ETHNOGRAPHY

Associate Professor Ann Harrington

School of Nursing & Midwifery, Flinders University
Ann.harrington@flinders.edu.au

What will be covered today?:

Definition of Ethnography
Central belief of ethnography
Ethnographys origins
How is data gathered?
Terms used in this area

1. Definition of ethnography
What is meant by ethnography?

What is your view?

Definition of ethnography

The art and science of describing a group or culture

Definition of ethnography:

The systematic process of observing, detailing, describing,

documenting and analysing the life-ways or particular
patterns of a culture (or sub-culture) in order to grasp the
life-ways or patterns of the people in their familiar
environment (Leininger)

What constitutes culture? Multiple ways of

describing culture Total way of life for people
The social legacy the individual acquires from

his/her group
A way of thinking, feeling and believing
An abstraction from behaviour
A theory on the part of the researcher about the
way in which a group of people behave
A storehouse of pooled learning

Not necessarily national culture: May be

nursing culture.

2. Central tenet of ethnography:

peoples behaviour can be understood only in context

the ethnography cannot separate elements of human

behaviour from their relevant contexts of meaning and
purpose (Boyle 1994 p.162)

3. Ethnographys Origins:
From British social anthropology focused on small-scale

societies often tribal or village-level groups in Africa,

Asia and the Americas (Hughes 1992 p.441)
From 1920s Polish born anthropologist Bronislaw

Malinowski long periods of time spent in the field

Current ethnography:
Culture diverse social sciences, nursing and related

health sciences
Field work emphasis on emic (insider) and etic

(outsider) views
Emphasis on mini ethnography small scale (over 1

month period)

4.How is Data gathered?

Multiple methods:
Documents (from setting)
Interviews
Diary entries
Observation (participant or non participant*)

Recorded in Field notes

Participant or non-participant?
Participant is where the researcher (ethnographer)
participates in that culture and takes notes when
researching.
Non-participant is where the researcher sits aside with a
notepad (clipboard) and records the observations.

Field notes-primary method:

Ethnographic methods are now being weakened: They

have been reduced to, for instance, telephone interviews

as studies that exclude the observational components.
We read that researchers are using ethnographic
interviews alone traditional anthropologists are fighting
back for richer and deeper studies.(Janice Morse 2013)
Morse, J Foreword in Nursing Research using

ethnography. Qualitative designs and methods

in nursing Mary De Chesnay (Ed) 2013 Springer
Publishing, New York.

5. Past terms used in the area. Not so

frequently now:
Ethnoscience (ethnosemantics or ethnolinguistics)

Developed in late 1960s. Evolved as social scientists attempted to

increase the rigour of ethnography which was purport to be soft. It is a

method of developing precise and operationalised descriptions of cultural
phenomenaderived from linguistics .. Where researchers employ the
structural analysis of phenomenology and grammar as a basis for data
analysis
Ethnomethodology

How people make sense of their world and behave in socially acceptable

ways. Social groups norms that have culturally ingrained.

Ethology

Observation technique in which behaviours are recorded, coded,

categorised and analysed

Ethnology

Researcher develops theories of culture and society rather than focussing

on individuals in the setting

Any Questions?

THANK YOU
Ann.harrington@flinders.edu.au