Presented By Hilario Lomeli with a lot of insight from Joe Valente and Kim Powell

ETHNOGRAPHY

Ethnography is the work of describing a culture. The central aim of ethnography is to

understand another way of life from the native point of view. The goal of

ethnography, as Malinowski put it, is “to grasp the native’s point of view, his relation

to life, to realize his vision of his world.” Fieldwork, then, involves the disciplined

study of what the world is like to people who have learned to see, hear, speak, think, and act in ways that are different. Rather than

studying people, ethnography means learning from people.”

(Spradley, 1980, p. 3)

WHAT IS ETHNOGRAPHY

Description resides at the core of ethnography, and however that description is constructed it is the intense meaning of social life from the everyday perspective of groups members that is sought.

(Dick Hobbs, 2006)

WHAT IS ETHNOGRAPHY?

Method to discover systematically what human beings can do, and what they say about what they do

Not a set of techniques but an epistemological choice for social scientific knowledge

An epistemological choice that incorporates humanities approaches to understanding the world

And thus a tool for discovering education and, reflexively, finding out what education is and what we can do about it.

* Courtesy of K im Powel l

WHAT IS ETHNOGRAPHY?

Ethnography is an orientation to research that embodies anthropological and/or sociological concepts. It is long-term, usually a 12 month minimum timeline of data collection with persistent, frequent observation.

Ethnographic methods are the particular tools that ethnographers use: open-ended interviews, fieldnotes, participant observation, thick description. Many qualitative studies use ethnographic methods but are not ethnographies.

*Courtesy o f K im Powe l l

ETHNOGRAPHY VS. ETHNOGRAPHIC METHODS

1) Field Work/Participant Observation2) Localized3) Make Entrée4) An outsider among insiders5) Thick Description or the “imponderabilia of

everyday life” – Malinowski 6) Foregrounding the problem of interpretation 7) Making the exotic familiar8) Making the familiar exotic9) Comparison 10)Concerned with tradition, the past, and moving that

forward *Courtesy of Joe Valente

JOE TOBIN’S 10 CORE FEATURES OF ETHNOGRAPHY

InterviewsFieldnotesDocument collectionGenealogiesLife historiesFilm and photographsResearcher journalsMaps and MappingSound Recordings*Courtesy of K im Powel l

ETHNOGRAPHIC METHODS

Conversation and discourse analysis

Coding/thematic analysis

Narrative analysisWriting techniques from the social sciences and the humanities

ETHNOGRAPHIC METHODS OF ANALYSIS

Origins of Ethnography in Colonialism

“Crisis of Representation in Ethnography” (Marcus and Fischer, 1986)

Rethink the goal of discovering an encompassing totality and speaking for others

From realism to reflexivity

*Adapted Form Kim Powe l l

HOW CAN ETHNOGRAPHY HELP NON-ETHNOGRAPHERS?

Refers to the researcher’s awareness of an analytic focus on his or her relationship to the field of study

It is intimately interested in issues of power, voice, knowledge production, and representation

Whom and/or what am I speaking on behalf of?

In what ways am I situated within my work and what are the implications of my positionality?

How might I be implicated in the essentializing or objectification of people?

REFLEXIVITY!