Key Concepts in Ethnography

Karen O?Reilly, Karen O?Reilly, Karen O?Reilly, Karen O?Reilly

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781446243442
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

"An accessible and entertaining read, useful to anybody interested in the ethnographic method."
- Paul Miller, University of Cumbria "A very good introduction to ethnographic research, particularly useful for first time researchers."
- Heather Macdonald, Chester University "The perfect introductory guide for students embarking on qualitative research for the first time... This should be of aid to the ethnographic novice in their navigating what is a theoretically complex and changing methodological field."
- Patrick Turner, London Metropolitan University An accessible, authoritative, non-nonsense guide to the key concepts in one of the most widely used methodologies in social science: Ethnography, this book:

• Explores and summarises the basic and related issues in ethnography that are covered nowhere else in a single text.
• Examines key topics like sampling, generalising, participant observation and rapport, as well as embracing new fields such as virtual, visual and multi-sighted ethnography and issues such as reflexivity, writing and ethics.
• Presents each concept comprehensively yet critically, alongside relevant examples.

This is not quite an encyclopaedia but far more than a dictionary. It is comprehensive yet brief. It is small and neat, easy to hold and flick through. It is what students and researchers have been waiting for.

Insider Ethnographies

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The goal of ethnography, to gain the perspective of the insider and to render it meaningful, raises special issues for ethnographers who are also members of the group they study.

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Outline: The insider/outsider distinction. The development of ethnography ‘at home’ and explanations for more ‘insider’ ethnographies. Challenging the insider/outsider distinction. Criticisms of and problems with insider ethnography: accusations of over-involvement and bias. Advantages of being an insider: finding strangeness on your own doorstep. The ethnographer as key informant. Degrees of difference and the mirror of ethnography.

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INSIDERS AND OUTSIDERS

The more or less explicit goal of thorough ethnographic research is to gain an insider perspective and to collect insider accounts. In order to achieve this insider perspective, it is considered best to adopt (if you do not already have one) an insider role within the community. The distinction between insiders and outsiders is based on the traditional conception of fieldwork as conducted by the lone ethnographer in some kind of exotic outpost. Here the goal was to become gradually socialised into the group, thereby gaining insider knowledge and understandings (see Ellen, 1984). However, such texts also acknowledge the importance of the initial outsider perspective, the initial culture shock or surprise that draws our attention to the unusual and strange that over time we will neglect to see. Several ethnographers have thus written about the experience and process of becoming an insider, about the process of merging self with other (Coffey, 1999). However, ethnographers also do research in settings in which they are already insiders, and this is becoming more common. This has led to discussion and debate about the implications of doing ethnography ‘at home’.

ETHNOGRAPHY AT HOME

It was so taken for granted that ethnographic research within anthropology was undertaken away from home that, as it became more usual for it to take place in one’s own country or community, the implications needed thinking about. Two books on doing anthropology at home, one centring mainly on Europe (Jackson, 1987) and one from North America (Messerschmidt, 1981), were compiled in recognition of the debates and the assumption that ethnography was traditionally done in distant lands, alone, as some kind of rite de passage. However, although the history of ethnography in anthropology is to some extent also the history of the colonial encounter, in sociology this has always been less the case. The Chicago sociologists (Chicago School) not only got out into the streets in their own cities and communities, but they were in many cases also personally involved in the lives or lifestyles of those they studied (Deegan, 2001).

But why did ethnography come home, as it were? Jackson wonders if one of the reason was that sociologists began to realise that ethnographic methods were needed to understand their own societies since other methods, such as survey work, were failing so badly. But other key reasons include: changes to funding opportunities; realising the exotic can be found just down the street; objections to intellectual imperialism; and changing international relations. Wars, civil unrest, governments who are unwilling to admit foreign researchers, can all make it difficult or inadvisable to go to some places. There was also an increase in the number of minority group and indigenous anthropologists working in the areas over which white, male, Euro-Americans thought they had a monopoly (Messerschmidt, 1981). In the US, American Indian and Hispanic anthropologists worked in their own communities, while female feminists researched the women’s movement. Meanwhile, anthropologists who would previously have gone abroad started to focus on issues at home, specialising in fields such as medicine, urban studies, criminology, business, housing, or education.

But perhaps more important was the development of ideas that has led to the recognition of our own role in research and writing (see interpretivism and reflexivity) and the impact this must have on the naïve distinction between insider and outsider. Anthropologists and sociologists are now less wedded to the idea of a science of society; they have more or less accepted that research is complicated, messy, personal, and subjective, and so are less concerned with achieving distance. Or at least they are aware of the problematic nature of trying to achieve it.

CRITICISMS OF INSIDER ETHNOGRAPHY

However, when anthropology and ethnography did turn their gaze upon western and ‘advanced’ societies, they still tended to seek the ‘primitive within’ (along with ethnologists and folklorists) in peasant or rural communities, or focus on the exotic outsiders that could be found in strip joints, cocktail bars, retirement homes, and subcultures (Löfgren, 1987). Exploring one’s own society and culture simply seemed too problematic.

Ethnography of what were termed ‘contemporary’ societies (as if more distant cultures were somehow also more distant in time) was seen to be too complex, or the insider was seen as too close, too involved, and lacking detachment. The anthropologist in a foreign culture has to struggle to gain insights; the anthropologist in her own culture must struggle to withdraw from it (Hennigh, 1981: 125). Some describe the knowledge gained, John Aguilar notes, as no more than subjective involvement, ‘a deterrent to objective perception and analysis’ (1981: 15). A widely held view is that outsiders can more easily read a society’s ‘unconscious grammar’, implying that what ethnographers infer from behaviour is more fruitful than what they derive from locals’ statements. The insider is seen as too familiar with the setting for the unfamiliar and exotic to arouse curiosity. Critics argue that outsider ethnography is essentially comparative because the ethnographer has been socialised into a different culture. They argue that the culture shock and subsequent adaptation which an ethnographer experiences in a foreign culture aid understanding of that way of life. Insider ethnography is seen as biased and as beginning with political aims. The non-involved outsider can be more scientific and more likely to question what others see as familiar. Critics invoke the advantages of the position of the stranger in Simmel’s work. The stranger ‘surveys conditions with less prejudice: his criteria for them are more general and more objective ideals; he is not tied down in his action by habit, piety, and precedent’ (quoted in Aguilar, 1981: 17).

The advantage of a cross-cultural context

Kirsten Hastrup (1987) prefers to make a distinction not between insiders and outsiders, or home and away, but between cross-cultural and parallel-cultural contexts. And while she concedes there may be advantages in doing ethnography in a parallel culture to our own, she also recognises the advantage of strangeness and difference. For example, she says, it has been common for female anthropologists doing research in ‘strange’ cultures to be able to take advantage of their own difference and strangeness and to gain access to people and insights from which they would have been excluded, by being granted some sort of honorary male status. In research in a culture similar to one’s own, participants are more likely to treat the ethnographer according to pre-conceived categories associated with class, education, gender, and so on. Outsiders are thus more likely to be told things insiders would not; and respondents are less partisan in their relations with them. Adopting the pose of naïve ethnographer who needs to be taught how to behave in the culture and can ask difficult questions is not so easy ‘at home’.

DIFFICULTIES OF DOING ETHNOGRAPHY ON YOUR DOORSTEP

Ethnographers at home do not just research at home but also write and publish at home and they do not go home (thus achieving detachment and distance) at the end of the fieldwork period. They cannot so easily duck their moral or ethical obligations or ignore the implications of their work as stranger ethnographers. To the researched, the ethnographer is ‘one of us’. Angela Cheater (1987) says this is not so much ethnography in your own backyard as in your own front room! I see it as not so much ‘living amongst’ another culture as weaving your way in and out of other people’s worlds. It is thus crucial to confront your own role, and your impact on the topic, the research, the subjects. The problem for ethnographers in their own milieu is not so much how to gain access as how to stand back and see ourselves as others see us. However, Maryon McDonald believes it is possible to discover symbolic boundaries – the strange, exotic, and different – anywhere, even right on our own doorstep and ‘they are none the less real for that’ (1987: 122). Sue Estroff talks about this eloquently in her research on people labelled mentally ill:

Instead of arranging for passage, visas, fearsome injections, getting out my hiking boots, and packing my trunk, I got in my car, drove for ten minutes to the downtown area of a city where I had lived for five years, and thus began fieldwork. Despite the geographic proximity and lack of exotic contingencies, I am convinced that the experiences of the two years that followed constituted as long, arduous, exciting and frightening a journey into differentness and newness as that of any anthropologist on her first vision quest. (Estroff, 1981: 3)

One problem when doing ethnography in a group with whom you are very familiar or in a parallel culture is that people tend to think they cannot be an object of interest because they are not interesting enough. In France, McDonald found herself constantly directed towards the Breton-speaking peasant communities, as if they were who she really wanted to learn about. In my own research in Spain, British people would tell me to talk to others who spoke more Spanish or had been there longer, or whatever else they considered more valuable than what they themselves had to offer.

But doing ethnography at home is not just about Europeans researching Europeans (or westerners, westerners) but also non-westerners engaging in research in their own communities. Indigenous anthropologists in Brazil, India, and North America, and later in other parts of the world, have increasingly explored their own societies. Cheater (1987) thinks that with such research opportunities on their doorstep, they have little inclination or need to go elsewhere. Third world or indigenous anthropologists (or what we might call ethnographers of and in the majority world) have their own particular problems: contexts are more likely to be overtly political and politicised, and perhaps dangerous and violent. And in some settings the independent ideas we seek or bring may be considered more dangerous than physical violence (Cheater, 1987).

ADVANTAGES OF AN INSIDER PERSPECTIVE

To counter to these criticisms of doing ethnography at home, insider ethnographers either find fault with the outsider perspective or demonstrate the advantage of their own. Defendants of insider research may see outsiders as less trustworthy, less discerning, lacking commitment to the group, or having no political axe to grind. Insider ethnographers argue that the experience of culture shock is a negative rather than positive reaction more likely to cause the ethnographer to recoil than open up. Insiders believe they blend in more, gain more rapport, participate more easily, have more linguistic competence with which to ask more subtle questions on more complex issues, and are better at reading nonverbal communications. Where they are politically engaged, research participants are more likely to open up to them, whereas a stranger is always to some extent strange and alien. Insider ethnographers argue that they are less likely to construct stereotypes or to caricature communities, and are more likely to present complex interpretations of events. They get beyond the ideal to the real, daily, lived, and back-stage experiences. Rather than describing the unconscious grammar of the community, their ethnographies are expressions of it, the result of a superior insider knowledge gained through primary socialisation.

Even ascribed status roles, though more severe in parallel cultures, can be an advantage to insider ethnographers. The ethnographer is never seen as no one. Aguilar in his research in Chiapas, was categorised according to his Spanish surname and non-Indian appearance. In Spain I was seen as a woman, of a certain age, and treated accordingly. Respondents wondered if I represented a government agency: the department for social security perhaps, or the tax office. It was assumed as a female academic I was feminist, left-wing, and middle class. Ethnographers learn about the unwritten codes and rules, assumptions, and categorisations of their community from such ascription. And access can be aided as well as impeded. In Hastrup’s (1987) research in Iceland, she found that being Danish meant that her access and experiences were very much circumscribed by the gendered role in which she was cast. However, in this role she perceived things she might have missed if she had been cast in the role of honorary male.

The ethnographer as key informant

Many deal with the problem of being an insider by trying to make the familiar appear strange or looking for the symbolic boundaries. Alternatively, Lawrence Hennigh (1981) contends that we can use ourselves as key informants. He did long-term ethnographic research in a school and local community in Oregon in the 1970s in an area affected by economic slump, rapid population growth, and mass migrations. During his time in the field he became so involved in community affairs that eventually newcomers were directed to him for information about local matters; he was seen as an expert and activist in a variety of areas. The more he got involved in school–community relations, the more he realised these became his research ‘problem’. Although he was being guided into this by the community, to resist would have seemed unnatural to him. There was an expectation to be civic-minded and an emphasis on community spirit, which he learned about through being cast in the role.

The ethnographer as key informant, he argues, has greater access, has negotiated entry to a range of settings and people, knows who to ask, can interpret responses more subtly, can more easily gain knowledge that interviews might never reveal. Furthermore, the research is more ethical, contributing real investment of time and energy as opposed to the token membership so typical of traditional ethnography. In such longterm fieldwork it becomes very difficult or even uncomfortable to remain objective or detached and to constantly solicit other people’s opinions while suppressing our own (Hennigh, 1981). One’s approach therefore tends towards the active and participant, but this can be seen as a positive thing if interpreted sensitively and used to full...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Access
• Analysis
• Asking Questions
• Case Study
• Chicago School
• Coding
• Computer Software
• Covert
• Critical Ethnography
• Ethics
• Feminist Ethnography
• Fieldnotes
• Focus Groups and Group Discussions
• Generalisation
• Going ‘Native’
• Grounded Theory
• Holism
• Inductive and Deductive
• Insider Ethnographies
• Interpretivism
• Interviews and Conversations
• Key Informants and Gatekeepers
• Malinowski
• Multi-sited and Mobile Ethnographies
• Participant Observation
• Participant Observer Oxymoron
• Positivism
• Postmodern Ethnographies
• Rapport
• Realism
• Reflexivity
• Sampling
• Team Ethnography
• Time
• Virtual Ethnography
• Visual Ethnography
• Writing
• Where to find other ethnographic concepts