnotes are not mere records of events; they are interpretive, selective inscriptions of social life that allow researchers to capture and reflect on interactions, meanings, and emotions. As Geertz (1973, cited in Emerson et al., 2011) notes, fieldnotes turn fleeting events into written accounts that can be re-examined and interpreted (p. 12). The authors argue that writing fieldnotes involves perception, interpretation, and construction, not passive transcription (p. 6). Descriptions differ based on the ethnographer’s positioning, theoretical orientation, and interaction with the subjects. Through detailed and systematic note-taking, researchers construct a “cultural text” that enables deep analysis of social worlds.

4. ‘Big’ and ‘little’ ethnography: There are two broad understandings of ethnography in Brewer (2005, pp. 17-19), describe the term as ‘big’ ethnography, which treats ethnography as synonymous with qualitative research overall; and ‘little’ ethnography, which specifically refers to ethnography as fieldwork—involving direct observation and participation in real-life situations. ‘Little’ ethnography, though narrower in scope, is still a comprehensive approach. It includes not only methods like participant observation, interviews, and flexible, open-ended data collection, but also integrates theoretical and philosophical foundations that shape the research process.

5. Language and Field Work: Spradley (1979. pp. 17–18) emphasises that ethnography was first undertaken in non-Western societies, learning the native language took the highest priority. The ethnographer who went to study the Bushmen, a remote village in the Andes, or an isolated New Guinea tribe, knew that understanding the language was a necessary prerequisite to thorough research. Language is more than a means of communication about reality: it is a tool for constructing reality. Different languages create and express different realities. They categorize experience in different ways. They provide alter- native patterns for customary ways of thinking and perceiving.

6. Enhancing Ethnographic Representation through Visual Methods: As Given (2008. pp. 934–937) notes in The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods, visual methods enhance the richness and communicative power of ethnographic representation by offering a means to access and articulate cultural meanings embedded in nonverbal cues—symbols, gestures, and imagery that are often overlooked in traditional ethnography. Visual ethnography enables participants to negotiate their visual meanings, reflect on their own lives, and share perceptions of their social realities. This method is particularly empowering in participatory research frameworks, where images serve both as tools of expression and instruments of analysis.

Ethnography is significant in social research because it provides a holistic, emic (insider) perspective, uncovers complex social patterns, and offers grounded, meaningful insights into human experience. It not only enhances the depth of understanding but also contributes to more empathetic, ethical, and inclusive forms of knowledge production.

References

Brewer, J. D. (2005). Ethnography. Open University Press.

Emerson, R. M., Fretz, R. I., & Shaw, L. L. (2011). Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes, Second Edition. University of Chicago Press.

Given, L. M. (Ed.). (2008). The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods (Vol. 1 & 2). Sage Publications.

Hammersley, M., & Atkinson, P. (2007). Ethnography : principles in practice (Third ed.). Routledge.

Lata, H. S., & Sarkar, C. (2019). Ethnography Research: An Overview. International Journal of Advance and Innovative Research, 6(2).

Spradley, J. P. (2016). The Ethnographic Interview. Waveland Press, Incorporated.

Visual ethnography. (n.d.). https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/v/visual-ethnography

Other References which can be cited

E. E. Evans-Pritchard - The Nuer (1940) ~ Link

Margaret Mead - Coming of Age in Samoa ~ Link

A Synthesis of Ethnographic Research ~ Link

Ethnographic Research Among Drinking Youth Cultures- Reflections From Observing Participants ~ Link

Ethnographic Research ~ Link

Ethnography ~ Link

Ethnography in Qualitative Educational Research ~ Link

Ethnography Research- An Overview ~ Link

Ethnography- An Introduction to Definition and Method ~ Link

How to Conduct Ethnographic Research ~ Link

The Basics of Ethnography- An Overview of Designing an Ethnographic Research in Anthropology and Beyond ~ Link

Unit-1: Introduction Including Ethnography ~ Link

Bronislaw Malinowski by George Peter Murdock ~ Link