ETHNOGRAPHY

Ethnography

Ethnography

Introduction

Common wisdom tells us that there are, in general, two kinds of writing: creative and expository. Creative writing tells about feelings, opinions, points of view, things that originate inside the writer. Expository essays tell about facts, things outside of the writer. Essays on literature examine a literary text, a thing outside the writer. Lab reports describe experiments with chemicals and other stuff that really exists and can be measured. Research is factual; fiction, poetry, and the personal story are emotional.

Wrong. Writing is not that simple. The farther you go in your academic or professional career, the less you are able to simply report what you see. The more you know about your chosen field, the more you realize that the researcher argues for his/her point of view even as he/she reports the facts. When we ask how to provide medical care, how to enforce the law, how to work in the legal profession, how to do science, how to educate children - when we ask how any profession should be done - there is always more than one possible answer. We have to decide which answers work best, and the research almost always provides some evidence for both (or many) sides. Facts mean nothing without interpretation - we have to decide what the facts mean, what their consequences are.

So we need to get used to using facts, not just reporting them. We need to write expository essays that include our own opinions and points of view. (Burgess, 2005)

Ethnography is a science that allows for this kind of writing. Ethnographers study social communities (“cultures”) from the inside out - the researcher lives in and among the people she studies for months or years, speaking the language, participating in daily life. He or she takes copious notes on the details of everyday life. He transcribes thousands of hours of taped conversations. The she or he writes articles or books finding patterns and lessons in this massive data. (Burgess, 2005)

But what kind of data is it? The researcher is part of the situation being studied. He/she cannot possibly observe a social situation without being part of it. The researcher can't pretend he has objectivity. Most ethnographers admit their own feelings, points of view, and social roles in the community. They are “participant/observers” in the culture. By admitting their human point of view, they allow their readers to second-guess them, if necessary. They ...