Ethnography study,” these also often being ambiguous or hav-

ing fuzzy boundaries. Furthermore, there is no

MARTYN HAMMERSLEY firm distinction between ethnography and the
The Open University, UK study of individual life histories, as the example
of “autoethnography” shows – this term referring
to an individual researcher’s study of her or his
In etymological terms, “ethnography” means own life and context.
“writing about people,” or “writing an account In practical terms, as a method, ethnography
of the way of life of a particular people.” In usually involves most of the following features:
early anthropology, the aim was a descriptive
account of distinctive social or cultural features • People’s actions and accounts are studied
of a particular society. In this, ethnography was primarily in everyday contexts rather than
sometimes contrasted with ethnology, which under conditions created by the researcher,
was concerned with the comparative analysis of such as in experiments or highly structured
cultures, often in terms of some evolutionary interview situations. In other words, research
scheme. Ethnology was originally based on the takes place “in the field.”
accounts produced by travelers or missionar- • Data are gathered from a range of sources,
ies, but later anthropologists began to generate including documentary evidence, but partici-
ethnographic data for themselves. Over time, the pant observation and/or in-depth interviews
term “ethnology” largely fell out of favor, and are usually the main ones.
“ethnography” came to refer to a combination of • Data collection is unstructured, in the sense
firsthand investigation and description of cul- that it does not involve following through a
tures, carried out by social scientists themselves, fixed and detailed research design set up at the
and the theoretical interpretation of the data beginning. Nor are the categories that will be
this produced. Moreover, the term has a double used for interpreting what people say or do
meaning, referring both to a form of research and built into the data collection process itself via
to the product of that research: ethnography as prestructuring of observation, interviews, or
a practice generates ethnographies as products. documentary analysis. Categories are gener-
In addition, a distinction has sometimes been ated through later analysis.
drawn between doing ethnography and using • The focus is usually on a small number of
ethnographic methods. This distinction has been cases, perhaps a single setting or group of
employed by some anthropologists in an attempt people, typically small-scale, with these being
to mark off their own practice from what passes studied in depth.
for ethnographic work within sociology and • The analysis of the data involves interpreta-
other areas (see, e.g., Wolcott, 1999). tion of the meanings and functions of human
For most anthropologists in the past, and many actions and how these are implicated in local
still today, ethnography required living with a and wider contexts. What are produced,
group of people for an extended period, a year for the most part, are verbal descriptions,
or several years, in order to document their explanations, and theories; quantification and
distinctive way of life and the beliefs and values statistical analysis play a subordinate role at
integral to it. However, within sociology the term most.
is used in a much looser way – to refer to studies
that rely on participant observation and/or on As a set of methods, ethnography is not far
in-depth, relatively unstructured interviews. As a removed from the means that we all use in
result, there is considerable overlap in meaning everyday life to make sense of our surround-
with other labels, such as “qualitative research,” ings. However, it involves a more deliberate
“fieldwork,” “interpretive method,” and “case and systematic approach and also a distinctive

The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. Edited by George Ritzer.

© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781405165518.wbeose070.pub2
2 ETHNOGRAPHY

mentality. This mentality can perhaps best be In recent times, there has been significant
summarized, first, as seeking to make the strange dispute over the character of the phenomena
familiar, in the sense of finding intelligibility and that ethnographers study. We can formu-
rationality within it. Second, the ethnographic late this as a tension between naturalism and
mentality involves making the familiar strange, constructionism. The first takes the task of
by suspending those background assumptions ethnography to be to document and explain
that immediately give apparent sense to what social phenomena – treated as relatively stable
we experience, in order to enable us to notice cultures, perspectives and attitudes, patterns of
what ordinarily goes unnoticed and to recognize social interaction, institutions, social divisions,
alternative interpretations as well as habitual ones and so on – that emerge and persist largely inde-
(Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007). pendently of the actions of any individual agent.
Over the course of its development, ethnog- While people’s perceptions and intentions are an
raphy has been influenced by a range of important factor in shaping these phenomena, so
methodological and theoretical movements. too are many factors of which they may not be
Early on, within anthropology, it was shaped aware, including the unintended consequences of
by German ideas about the distinctive charac- their own actions.
ter of history and the human sciences, by folk By contrast, constructionism treats social phe-
psychology, and by positivism. Subsequently, nomena as much more contingent and fluid in
in the form of the case study approach of the character, being generated in an ongoing manner
Chicago School, it was also influenced by philo- by interactional or discursive processes. Thus, for
sophical pragmatism, while in more recent times example, constructionists do not use informants’
Marxism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, struc-
accounts as a source of information about the
turalism, and poststructuralism have all played
world, or even about informants’ own experience,
an important role in shaping it.
but rather study them as exemplifying discur-
While these influences have led to a diversifica-
sive practices, narrative strategies, or distinctive
tion in ethnographic approaches, it is nevertheless
voices that themselves actively constitute what
possible to recognize some common method-
counts as social reality rather than simply reflect-
ological ideas about the nature of the social world
ing it (Holstein and Gubrium, 2003). Indeed, it
and how it can be understood. As this entry
is sometimes denied that there is any objective
will show, these ideas overlap in their implica-
tions, while at the same time conflicting in some reality beyond these, and certainly none to which
respects. To one degree or another, ethnographers the researcher has privileged access. Moreover, in
tend to make the following assumptions about its more radical forms, constructionism regards
the nature of the social world: the social phenomena studied by ethnographers
as effectively constructed in and through the
• Human behavior is not an automatic product research process itself, and especially through the
of either internal or external stimuli. It is process of writing (Clifford and Marcus, 1986).
constructed and reconstructed over time, In practice, many ethnographers today seek to
and across space, in ways that reflect the combine elements of naturalism and construc-
biographies and sociocultural locations of tionism in their work, but it should be clear that,
actors, and how they interpret and act on the while there is overlap, there are also fundamental
situations they face. tensions.
• There are diverse cultures that can inform There are several other significant conflicts in
human behavior, and these operate not just orientation within ethnography. One of these is
between societies or local communities but between a focus on the details of what happens
also within them. in particular situations on particular occasions
• For both these reasons, human social life is and a concern to locate what has been studied
not structured in terms of fixed, law-like pat- within the context of some larger whole, or even
terns, but displays emergent processes of var- to use it to show what is happening within that
ious kinds that involve a high degree of con- larger whole. Since the middle of the twentieth
tingency. century there has been a trend toward more
 ETHNOGRAPHY 3

micro-focused ethnographies, perhaps stimu- what people say and do in its own terms, whereas
lated by the availability of highly portable audio the second, often given the label “etic,” may
and video recording equipment which generate even produce accounts that raise questions about
large amounts of data, and also by the associated the validity of people’s beliefs about themselves
rise of discourse analysis. By contrast, in the and their world. This can lead to an emphasis
past, under the influence of both functionalism on explaining why people believe what they
and Marxism, there was emphasis on locating believe and do what they do in terms of causal
what is studied in a wider context, where the factors whose existence or significance they do
unit of analysis was usually taken to be a whole not acknowledge or may explicitly deny. Indeed,
community or society. More recently there have there is sometimes a hermeneutics of suspicion in
been calls for ethnographies to take account of operation here which assumes that what people
global social forces (Burawoy et al., 2000), and believe or say hides as much as it reveals. Associ-
proposals for multisited investigations in order ated with this is the question of whether the aim
to facilitate this (Marcus, 1995; Hannerz, 2003). is to challenge official appearances, or the fronts
Parallel to this have been criticisms of much people display, in order to find out what they
ethnography for being preoccupied with describ- really believe or what really goes on; or whether
ing and explaining what happens in relatively social life is viewed as inevitably a matter of
short time periods, thereby neglecting longer performative fronts, the task of analysis being to
term trends. One response to this has been to study the processes or strategies by which people
advocate longitudinal ethnographies, for example bring off particular performances on particular
following the development of a group of peo- occasions.
ple’s lives over several years and focusing on the Even for those ethnographers who place their
patterns of change experienced (see Thomson, emphasis on understanding insider perspectives,
Plumridge, and Holland, 2003). Also relevant there are questions about how far it is ever possi-
here are attempts to link ethnographic with ble or necessary to understand such perspectives
historical work, as “historical ethnography” or in their own terms. It has been suggested that
“ethnographic history” (Evans-Pritchard, 1962; understanding always involves reducing the other
Comaroff and Comaroff, 1992). to the same, forcing what is different into terms
Another tension is between seeking to study that are familiar. At the same time, ethnography
cases in all their uniqueness and aiming to pro- has also sometimes been accused of othering,
duce generalizations or to engage in comparative of rendering other societies exotic and alien,
analysis to build theories. Ethnographers vary a criticism that parallels Said’s discussion of
considerably in their position on this spectrum, “orientalism” (Said, 1978). Closely related are
but most seek to satisfy both sorts of demand criticisms of the totalizing orientation of much
in one way or another. The concept of thick older ethnography, where cultures are described
description represents one sort of trade-off, as if they were well defined and mutually exclu-
where theories are relatively low level and are sive entities, and as if membership of a culture
seen as a means for understanding what is going determined everything of importance about any
on in individual cases. Toward the other end individual person.
of the spectrum are grounded theorizing and In its early forms, ethnography involved a
analytic induction, where the product of ethno- concern to capture the beliefs and actions of the
graphic work is some sort of general theory, albeit people being studied in such a way as to minimize
instantiated in detailed analysis of particular the effects of the research process on them. As a
cases. result, ethnography was usually detached from
A further issue concerns whether the primary concerns with practical improvement or political
task is seen as explicating the perspectives, or activism, and therefore adopted a nonjudgmen-
cultural orientations, of the people being studied tal or appreciative orientation (Matza, 1969).
or as explaining why they see the world and act However, in the mid-twentieth century there
in the ways that they do, and the consequences of developed forms of applied anthropology that
this. The first approach, sometimes characterized treated ethnography as a basis for interventions
as “emic,” emphasizes the role of understanding designed to improve the lives of the people being
4 ETHNOGRAPHY

studied. Similarly, later, some ethnographers objective scientific knowledge about diverse
came to adopt Marxist or “critical” perspectives cultures, an orientation that is now regarded by
in which the phenomena studied were to be many, though not by all, ethnographers as simply
located within a political perspective, generat- an ideological disguise for political interests that
ing evaluations and recommendations for social serve the status quo, or at least that are necessarily
change. The influence of feminism and antiracism partial.
reinforced this tendency, while that of poststruc- As indicated earlier, ethnography refers not just
turalism and postmodernism challenged reliance to a process of inquiry but also to a particular type
on political positions involving metanarratives of product: to the written accounts generated by
in favor of subordinating ethnographic work to ethnographic research. Prior to the early 1980s,
local struggles, with one of its tasks being seen as the task of writing up ethnographies was given
liberating those repressed forms of knowledge to relatively little attention in the methodological
be found on the margins of mainstream society. literature. Most of the focus was on problems sur-
Closely associated with these developments rounding data collection and analysis. However,
have been pressures to do ethnographic work since then there has been considerable interest in
with people rather than on them, in the manner this topic, not just from a practical point of view
of various participatory forms of inquiry. In some but also in terms of analyzing how ethnographic
cases this builds on a commitment to advocacy by accounts represent, or effectively constitute, the
anthropologists and on the associated notion of social contexts and people investigated. Epis-
indigenous ethnography, while within sociology temological, political, and ethical concerns are
it derived from feminist and other approaches to intermingled in what has come to be seen as a
research ethics which challenged what was seen as “crisis of representation” (Clifford and Marcus,
the hierarchical relationship between researcher 1986).
and researched. There is a sharp conflict here Developments in technology have also had
with older approaches to ethnography, and also an important impact on ethnographic work. In
a tension between subordinating research to particular, the availability of easily portable audio
participants’ orientations, on the one hand, and and video recorders has meant that field notes
using it as a means of raising their consciousness, have come to play a subordinate role in much
in the form of a “critical” orientation designed to ethnography, and, as noted earlier, this develop-
generate radical social change, on the other. ment may also have encouraged an increasingly
There has also been increasing pressure to micro focus concerned with the details of what is
recognize the extent to which, and the ways in said and done on particular occasions. The use of
which, all research, including ethnography, plays video recording has built on earlier developments
a political role in the world. To some degree this in visual ethnography that employed photographs
began long ago with criticism of how anthropo- and film. And it has recently been extended out
logical ethnography was implicated in western into a multimodal approach that pays attention to
imperialism. In more recent times the concern the various forms of understanding and display
with the politics of ethnography has become employed by both researchers and those they
much broader, reflecting the influence of new study.
social movements of various kinds. For some The development of software for processing
commentators what is at stake is not simply how qualitative data is another important area of
research can be distorted by its sociopolitical development, one where there is disagreement
context, or even the positive or negative conse- about whether the technology serves or distorts
quences it may have, but rather how the whole ethnographic practice. What seems clear, though,
enterprise of research is political through and is that the digitization of data and the increased
through, in the sense that it cannot but involve capacity of computers to handle multimedia
reliance on value assumptions, and that these material will open up considerable opportuni-
necessarily reflect the identity, commitments, and ties for ethnographers, as well as no doubt also
social location of the researcher. This runs against raising new problems, or old problems in novel
earlier forms of ethnography where research forms. Closely related here is the development of
was treated as concerned simply with producing the Internet and the opportunities that this has
 ETHNOGRAPHY 5

provided, not just as a source of information but Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J. (1992) Ethnography and
by providing access to virtual sites that can be the Historical Imagination, Westview Press, Boulder,
studied by ethnographers (Hine, 2000). Here, a CO.
central issue is the relationship between online Evans-Pritchard, E. (1962) Anthropology and history,
in E. Evans-Pritchard, Social Anthropology and Other
and offline activities, and how this can be studied.
Essays, Free Press, New York.
Finally, it is worth mentioning a couple of
Hammersley, M. and Atkinson, P. (2007) Ethnography:
significant features of the changing environment Principles in Practice, 3rd edn, Routledge, London.
in which many ethnographers seek to carry Hammersley, M. and Traianou, A. (2012) Ethics in
out their work. First, both anthropologists and Qualitative Research, SAGE, London.
sociologists have encountered increasing barri- Hannerz, U. (2003) Being there … and there … and
ers in gaining access to settings, arising from a there! Reflections on multi-site ethnography. Ethnog-
variety of factors, including persisting views of raphy, 4(2), 201–216.
anthropology and social science more generally Hine, C. (2000) Virtual Ethnography, SAGE, London.
as colonialist and, in the west, heightened sensi- Holstein, J.A. and Gubrium, J.F. (eds) (2003) Inside
tivities about publicity on the part of both public Interviewing: New Lenses, New Concerns, SAGE,
Thousand Oaks, CA.
sector and private sector organizations. Second,
Marcus, G.E. (1995) Ethnography in/of the world
there has been increasing ethical regulation, and system: the emergence of multi-sited ethnography.
the ethical codes on which this is based often Annual Review of Anthropology, 24, 95–117.
assume a model of research that is at odds with Matza, D. (1969) Becoming Deviant, Prentice Hall,
both the theory and the practice of ethnography Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
(Hammersley and Traianou, 2012). Said, E. (1978) Orientalism, Pantheon, New York.
Thomson, R., Plumridge, L., and Holland, J. (2003) Edi-
SEE ALSO: Autoethnography; Chicago School; torial: longitudinal qualitative research: a developing
Constructionism; Culture; Ethics, Fieldwork; methodology. International Journal of Social Research
Ethics, Research; Interviewing, Structured, Methodology, 6 (3), 185–187.
Unstructured, and Postmodern; Observation, Wolcott, H.F. (1999) Ethnography: A Way of Seeing,
AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, CA.
Participant and Nonparticipant; Performance
Ethnography.
Further Readings
References
Brewer, J. (2000) Ethnography, Open University Press,
Buckingham.
Burawoy, M., Blum, J., George, S., et al. (2000) Global
O’Reilly, K. (2009) Key Concepts in Ethnography, SAGE,
Ethnography: Forces, Connections, and Imaginations
London.
in a Postmodern World, University of California
O’Reilly, K. (2012) Ethnographic Methods, 2nd edn,
Press, Berkeley, CA.
Routledge, London.
Clifford, J. and Marcus, G. (eds) (1986) Writing Culture:
The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, University of
California Press, Berkeley, CA.