Ethnography

We explain what ethnography is, what its history is and its objectives. Also, its advantages, limitations and classification.

What is ethnography?

Ethnography is the systematic study of the people and the cultures through the observation of their cultural and social practices. Rather than a science in itself, it is considered a technique, a research method or a branch of social and cultural anthropology.

It was widely used in the study of indigenous communities from various regions of the world during the 20th century and is currently applied to the study of any type of social group. This is because as a method of obtaining information it has some advantages over other techniques, since it allows obtaining information directly from the source and of a very varied nature, through participant observation (permanence within a social group to observe their practices, participate in them and collect data).

Important: Ethnography should not be confused with ethnology (sometimes equated with social and cultural anthropology), a discipline that is dedicated to the comparative analysis of cultures and which is a field of theoretical study that can make use of the descriptions offered by ethnography.

See also: Communication sciences

Definition of ethnography

The term “ethnography” is composed of the Greek words ethnos (“people” or “nation”) and graphein (“write”), so can be defined as the descriptive study of a culture.

In general terms, ethnography involves the written description of the way of life of a community or a specific human group. It is part of the so-called social sciences, since its object of study is human societies and their forms of organization.

It is fundamentally a technique or methodology that consists of the presence of the observer within the group or society studied to record their cultural practices. From this point of view, any exercise in social or cultural anthropology is based on the collection, comparison and analysis of own or third parties' ethnographic experiences.

History of ethnography

In ancient times, a form of ethnography was practiced when were transmitted observations and descriptions of peoples considered “barbaric” or exotic as was the case of the Greek historian Herodotus in the 5th century BC. C., who is usually considered a precursor of ethnography. This same thing happened during the European exploration and colonization voyages between the 15th and 19th centuries, which led to recording and describing the populations they encountered.

However, Ethnography as a field of modern study began at the beginning of the 20th century along with social anthropology, heir to the European interest in societies that it considered exotic but willing to produce scientific knowledge about these societies. The founding father of ethnography was the same one who gave birth to British social anthropology: Bronislaw Malinowski. Other anthropologists who contributed to the development of modern ethnography were Franz Boas and Margaret Mead, representatives of American cultural anthropology.

Throughout the 20th century, ethnographic observation continued to be used by anthropology which over the decades developed a less ethnocentric view of societies, and was even incorporated into sociological studies and to communication sciences.

Objective of ethnography

Ethnography aims make as objective a description as possible of the practices, structures and processes that occur within a specific human group. The objective is to record and compile the data obtained to facilitate its interpretation.

The ethnographer plays the role of observer, but also of interpreter or analyst, in the sense that he or she must compare what is observed with other experiences for it to make sense: these other experiences are, generally, the practices, structures and processes of the society to which they are exposed. which belongs to the ethnographer.

On the other hand, Ethnologists and anthropologists often make use of ethnographic observations to conduct your own comparative analyzes of cultures.

Advantages of ethnography

One of the advantages of ethnography is the abundant information it offers, since Its techniques allow us to observe practices that are not always available in documentary sources or other types of research. Another advantage is that it allows us to know the meaning that people give to their practices by asking them questions through interviews.

This appreciation is based on the assumption that only by remaining within a human group can the social and cultural reality of what happens be faithfully described. This implies that Ethnography is qualitative and not quantitative research since it is interested in describing and interpreting what happens, and not in providing statistical data.

Limitations of ethnography

Ethnography has some limitations. On the one hand, in general, allows studying only small communities whose behavior and structure can be interpreted as the norm and lead to generalizations that are not always appropriate for the broader social group or for other social groups. Furthermore, the reliability of ethnographic observation depends on the researcher's ability to integrate into these communities and gain their trust which is usually not an easy task.

On the other hand, the presence of the observer in the studied community implies that their values, prejudices and experiences can easily intrude in their ethnographic descriptions, or they may predispose the community studied not to act naturally. Therefore, objectivity is always an unattainable ideal of ethnography.

Types of ethnography

Some authors distinguish between two types of ethnographic approach:

• Macroethnography. It is dedicated to the study of large-scale social relations or institutions that organize a complex society, which requires the coordinated efforts of several ethnographers over a considerable period of time. For example, the analysis of a country's culture based on its political, economic and social relations.
• Microethnography. It focuses attention on a particular social institution or on a few situations or social practices within a given local group, which can be accomplished by a single ethnographer in a relatively short time. For example, the study of personal and business relationships in a village market in a certain neighborhood.

How to carry out an ethnography?

Ethnographic studies are carried out through three fundamental steps:

• Observation. It is about using the five senses to capture the greatest amount of information possible in the social framework to be investigated, without disregarding any type of data or experiences. This includes conducting interviews.
• Description. It is about recomposing what is observed in a document (written, visual or sound) that serves as support and allows its review, correction, registration and transmission.
• Analysis. It involves collating, comparing and interpreting the information obtained and recorded, and drawing relevant conclusions from it, both on a small and large scale.

life stories

One of the most common tools available to ethnography are life stories: oral histories obtained through interviews face to face between the scholar and the person from the society studied (often called the informant). In these interviews, the other person is induced to tell their life story and provide as much detail as possible about it, as well as their beliefs, values, myths, and religious practices.

From this type of profiles, similar to psychological ones, documents are created that serve as ethnographic sources for subsequent studies, as they offer relevant information about personal and collective practices, beliefs and dynamics.

Who was Bronislaw Malinowski?

Bronislaw Malinowski He is considered the founding father of British social anthropology and ethnography as a professional field of study. He was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1884 and became a British citizen.

Malinowski renewed the discipline from a consideration of culture as a system in which each part has a certain function (called functionalism), and from his own field experiences. through the application of the participant observation method in numerous indigenous communities in Melanesia. He also incorporated questions from psychoanalysis into his ethnographic research.

Some of his famous books are The Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922), Crime and custom in savage society (1926) and the posthumous volume A scientific theory of culture (1944). He also wrote the introduction to the book by Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz, Cuban counterpoint of tobacco and sugar (1940).

Differences between ethnography and ethnology

Ethnography and ethnology are not the same. Ethnography involves field work, research on site of a culture or a social group, while Ethnology consists of the comparison and analysis of various cultures whether contemporary or not.

In this sense, ethnology is usually equated with social and cultural anthropology, which makes use of the observations recorded by ethnography to conduct its analyses.

On the other hand, There is also ethnohistory, an interdisciplinary approach between anthropology and history which is dedicated to the study of pre-colonial or colonial-era indigenous populations through written documents, archaeological remains and ethnographic research (including oral stories transmitted from generation to generation).

See also:

• indigenous peoples
• indigenous people of Mexico
• Humanities

References

• Britannica, Encyclopaedia (2024). Ethnography. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/
• Hammersley, M., & Atkinson, P. (2013). Ethnography. Research methods. Paidós.
• Howell, S. (2018). Ethnography. The Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology. https://www.anthroencyclopedia.com/
• Restrepo, E. (2016). Ethnography: scope, techniques and ethics. Pontifical Javeriana University.
• Spradley, J. P. (1980). Participant Observation. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers.