Individual methods which are available within an ethnographic study include: participant observation, interviews and surveys. All of these ethnographic methods can be very valuable in gaining a deeper understanding of a design problem.
Usability practitioners often make use of these in order to develop their understanding of the relevant domain, audience s , processes, goals and context s of use. Ethnography is most useful in the early stages of a user-centred design project. This is because ethnography focuses on developing an understanding of the design problem.
Therefore, it makes more sense to conduct ethnographic studies at the beginning of a project in order to support future design decisions which will happen later in the user-centred design process. Ethnographic methods such as participant observation could also be used to evaluate an existing design — but their true value comes from developing an early understanding of the relevant domain, audience s , processes, goals and context s of use.
Equally, highly critical systems where failure or error can lead to disaster could also justify significant ethnographic research. For example: An insurance company wanted to re-design their system dealing with the processing of insurance claims. This system had evolved over many years and actually represented a patchwork of previous systems. In this example, ethnographic research should probably be considered. One of the main advantages associated with ethnographic research is that ethnography can help identify and analyse unexpected issues.
When conducting other types of studies, which are not based on in-situ observation or interaction, it can very easy to miss unexpected issues. This can happen either because questions are not asked, or respondents neglect to mention something. Because of its subjective nature, an ethnographic study with a skilled researcher can be very useful in uncovering and analysing relevant user attitudes and emotions.
One of the main criticisms levelled at ethnographic studies is the amount of time they take to conduct. As discussed above, ethnographic studies do not always require a long period of time , but this consideration is nonetheless valid. Because of its richer output, an ethnographic study will tend to take longer to generate and analyse its data than many other methods. Think about it. We actually believe that tiny beings attack our bodies.
Though modern medicine allows us to show that viruses do exist, it does nothing in the way of proving that the Azande are, in fact, completely wrong about witchcraft.
Missionaries found that understanding another culture was important in achieving their goals of conversion. By immersing themselves in a culture, missionaries found that not only were they able to weave Christianity into the target culture, but groups were more receptive to the missionaries' messages than in cases where missionaries refused or were unable to engage with a group. When working with various cultures, missionaries often took copious notes describing various mechanisms of society within various ethnic groups.
This documentation was one of the earliest forms of ethnography. Because of the work they put forth in getting to know other cultures, missionaries can be considered as ethnographers themselves. Missionaries created an early framework for ethnography, but it wasn't until anthropologists such as Boas, Malinowski, Mead, Benedict, and Evans-Pritchard hit the scene that ethnography started to grow into what it is today. Franz Boas, who is widely considered to be the father of cultural anthropology, really got the ball rolling for ethnography and cultural anthropology as a whole.
Boas' idea of cultural relativism, that every culture should be judged by its own premises, was used by anthropologists after him and is a belief many anthropologists hold today. Bronislaw Malinowski with natives on Trobriand Islands Malinowski became immersed in the culture of the Trobriand people.
He learned their language and worked directly with the people he studied with a focus on understanding cultural customs in their own context. Many ethnographies written today are drawn from participant observation, where anthropologists live within a group while performing interviews and creating detailed accounts of the lives of members of the group and their society as a whole. Margaret Mead, who did her fieldwork in Samoa and Bali, described cultural differences between adolescents in Western culture and the other cultures.
Mead hypothesized that problems in adolescents were a result of culture and not the widely help western idea that they were a result of changes in hormones. Unfortunately, Mead's beliefs in this as well as her belief that sexual division of labor was also a product of culture led to others in her field to accuse her of sloppy fieldwork, skewing the facts, and completely fabricating her facts.
These accusations opened up the idea of reflexivity in anthropology, rather, what effect a researcher has on their own research and that a researcher should be aware of their own subjectivity in research. Benedict drew heavily from Nietzsche and described cultures as being Dionysian emotional or Apollonian intellectual.
While her work is widely considered inadequate in terms of describing a culture, she did bring forth the idea that if a person had been raised a Zuni, they would grow up to be a different person than he would have been had he grown up in Dobuan or Kwakiutl culture. Evans-Pritchard, a student of Malinowski, studied the Azande people. From his fieldwork, he published Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande. With this book, he illustrated the very idea that Boas had stressed: cultural relativism.
With Evans-Pritchard's description of the Azande people, he was able to show that the people's strongly held belief in witchcraft made total sense There are various ways in which ethnography can be used in personal success or in the success of foreign relations and in understanding other cultures.
Evans-Pritchard, whose study of the Azande illustrated Boas' idea of cultural relativism, serve the illustrate how we are able to use ethnography within our own culture and in understanding others. If ever there was a hub worth reading it is this one, fascinating stuff, really well put together, very interesting, thanks for sharing your knowledge, voted up, Lee. I saw this article won HOTD and it sounded interesting so had to check it out. Very well written and informative Melbel.
Thanks for enlightening the uninformed amongst us on ethnography. Ruth Benedict as well as all these other Ethnographists realized the same thing. It was easier to immerse themselves in the atmosphere of a primitive culture than to study the faults in their own cultures.
They should rename Ethnography the study of what we consider primitive culture. Sorry, but I don't like it when the history of the exploitation of native culture is glossed over by academics.
It makes it look like they had a choice before the forced assimilation of religion and culture. This is excellently done, and is a great learning tool.
I loved my Cultural Anthropology course, and your hub reminded me of why I still remember it, years later. Interesting hub. I have always loved reading reports on living in other countries, as a member of the local culture. Makes you realise that what we think is "true" is not necessarily so. Melbel, congratulations on the well deserved HOTD award for this hub. For example, you might consider a community of people living in a certain neighborhood, or the fans of a particular baseball team.
A closed or private setting is harder to access. This may be for example a business, a school, or a cult. Most ethnography is overt. In an overt approach, the ethnographer openly states their intentions and acknowledges their role as a researcher to the members of the group being studied.
Sometimes ethnography can be covert. This means that the researcher does not tell participants about their research, and comes up with some other pretense for being there. Different levels of immersion in the community may be appropriate in different contexts. The ethnographer may be a more active or passive participant depending on the demands of their research and the nature of the setting.
An active role involves trying to fully integrate, carrying out tasks and participating in activities like any other member of the community. While ethnographers usually have a preference, they also have to be flexible about their level of participation.
For example, access to the community might depend upon engaging in certain activities, or there might be certain practices in which outsiders cannot participate. See an example. An important consideration for ethnographers is the question of access. The difficulty of gaining access to the setting of a particular ethnography varies greatly:. For example, if you had the idea of observing the staff within a particular finance company but could not get permission, you might look into other companies of the same kind as alternatives.
Ethnography is a sensitive research method, and it may take multiple attempts to find a feasible approach. All ethnographies involve the use of informants. This might be someone in a high position at an organization allowing you access to their employees, or a member of a community sponsoring your entry into that community and giving advice on how to fit in.
However, i f you come to rely too much on a single informant, you may be influenced by their perspective on the community, which might be unrepresentative of the group as a whole. In addition, an informant may not provide the kind of spontaneous information which is most useful to ethnographers, instead trying to show what they believe you want to see.
The core of ethnography is observation of the group from the inside. Field notes are taken to record these observations while immersed in the setting; they form the basis of the final written ethnography. They are usually written by hand, but other solutions such as voice recordings can be useful alternatives. Field notes record any and all important data: phenomena observed, conversations had, preliminary analysis.
Field notes should be as detailed and clear as possible. This entails going through the field notes and formulating a convincing account of the behaviors and dynamics observed.
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