What is Ethnography?

I went with my wife and her cohort to Serbia in July of 2008. They were conducting ethnographic research for a presentation in the fall. I produced, shot, and edited this video to explain what is ethnography. It was a challenging, yet very rewarding, experience!

There is not one right answer to the question.

Ethnography can mean different things to different people.

It can be part anthropology, part sociology and part investigative journalism.

This is what it means to us.

In the simplest terms ethnography is a picture or a portrait of a group of people.

It is doing our best to describe something about a culture from the perspective of those inside it.

The idea is to join a conversation already taking place and to learn what is important to people

What they value and what they naturally talk about

It is letting people tell us who they are

You are highly emotional, you know

But unlike other forms of research ethnography omits our own cultural perspectives.

For example we were Americans in a Balkan space

Protestants in an Orthodox space

and conflict sheltered in a conflict ridden space.

In this way ethnography functions not only as a description of a foreign culture

but also a commentary on our culture.

It is only through our interaction with others that we discover our own biases, our own identities

and our own collective culture

Ethnography involves field work which necessitates interaction

We couldn’t be afraid to get involved, to get our hands dirty

Several data collection methods were used, including outside research, observation and interviews

in this way we attempt to corroborate our findings in different ways

Ethnography is always of interest

Ethnography is recognizing that everyone has a story

We had to see people as more than just data informants

It means really getting to know people

It is learning how to communicate with people who are different than us

and seeking to understand them through being a good listener

asking open-ended questions and letting whomever we are talking to direct the conversation

We interviewed in pairs

So while one person asked the questions and engaged the interviewee the other person took notes

In order to preserve the voices of our interviewee’s we tried to write down everything we heard

to capture every word, even if it seemed trivial or insignificant at the moment

After interviewing for at least four hours a day we typed up everything we had written

for the next several hours

which takes forever by the way

Ethnography is writing and writing and writing!

Then we went back and read everything we typed and tried to locate emergent themes

Once a week we would all meet together to discuss patterns and themes, bounce ideas off one another

reformulate the questions and make sure we were all heading in the same direction

Ethnography is maintaining a level of academic professionalism at all times

< comedic music playing >

This is the first impression of seven Americans in Serbia