Ethnographic Methods

Karen O'Reilly

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781135194758
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Research & Methodology
• Index: Social Sciences

This new edition of Karen O'Reilly's popular Ethnographic Methods provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the technical, practical and philosophical issues that arise when employing traditional and innovative research methods in relation to human agents.

Using a wide range of case studies and source material to illustrate the dilemmas and resolutions that an ethnographic researcher may encounter, this textbook guides the reader from the initial design and planning stages through to the analysis and writing-up. It explores the historical and philosophical foundations of ethnographic research and goes on to cover a range of relevant topics such as participant observation, qualitative interviews, (focus) group interviews and visual data collection and analysis.

Having been substantially revised and updated, the second edition includes new discussions of emerging practices such as reflexive ethnography and autoethnographic accounts, as well as an entire chapter dedicated to new directions in the field – including virtual, mobile, multi-sited and global ethnography.

1 Introduction

Ethnography as Practice

Key idea: ethnography should be informed by a theory of practice that: understands social life as the outcome of the interaction of structure and agency through the practice of everyday life; that examines social life as it unfolds, including looking at how people feel, in the context of their communities, and with some analysis of wider structures, over time; that also examines, reflexively, one’s own role in the construction of social life as ethnography unfolds; and that determines the methods on which to draw and how to apply them as part of the ongoing, reflexive practice of ethnography.

I am still, as I write the second edition of this book, very enthusiastic about ethnographic research. Over the decades, ethnography has been shown to involve the application of any number of the full range of methods available to a researcher in a way that is close to the way we all make sense of the world around us in our daily lives – by watching, experiencing, absorbing, living, breathing, and inquiring about a culture, lifestyle, event, or even object – while it can also be, if undertaken carefully, scientifically rigorous, systematic, and at least to some extent objective. Ethnography has proven to be the best way to learn, in detail, about a diverse range of complex social phenomena from personal experiences of self-harm (Adler and Adler 2007) to the globally-structured network of organs trafficking (Scheper-Hughes 2004). Nevertheless, ethnography is difficult to define because it is used in diverse ways in a wide range of disciplines drawing on different traditions. This chapter will first examine how ethnography has been defined by a range of other authors before explaining my own definition of ethnography as a methodology informed by a theory of social life as practice. I will trace some of the historical development of ethnography, especially within anthropology and sociology, before looking at more contemporary approaches in other disciplines.

Defining Ethnography

Exemplifying the breadth of ethnography within the social sciences, Stephanie Taylor (2002) brings together a collection of ethnographic studies, including an engaging and critical work on schoolgirls’ friendships by Valerie Hey (1997) and Lesley Griffiths’(1998) interpretive study of how humour is used as a strategy by healthcare workers to mediate instructions from powerful professionals. The studies range methodologically from what Taylor calls a conventional ethnography, ‘for which the ethnographer makes the enormous personal investment of moving into a community for an extended period’ (2002: 1) to a team project drawing on several discrete methods of formal data collection. However, for Taylor, ethnography essentially involves empirical work, especially observation, with the aim of producing a full, nuanced, non-reductive text, in ‘the ethnographic tradition’, however that is defined or interpreted by each author.

Hammersley and Atkinson (2007) acknowledge that the term ethnography is variable and contested, overlapping with qualitative research more broadly, with ‘fieldwork’, case study, and even life histories (see Heyl 2001). In their search for a definition they focus on what ethnographers do, recognising that in terms of data collection:

ethnography usually 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, 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.

(Hammersley and Atkinson 2007: 3)

Beyond this, they also acknowledge that the research is usually small in scale, undertaken in everyday contexts, using various data sources and methods, and they draw attention to the inductive and interpretive nature of ethnographic inquiry.

David Fetterman, an applied anthropologist, focuses more on the real-world applications of knowledge produced using ethnography, and calls it ‘more than a 1-day hike through the woods. It is an ambitious journey through the complex world of social interaction’ (Fetterman 2010: xi). Ethnography, for him, involves telling ‘credible, rigorous and authentic’ stories from the perspective of local people, and interpreting these stories in the context of people’s daily lives and cultures (2010: 1). This involves both phenomenological and hermeneutic interpretations (as I discuss further in chapter 2).

In the British Medical Journal, Jan Savage (2000) argues the case for using ethnography as a qualitative methodology for the in-depth study of health issues in context. She recognises that there is no standard definition of ethnography, but argues that the defining feature is often participant observation entailing prolonged fieldwork, and that:

Most ethnographers today would agree that the term ethnography can be applied to any small scale research that is carried out in everyday settings; uses several methods; evolves in design through the study; and focuses on the meaning of individuals’ actions and explanations rather than their quantification.

Jan Savage (2000: 1400)

We therefore begin to see a few essential components of ethnography emerging, and these are not so much to do with methods of data collection as a methodology, or an approach to research. These are summarised very well in the eclectic approach of Paul Willis and Mats Trondman (Willis and Trondman 2000: 5), the first editors of the journal Ethnography, who in their introduction to the (then new) journal, describe ethnography as ‘a methodology that draws on a family of methods involving direct and sustained social contact with agents, and on richly writing up the encounter, respecting, recording, representing, at least partly in its own terms, the irreducibility of human experience’. Crucial elements are: the understanding and representation of experience; presenting and explaining the culture in which this experience is located, but also acknowledging that ‘experience is entrained in the flow of history’ (2000: 6). Human beings are therefore part subjects and part objects. For Willis and Trondman, ethnography should also be theoretically informed, with a critical focus, and should have relevance for cultural politics.

It is the contention of the present book that ethnography is a practice that evolves in design as the study progresses; involves direct and sustained contact with human beings, in the context of their daily lives, over a prolonged period of time; draws on a family of methods, usually including participant observation and conversation; respects the complexity of the social world; and therefore tells rich, sensitive and credible stories. Ethnography should be informed by a theory of practice that: understands social life as the outcome of the interaction of structure and agency through the practice of everyday life; examines social life as it unfolds, including looking at how people feel, in the context of their communities, and with some analysis of wider structures, over time; also examines, reflexively, one’s own role in the construction of social life as ethnography unfolds; and determines the methods on which to draw and how to apply them as part of the ongoing, reflexive practice of ethnography.

The Chapters

It is not essential to read this book in order. It should be treated as a handbook that can be taken into the field with you and consulted at various stages of your journey through ethnography. I firmly believe that the best way to learn about ethnography is to do it, but this book should raise awareness and a critical reflexivity in you, helping you make informed and considered decisions at various junctures. I am proposing that ethnography is best viewed using the concept of practice. This first chapter therefore goes on to discuss what I mean by the practice of ethnography, and sketches out the theoretical framework for a theory of practice. I then describe the origins of the methods of ethnographic fieldwork within social anthropology and sociology, in which disciplines ethnography arguably has its roots. We especially examine the work of Bronislaw Malinowski who is considered by many to be the founder of contemporary ethnographic fieldwork methods. Then we are introduced in depth to the work of William Foote Whyte, who has contributed so much to debates in ethnographic methods through his famous methodological appendix. This chapter concludes with the range of contemporary uses of ethnographic methods in social science, especially in health and medicine, geography, and education.

chapter 2 explores more practical issues as to how one might approach a piece of ethnographic research. It includes the iterative-inductive nature of much ethnography, defining a guiding theoretical problem, reviewing the literature, starting out and selecting cases. The chapter then takes an in-depth look at the role of the philosophy of social science and theories of knowledge for ethnography. This examines positivism, interpretivism, realism, critical approaches, relativism, post-modernism and post-positivism/subtle realism and their implications for ethnographic methods in practice.

chapter 3 explores the myriad ethical considerations raised while conducting ethnographic research, including: the difficult distinction between overt and covert ethnography; gaining consent; disclosure and confidentiality; issues of power and control; and how to balance rights, responsibilities and commitments. This chapter features a transcript of a group discussion about ethics between existing researchers. It also considers ethical issues for some of the newer approaches in ethnography, such as autoethnography, performance and virtual methods.

The main method of ethnography is known as participant observation, and it is very distinctive as a method. The advantage of chapter 4 is that it discusses what one actually does in the field – which so many textbooks fail to consider. Key elements of participant observation explored here are gaining access, taking time, learning the language, participation and observation, and taking notes. We also address field relations, reflexivity, the notion of ethnography as embodied practice, the building of trust and rapport, and the use of gatekeepers. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the dialectic relationship between participating and observing.

Ethnographers conduct interviews as well as participating and observing. Interviews can take the shape of opportunistic chats, questions that arise on the spur of the moment, one-to-one in-depth interviews, group interviews and all sorts of ways of asking questions and learning about people that fall in between. It is therefore quite difficult to prescribe how an ethnographer should do an interview. Nevertheless, there are some quite distinctive features of an ethnographic approach to interviewing, so chapter 5 deals with that first, before going on to explore the different types of interview available to an ethnographer, including oral-history interviews, autoethnographic accounts and group interviews. Ethnographic interviews are shown to be collaborative rather than interrogative, guided rather than structured, flexible, and usually informal.

Although I prefer not to be too prescriptive about interview styles and techniques, chapter 6 offers some practical guidelines for interviewing, addressing questions such as: how do I get someone to agree to an interview? What is an interview guide? What do I do if they wander off the point? Should I transcribe? How do I test for validity? It includes an example of an interview topic guide, and lots of illustrations of interviewing practice.

chapter 7 explores some of the ways ethnography is responding to changes in the world around us as well as to theoretical, conceptual and thematic developments in the disciplines that guide our work. The chapter therefore introduces advancements in visual, mobile, multi-sited, global and virtual ethnography.

Ethnographic research is iterative-inductive. This is a practice of doing research, informed by a sophisticated inductivism, in which data collection, analysis and writing are not discrete phases, but inextricably linked. Nevertheless, we do reach a point where we move more towards analysis and representation and leave data collection to one side (if only for the moment). chapter 8 deals with this final phase. It explores the spiral model for ethnographic analysis; using computer software; sorting, classifying and describing; the role of concepts and theories; and how to analyse the interaction of structure and agency. It concludes with an in-depth description of the methodology and techniques of grounded theory.

Since the reflexive turn of the 1980s, the production of ethnographic texts has come under careful scrutiny. Ethnographers must now think critically and reflexively about writing and about the contexts of research and writing. chapter 9 thus explores modernist (traditional), post-modern and post-post-modern (or subtle realist) writing styles and their attempts to construct, or to think critically about the construction of, authoritative texts. Through the use of the arguments outlined in the Key ideas, it makes the case for a subtle realist approach to representation informed by the philosophical approaches discussed in chapter 2. The chapter concludes with some reflection on the validity of ethnographic accounts and on the relevance of ethnography beyond the specific case.

Each chapter ends with suggestions for further reading and recommends exercises for readers to undertake on their own or in small groups (perhaps in classroom settings). If students work through the classroom exercises for each chapter, they will be equipped to undertake independently a theoretically-informed ethnographic study, to analyse and write it up with a critical reflexivity towards representational forms, and be in a position to defend the validity and reliability of their work.

The Practice of Ethnography

I would like to spend a little time here elaborating on some of the ideas implicit in the definition of ethnography proposed by Willis and Trondman (discussed above). Their call to perceive human beings as part object and part subject is based on some assumptions about the extent to which humans are free agents or are determined by structures. There has been a tendency in more recent ethnography to focus on people’s opinions and feelings or on their cultures, while forgetting to look at the wider structures that frame their choices, or at least with very little theorising about how agency and structures interact. In this second edition of this book, I propose that ethnography is best viewed using the concept of practice. By this I mean it should be informed by a theoretical perspective that:

• understands social life as the outcome of the interaction of structure and agency through the practice of everyday life;
• examines social life as it unfolds, including looking at how people feel, in the context of their communities, and with some analysis of wider structures, over time;
• examines, reflexively, one’s own role in the construction of social life as ethnography unfolds;
• determines the methods on which to draw and how to apply them as part of the ongoing, reflexive practice of ethnography.

There are some useful threads in social theories of practice we can draw on to inform ethnographic practice. I will very briefly examine the work of Anthony Giddens, Pierre Bourdieu, Rob Stones, Etienne Wenger, Jean Lave and a few other authors.¹ Structuration theory was a social theory of practice proposed by Anthony Giddens via various publications (especially Giddens 1976, 1979, and 1984). It argues that we should not see objects (structures) and subjects (agents, individuals) as distinct entities, but as interrelated in the everyday playing out (or practice) of everyday life. Giddens insists that social life is neither the outcome of individual actions, determined by how individuals feel, what they intend, or plan to achieve; but nor is it determined by social structures (institutions, rules or resources). Indeed, social structures limit what people can and cannot do, what they even try to or wish to do, but agents do have some free will; and the very social structures that enable or constrain in some situations are made and remade by individuals in the process of their acting (or their agency). For Giddens, we therefore cannot even think of agency and structure as (ontologically) distinct; they are a duality – always interdependent and interrelated: ‘structures are constituted through action and […] action is constituted structurally’ (Giddens 1976: 161). But Giddens did not give us much in the way of methodological tools for applying this theory, so people have applied it rather loosely. He tends to be voluntaristic (and so do those who use his theory). He does not very clearly specify what he means by structures and perhaps leaves them too tangled up with agency. However, he does make the important point that social life is an historical process: it therefore cannot be studied by taking a snapshot. This is an important point for ethnogr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface to the second edition
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction: ethnography as practice
• 2. Where to begin
• 3. Ethical ethnography
• 4. Participating and observing
• 5. Interviews: asking questions of individuals and groups
• 6. Practical issues in interviewing
• 7. New directions in ethnography
• 8. Ethnographic analysis
• 9. Writing and representation
• Notes
• References
• Index