Ethnography & FieldworkAaron Krinsky, Yuri Pavlov

Feb 14, 2018

EDU 603 Introduction to Qualitative Research

SUSAN THOMAS’S FEEDBACK (16 April 2018):

Strengths: You both did a great job of creating a very interactive class facilitation by integrating questions

throughout as you connected to the lesson's content. I also appreciated how you brought what seemed like

some outside material to help contextualize the readings.

Ways to Improve: I think the only issue was that there could have been a deeper reading of the arguments

of the different texts to then connect into a discussion. This seemed to be missing a bit--or at least better

timing of the facilitation could have attended to this some more.

Good job to both of you!

Grade: A-

John Watson: ... I believe that my eyes are as good as yours.

Sherlock Holmes: You see, but you do not observe.

(Scandal in Bohemia, 1891)

Warm-up

Choose what you feel best answers the question

What phenomenon may explain why the Ilongot tribe in the Philippines used to involve in a communal act of beheading a person?

(a) Yearly ritual

(b) Grief

(c) Power relationship

What phenomenon may explain why the Balinese people used to involve in cockfighting tournaments?

(a) Moneymaking

(b) Violence fascination

(c) Prestige and status

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Content / Discussion

What is ethnography?

What is culture?

“Ethnographic designs are qualitative research procedures for describing,

analyzing, and interpreting a culture-sharing group’s shared patterns of behavior,

beliefs, and language that develop over time” (Creswell, 2012, p. 462).

“[E]thnographies study human groups, seeking to understand how they

collectively form and maintain a culture” (Marshall & Rossman, 2016, p. 17).

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• Clyde Kluckhohn (1944): 11 definitions of culture (Geertz, 1973, p. 311)

• Clifford Geertz (1973): human public webs of meanings that they create

• LeCompte et al. (1993): “everything having to do with human behavior and

belief” (Creswell, 2012, p. 462).

• Rossman & Rallis (2012): culture “describes the ways things are and

prescribes the ways people should act” (Marshall & Rossman, 2016, p. 17).

Content / Discussion (contd.)

What are some genres of ethnography?

What types of qualitative data can a researcher collect for an ethnography?

• Classical ethnography

• Performance ethnography

• Critical ethnography

• Autoethnogrpahy

• Internet/Virtual ethnography (Marshall & Rossman, 2016, p. 17)

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• Observations (participant/non-participant): fieldnotes, pictures

• Interviews

• Extant documents

• Audiovisual materials and physical objects

Content / Discussion (contd.)

How do we know what roles we need to fill if we’re in an unfamiliar environment?

What is a researcher’s role in ethnography?

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Content / Discussion (contd.)

What is fieldwork?• Method that distinguishes anthropology (see Imperative 1 in Gupta & Ferguson)

• “Fieldwork in ethnography means that the researcher gathers data in the

setting where the participants are located and where their shared patterns can

be studied” (Creswell, 2012, p. 470).

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What is a field in ethnography?• Actual setting (though not necessarily a specific far-away exotic location)

• WHY NOT?

• “Shifting location”:

• a social and political location (devalued historically)

• a place of “unequal power relationships”

• “a form of motivated and stylized dislocation” (Gupta & Ferguson, 1997, p. 37)

• Archetypal associations of the field: (1) Field vs. Home, (2) Fieldwork-based

knowledge, (3) Fieldworker as an anthropological subject

Content / Discussion (contd.)

What is locality and neighborhoods?• Neighborhoods—situated communities comprised of local subjects.

Neighborhoods are contexts, neighborhoods produce contexts.

• Locality:

• dimension/value of a neighborhood

• phenomenological quality (expresses in agency, sociality, reproducibility)

• “general property of social life”

• “a structure of feeling that is produced by particular forms of intentional

activity and that yields particular sorts of material effects”

• “ideology of situated community” (Appadurai, 1996)6

What is thick description? Why “thick”?

• Activity/process in ethnography: observe + pay close attention to details +

make sense of them + interpret meanings + go beyond the surface level

• Thick = richness, depth, insightfulness, requires interpretation

Activity 1

What steps have to be taken into account to conduct fieldwork?

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In groups of three–four students, discuss the following:

What common steps did all groups identify?

Activity 2

How would you evaluate an ethnographic study as a research consumer?

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In groups of three–four students, discuss the following:

Which of these precautions will you be particularly mindful when doing your

own ethnography?

Wrap-up

Choose what you feel best answers the question

What phenomenon may explain why the Ilongot tribe in the Philippines used to involve in a communal act of beheading a person?

(a) Yearly ritual

(b) Grief

(c) Power relationship

What phenomenon may explain why the Balinese people used to involve in cockfighting tournaments?

(a) Moneymaking

(b) Violence fascination

(c) Prestige and status

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Rosaldo, R. (1993). Introduction: Grief and a

headhunter’s rage. In Culture and truth: The

remaking of social analysis. Boston, MA:

Beacon Press.

Geertz, Clifford. (1973). Deep play: Notes on

the Balinese cockfight. In The interpretation of

cultures. New York, NY: Basic Books. Pp.

412–452.

References

• Appadurai, A. (1996). The production of locality. In Modernity at large. Cultural Dimensions of Globalization.

• Bogdan, R. & Biklen, S. (2007). Qualitative research for education (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

• Creswell, J. W. (2012). Educational research: Planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

• Geertz, C. (1973). Thick description: Toward an interpretive theory of culture. In The interpretation of cultures. New York, NY: Basic Books. Pp. 310–323.

• Geertz, C. (1973). Deep play: Notes on the Balinese cockfight. In The interpretation of cultures. New York, NY: Basic Books. Pp. 412–452.

• Gupta, A., & Ferguson, J. (1997). Discipline and practice: The field as site, method, and location in anthropology. In Anthropological locations.

• Marshall, C., & Rossman, G. B. (2016). Designing qualitative research (6th ed.). Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications.

• Rosaldo, R. (1993). Introduction: Grief and a headhunter’s rage. In Culture and truth: The remaking of social analysis. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

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