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When Dr. Pullman asked the class in English 3960 to write a paper describing a room
or place without using our own inferences and opinions, I found it difficult to adhere to
those guidelines. Upon completing the assignment I learned that the assignment had been
an exercise to prepare us for a much bigger task which would be to perform an
ethnography study. Prior to doing any ethnography, however, we must define the
meaning behind it. Therefore, this paper attempts to define ethnography through
examples and research.
The prefix “ethnos” has Greek origins, and it means “people of the same race or
nationality who share a distinctive culture” (qtd. in Wordnet 1.6, 1997 Princeton
University). According to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language,
fourth edition, the suffix “graphy” can be defined as a “[w]riting or representation
produced in a specified manner or by a specified process.” Both the prefix and the suffix
combine to form the word ethnography. Accessed through the Rhetcomp Web site under
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster’s dictionary offers the following definition for
ethnography: “That branch of knowledge which has for its subject the characteristics of
the human family, developing the details with which ethnology as a comparative science
deals; descriptive ethnology.” Also, within the same web site, Webster’s Revised
Unabridged Dictionary, 1996 defines ethnography as, “the branch of anthropology that
provides scientific description of individual human societies.” Another source advises
that an “Ethnography is a traditional method of sociology and cultural anthropology. It
involves the study of people performing activities and interacting in complex social
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settings in order to obtain a qualitative understanding of these interactions” (Amy
McCleverty, 1). Additional research defines ethnography as:
… a method of studying and learning about a person or group of people. Typically,
ethnography involves the study of a small group of subjects in their own
environment. Rather than looking at a small set of variables and a large number of
subjects ("the big picture"), the ethnographer attempts to get a detailed
understanding of the circumstances of the few subjects being studied.
Ethnographic accounts, then, are both descriptive and interpretive; descriptive,
because detail is so crucial, and interpretive, because the ethnographer must
determine the significance of what she observes without gathering broad, statistical
information. Clifford Geertz, whose thoughts about culture are excerpted in the
Other Important Definitions of Culture, is famous for coining the term "thick
description" in discussing the methodology of the ethnographer. (The
Ethnographics Gallery)
Amy McCleverty performed an ethnographic study under the direction of Research
Methodologies to determine solutions to system designs that fell short of the features
needed for actual use. The preliminaries of her study began by explaining the differences
between a formal task and analysis and ethnography:
The fundamental difference between a task analysis and an ethnographic study is
that the purpose of an ethnographic study is to see how work is truly accomplished,
while a task analysis reveals how work “should” be accomplished. This difference
enables ethnographic studies to provide a realistic understanding of labour division
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and “work-arounds” that people implement without being aware that they’re fixing
a problem such as posting a list of error codes and their meanings beside the
photocopier – the photocopier should provide meaningful error information, but
because someone has published a list of meanings associated with the codes, thus
allowing people to do their jobs, they, may not even be aware that the system is
poorly designed. (McCleverty, 2)
Ethnography differs from a case study because case studies can be performed on one
person whereas an ethnographic study must be done on more than one person or a group.
Also, writing related to ethnography differs from writing in a diary because diaries
generally contain daily recordings from one’s own personal accounts, experiences, and
observations whereby ethnography expresses objectivity.
An article listed under the URL
http://www.comp./ancs.ac.uk/sociology/VSOC/Handbook/Handbook.html
titled: A Handbook of Ethnography, identifies four uses for ethnography:

Concurrent ethnography: in which design is influenced by an on-going
ethnographic study taking place at the same time as systems development.

Quick and dirty ethnography: in which brief ethnographic studies are undertaken
to provide a general but informed sense of the setting for designers.

Evaluative ethnography: in which an ethnographic study is undertaken to verify
or validate a set of already formulated design decisions.

Re-examination of previous studies: in which previous studies are re-examined
to inform initial design thinking.
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Another online article titled, ideas bazaar, emphasizes that ethnography can be used to
gain an in depth understanding about a particular environment or market and to create
solutions to issues uncovered. The article insists that the ethnographer should remain
objective and perform the research in response to a hypothesis and reach beyond any
reported opinions. The same article lists the ethnographer’s tools:

Active involvement in people’s lives – an ethnographer must adapt to the subjects and
their environment. He or she must become involved with the people’s daily activities
within the environment being observed.

Collecting, documenting, and recording cultural artifacts – artifacts give the
ethnographer insight into the behavior patterns. Field notes would probably be
synonymous with this category.

Unstructured questions and conversation – these allow the informants to structure the
study and take the lead. The ethnographer can then observe the natural order of their
activities.

Interviews – these usually take place at the end of the research, and the ethnographer
can then clarify the parts not understood so that he will not risk an incorrect inference.

Dictaphone Diaries and Photo-Accounts – respondents may be asked to complete an
oral diary whereas their mood and feelings may be recorded.
Ethnography is founded on the idea that a coordination of intentionality is crossculturally possible; that a person from one cultural has the bases to grasp and
interpret the actions of a person from another culture. The actions may be no more
or less than a report about the past action of other agents or what ethnographers do
when they interview someone about what has happened previously. To put this
differently, ethnography rests on the assumption of the ontological existence of the
person; an agent defined minimally by the fact that he/she has beliefs, desires, and
judgements, thereby constituting intentions and thus the possibility of coordinated
intentionality or shared meanings (with, for example, the ethnographer). (Lambek
and Strathern 63)
Information from specific ethnographies can be accessed under various urls. For
example, under http://www.csun.edu/~hcchs006/gang.html, we can find a detailed
account for an ethnography done on an Urban Latino Street Gang. Jennifer Harris
performed ethnography titled, Surviving Ethnography: Coping with Isolation, Violence
and Anger, which involved the study of British Deaf People. It can be accessed under
http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR3-1/harris.html. The last example for ethnography
performed by Bruce Jones, comprises a proposal for a Dissertation in Communications
titled: An Ethnography of the Usenet Computer Network. It can be accessed through the
URL http://communication.ucsd.edu/bjones/usenet.orals.html
In summary, ethnography involves detailed research and observations of a group of
persons linked to one another culturally or through a common interest. Ethnographic
studies cannot be performed on an individual alone or on one person, rather it involves a
group. Interacting and living within the respondents’ environment is relevant to
performing ethnography. The ethnographer must produce field notes and documentation
showing the objective observations that he or she made. Ethnography differs from task
analyses and diaries in so far as a task analyses do not provide an actual picture of how
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the work gets done, and diaries maintain daily personal accounts. Lastly, we realize that
ethnographies have a wide subject base. The paper provides URLs for ethnographies
performed on an Urban Latino Street Gang, British Deaf People, and an Usenet
Computer Network.
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Works Cited
1.
Lambeck, Michael, and Strathern, Andrew. “Modernity and Personhood in.
Melanesia.” Bodies and Persons. Australia: Cambridge
University Press, 1998.
2.
McCleverty, Amy. “Re: Computer Science 681: Research Methodologies.”
Online Posting. March 1997. 12 Feb. 2003 <http://pages.cpsc.
ucalgary.ca/~saul/681/1997/amy/ethnography.html>.
3.
“The Ethnographic Gallery at the University of Kent at Canterbury.”
Ethnography. 12 Feb. 2003. <http://www.wsu.edu:8001
/vcwsu/commons/topics/culture/glossary/ethnography.html>.
4.
“The Uses of Ethnography.” A Handbook of Ethnography. 12 Feb. 2003
<http://www.comp./ancs.ac.uk/sociology.Vsoc/Handbook/
Handbook.html>.
5.
“Why use ethnography?.” Ideas bazaar. 12 Feb. 2003.
<http://www.ideasbazaar.co.uk/abc.htm>.