1. Chapter 7
Ethnography
A Synopsis

2. An Example
• In Search Of Respect:
Selling Crack In El Barrio
– Philippe Bourgeois
• Liquidated: An Ethnography Of Wall Street
– Karen Ho
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3. Ethnography In Everyday Life
• In some sense, everyone is an
ethnographer
• Literally, “ethnography” means “writing
people”
• Professional Strangeness
• Solving Puzzles in Reverse
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4. Ethnography: A Logic Of Knowing
• Ethnography is a design, an overall plan
for understanding how a group exists
• The Culture Question: “How?”
– “How” is arguably one of the main focal points
of ethnography
– Example—accomplished Interaction
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5. Ethnography: A Logic Of Knowing
– At the group- or community-level
• We refer to the body of mores as “norms,” patterns
of expected behavior
• Culture as Process and Structure in
Context
– Culture is a process; It’s also a structure
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6. Ethnography: A Logic Of Knowing
– Ethnographers generally set out to
understand culture as a problem to be solved
• Depth versus Breadth
– Ethnographic logic also emphasizes depth
over breadth
– A holistic approach requires the ethnographer
to study cultural processes in situ
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7. Ethnography: A Logic Of Knowing
• Falsification
– The ability to tell a holistic story about a
culture by continually attempting to:
• Undermine the story while she tries to assemble it
– The ethnographer must continually attempt to
falsify every emergent conclusion she
reaches
– Chronic Popperism
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8. Ethnography: A Logic Of Knowing
• Questioning Reality
– Abductive logic
– Deduction and induction
• Parsimony and Ockham’s Razor
• The World in a Grain of Sand
• Ethnography Holds Up a Mirror
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