What is ethnography? Can it survive? Should it?

ABSTRACT

This paper notes that, in the field of education and beyond, the term ‘ethnography’ has acquired a range of meanings, and comes in many different versions, these often reflecting sharply divergent orientations. I argue that this is a major problem that requires attention; particularly since today there are some serious threats to the practice of ethnographic work, on almost any definition. However, while we need to forge greater agreement about the meaning of the term, this is a challenging task. Indeed, if we take ‘ethnography’ to refer to a whole methodological approach little agreement will be possible. I argue that it may be feasible if we treat ethnography as one methodological strategy among others, each having varying advantages and disadvantages for the purposes of investigating particular topics. However, the fundamental disagreements among ethnographers today about ontological, epistemological, and axiological matters render even this by no means unproblematic.

KEYWORDS:

• Definitions of ethnography
• types of ethnography
• threats to ethnography
• nature of ethnography
• participant observation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Bellotti (2010) writes: ‘Ethnographers’ data collection and analysis methods have therefore been condensed, recombined, adapted – both systematically and as-needed – to meet these business demands’. See also Westney and van Maanen (2011). For a thoughtful discussion of short-term ethnography, and strategies to compensate for the problems involved, see Brockmann (2011). The terms ‘condensed ethnography’ (or ‘condensed fieldwork’) and ‘focused ethnography’ have been used to refer to this kind of work. See Walker (1978); Knoblauch (2005); and Wall (2015).

2. There does not seem to have been much sustained resistance to this, but see: Dingwall (2014).

3. On the issue of access generally, see Cipollone and Stich (2012).

4. In defending what he calls ‘traditional ethnography’, Walford (2009) insists that ‘for an activity or product to be regarded as ethnographic, there is a need for some recognisable continuity’ with what was regarded as ethnography in the past. Even if this criterion is accepted, there is clearly room for disagreement about the level of continuity required.

5. I will not pursue the issue here of how research can be ethnographic but not constitute an ethnography, but it does illustrate the fuzzy boundary around the concept.

6. If we compare this list with that provided by the editors of Ethnography and Education when this journal was first established we find many common elements, but also some new ones:

• • the focus on the study of cultural formation and maintenance;

• • the use of multiple methods and thus the generation of rich and diverse forms of data;

• • the direct involvement and long-term engagement of the researcher(s);

• • the recognition that the researcher is the main research instrument;

• • the high status given to the accounts of participants’ perspectives and understandings;

• • the engagement in a spiral of data collection, hypothesis building, and theory testing – leading to further data collection; and

• • the focus on a particular case in depth, but providing the basis for theoretical generalisation. (Troman, Jeffrey, and Walford 2006, 1).

7. In addition, we have at least one numerical adjective applied to ‘ethnography’: White’s (2009) ‘ethnography 2.0’. One or two labels carry multiple meanings. For example, Dourish 2006 (cited in Button et al. 2015, 62) contrasts ‘analytic ethnography’, concerned with providing interpretive understanding of cultures, with ‘factual ethnography’, focused on the description of situated action, whereas Button et al. (2015, 48) distinguish ‘between “scenic ethnography”, which involves the superficial registration of details, and “analytic ethnography” which is about elaborating the socially organised ways in which action is brought about and recognisably accomplished in its performance’, in other words ethnomethodological ethnography. For a third meaning, see Vaughan (2009).

8. These influences have sometimes been combined, for example ‘feminist post-structural ethnography’ (Cairns 2013) and ‘black emancipatory action research’, the latter being held to incorporate ethnography (Akom 2011). See also the contributions to Ethnography and Education vol. 4, no. 3, 2009.

9. There is a distorted echo here, no doubt unwitting, of Martin Nicolaus’s famous critique of sociology in 1968, in which ethnographers were described as those who

don the disguise of the people and go out to mix with the peasants in the “field”, returning with books and articles that break the protective secrecy in which a subjugated population wraps itself, and make it more accessible to manipulation and control.

Available at: http://www.colorado.edu/Sociology/gimenez/fatcat.html.

10. Indeed, Ingold (2014) argues that the term has become almost meaningless: ‘Ethnography has become a term so overused, both in anthropology and in contingent disciplines, that it has lost much of its meaning’ (Abstract).

I am concerned to narrow ethnography down so that to those who ask us, in good faith, what it means, we can respond with precision and conviction. Only by doing so, I contend, can we protect it from the inflation that is otherwise threatening to devalue its currency to the extent of rendering the entire enterprise worthless. (384)

11. However, Forsey (2010a, 2010b) has argued that the relationship between ethnography and participant observation should be decoupled. See also Hockey and Forsey (2012).

12. Of course, there are other assumptions that are associated with the use of participant observation, for example that human social life is not structured in terms of fixed, law-like patterns, but displays emergent processes of various kinds that involve a high degree of contingency, requiring observation in situ over a considerable period of time. But we could find participant observation useful even if we did not believe this, whereas the assumptions I have listed are so central to the use of participant observation that if we did not hold one or more of them there would be little reason for using this method.

13. For an account of some of the ways in which there have been changes in methodological ideas that are at odds with the initial commitments of ethnography when it first started to become popular across the social sciences in the 1970s; see Hammersley (2008: Chap. 1).

14. See Potter and Hepburn (2005) and Hammersley (2013). For an interesting discussion of some of the issues here see Speer (2002, 2008).

15. For an extended discussion of this and other aspects of Atkinson’s book, see Hammersley (2015). It should be said that he greatly values participant observation as a method.

16. I have used the translation by Will Fitzgerald, available at: http://entish.org/essays/Wilkins.html.

17. I have left open the choice of data collection strategies because an ethnographer could use several combinations of those listed. Also, the options identified here are relatively crude, they could be refined, generating sub-categories. This is most obvious in the case of the contrast between quantitative and qualitative analysis.

18. It is not uncommon for ethnography to be treated in this way: see for example Atkinson (2015, 3). For a commentary, see Hammersley (2015).

19. I have argued elsewhere that, despite claims to the contrary, most qualitative research is concerned with causal analysis, see for instance Cooper et al. (2012, 72–73). For elaboration of the notion of process tracing, see Bennett (2014).