etnography research

1. Ethnography
Research

2. Group Members
1. Ni Made Wersi Murtini
2. Sonya V.C. Benu
3. Dewa Ayu Novi Kusumawardani
4. Diah Afriani
5. Tri Buce J. Banu
6. Adi B.W. Banu
2

3. WHAT IS
ETHNOGRAPHY?
3

4. Definition of
Ethnography
Ethnography is one of many approaches that can be
found within social research.
Ethnography is a qualitative research method
that involves studying people and cultures in
their natural environment to understand their
behaviours, rituals, and social structures.
1

5. When to use an Ethnographic
Approach
▸ When we want to understand a culture-sharing group (individuals who have
shared patterns of behaviors, beliefs, and language and interact in a
regular basis and over a period of time).
▸ When studying a group in a natural setting helps us understand a larger
issue
▸ When you want a day-to-day picture
5

6. Characteristics of Ethnography
Ethnograpic work is characterized by the following features:
1. The study takes place in everyday contexts, or "in the field," rather than in controlled settings like
experiments or highly structured interviews.
2. Data is collected from various sources, with participant observation and informal conversations
being primary methods.
3. Data collection is relatively unstructured, with no fixed research design at the outset. Categories for
interpreting actions or statements are generated during data analysis rather than being predetermined.
4. The focus is typically on a few small-scale cases, such as a single setting or group, to enable in-depth
study.
5. Data analysis involves interpreting the meanings, functions, and consequences of human actions and
institutional practices within local and possibly broader contexts. The output is mainly verbal
descriptions, explanations, and theories, with quantification and statistical analysis playing a
minimal role.
6

7. Phylosophy of Positivisme and Naturalism
▸ Positivism was a big deal in the 1930s and 1940s,
especially in social science by emphasizing experimental
and quantitative research. The positivist approach
prioritized testing theories through controlled
experiments or statistical analysis.
▸ Now, when it comes to studying people and cultures,
some people didn't think positivism was the right fit.
They said that ethnography and qualitative research,
which are about understanding people deeply, weren't
scientific enough according to positivism. To respond to
this, researchers came up with a different way of looking
at things called ‘naturalism’.
7

8. “
▸ Naturalism, in simple terms, is about paying attention to the details of a situation. It
wants to describe what happens, what people think, and what's going on around them.
Naturalism cares more about understanding things as they really are. It looks at social
stuff (like how people act) rather than physical things.
▸ Naturalism is influenced by ideas like symbolic interactionism, phenomenology, and
hermeneutics. It doesn't like the idea of simple cause-and-effect relationships or
universal laws for human actions. Instead, it says, "Let's focus on what things mean in
different cultures."
▸ Naturalism doesn't like breaking down human behavior into mechanical parts, as in
numbers and statistics. It prefers to see how behavior is continually shaped by what
people think and interpret.
▸ To understand behavior, naturalism suggests using methods like watching and
participating in a group's activities (participant observation).
8
Naturalism

9. How is Ethnograpy
Research Conducted?
2

10. In doing ethnography research, typically requires the
researcher to actively engage in people's daily lives over an
extended duration.
This involvement includes observing events, listening to
conversations, and/or conducting informal and formal
interviews. Additionally, ethnographers collect documents
and artifacts, essentially gathering any available data that
can provide insights into the emerging research questions.
While ethnographers generally utilize various data sources,
they might occasionally place more emphasis on a particular
one.
10

11. During the pre-fieldwork phase and early data
collection, the goal is to turn expected problems into
questions that can be answered. This can lead to
telling stories, giving general information, or creating
theories. Sometimes, the original problems you wanted
to study might change or be replaced with different
ones.
11
The Development of
Research Problems

12. Selecting Settings and Cases
Sometimes, researchers decide to study a
place or group of people first, and then the
questions about what to explore come from
that. For example, if there's an interesting
situation or a unique group, the problems to
study come from that situation itself.
12

13. Sampling within the Case
In ethnography, it's not just about choosing
which cases to study; it's also about picking
specific things within those cases to look at.
This is important, especially when cases are
too big to study everything.
13

14. Time
Time may seem a dimension of obvious
importance in social life, but it has often been
neglected. Attitudes and activities frequently
vary over time in ways that are highly
significant for social theory.
14

15. People
In any place, the people won't be exactly the
same in every way. To understand the people
in a situation, we might need to study some of
them instead of everyone (unless we can
study everyone really well).
15

16. Context
Considering the different situations or
environments (contexts) is just as important
as choosing specific times and people when
studying something. In any place, people
might act differently in various situations.
16

17. 3. Access

18. The problem of obtaining access
• Feldman et al. (2003: vii): it often comes ‘as a rude
surprise’ to researchers who have not anticipated the
difficulties that could be involved.
 Sampson and Thomas (2003): obtaining permission
from the owners was only the very first step: the captain
was an even more important gatekeeper
 Negotiating access is something of a full-time
occupation in a shipboard context’ (Sampson and
Thomas 2003: 173).

19. Solutions:
1. Approaching the field: Anyone can enter such public domains;
that is what makes them public. No process of negotiation and
physical presence is not in itself problematic.
2. Gatekeepers: initial access negotiations may be focused on
official permission that can legitimately be granted or withheld by
key personnel.
1. To deceive or not to deceive?
2. Obstructive and facilitative relationships

20. Field Relation
4

21. Villages, towns, inner-city neighborhoods,
factory shop floors, deep-shaft mines, ships,
farms, retail stores, business offices of various
kinds, hospital wards, operating theatres,
prisons, public bars, churches, schools,
colleges, universities, welfare agencies, courts,
morgues, funeral parlors, etc.
21
Field Relation

22. Initial Responses
Experience
Knowledge

23. Impression management
Personal
appearance
Physical
appearance
Expertise
and
knowledge

24. The personal characteristics
of the researcher
… effects of these as absolutely determined or fixed, such
characteristics as gender, age, ‘race’, and ethnic identification may
shape relationships with gatekeepers, sponsors, and people
understudy in important ways ((Calvey 2000).

25. Field roles
▸ 1. Consider the position of the novice or recruit – a student
fresher, a military rookie, a person starting a new job – who
finds him- or herself in relatively strange surroundings.
▸ 2. Novice must put themselves into the position of being an
‘acceptable incompetent’ (Lofland, 1971)
▸ 3. Styles (1979) provides an example of the early stages of
learning to be a participant
observer in his research on gay baths.

26. Managing marginality
▸ Participant perspectives have to be inferred from what
can be observed plus the researcher’s background
knowledge, without any possibility of checking these
interpretations against what participants would say in
response to questions.

27. The strains and stresses
of fieldwork
1. In overt participant observation there is the strain of living
with the ambiguity and uncertainty of one’s social position
on the margin, and doing so in a way that serves the
research but is also ethically acceptable
2. The stress will be particularly great where one is
researching a setting from which one cannot escape at the
end of each day, in which one must remain for days at a
time.

28. Leaving the field
▸ The quality of the connections made with participants
in the field can sometimes be seen in how difficult it is
to leave; the more successful one has been in this
regard, the more difficult it might be to leave the
environment.

29. Oral Accounts
and Role of
Interviewing
5

30. Solicited Oral Accounts
Researcher initiates and
actively seeks information
through interview after
preparing a specific set of
questions or topic.
Oral Accounts
Unsolicited Oral Accounts
The information is
voluntarily shared without
being prompted by
researcher.
30

31. Selecting Informants Strategy
in Ethnograpic Interview
▸ Participant selection criteria
▸ Diversity
▸ Purposive sampling
▸ Snowball sampling
▸ Cultural insiders
▸ Triangulation
Source: Müller, 2021 31

32. Selection strategy
by Dean et al (1967)
1. Informants who are
especially sensitive to the
area of concern
2. The more-willing-to-reveal
informants
32

33. Types of Questions
Open-ended Question
Participants share their
opinion, thoughts,
experiences, stories, and
overviews of a specific
area of interest or topic
set by researcher.
Probing Question
Follow-up questions to
uncover more details
about a topic or response
by the participants.
Comparative Question
Participants make
comparison between
different aspects of
participants’ culture and
experiences that help
researcher explore
variation and contrast.
33

34. Documents and
Other Artefacts
Real and Virtual
6

35. Documentary Sources
▸ Archival records (historical documents, manuscripts)
▸ Government documents (reports, cencuses, laws,
regulation)
▸ Books and publications
▸ Maps and Geographic data
▸ Photographs and visual materials
▸ Films and documentaries
▸ Legal documents (contracts, legal records, court
document)
▸ Newspaper and periodicals
35

36. “ Objects or items that hold
cultural, historical, and
symbolic significance
within a community. There
are real artefacts and
virtual artefacts.
36
Material Artefacts

37. Real Artefacts
 Cultural symbolism
 Everyday life artefacts (tools,
utensils)
 Ceremonial and ritual objects
 Arts and crafts
37
 Housing and architecture
 Food and cuisine
 Transportation and mobility
 Medicine and healing
 Communication and language

38.  Digital art and
multimedia (images,
videos, etc)
 Emojis and Emoticons
 Digital and virtual
architechture
Virtual artefacts
Digital objects within virtual spaces: online communities, digital
platforms, and social media
38
 Online avatars and
profiles
 Hashtags and
trending topic
 Digital archives and
repositories
Source: Hine, 2000

39. Recording and
Organizing Data
7

40. Documents and Other Materials
▸ In Ethnography, kinds of data freely take
a wide variety of forms, such items as
promotional material, guides, and
circulars. Some data can be downloaded
from internet sources.
▸ These three modes of note-taking –
copying by hand, indexing, and
summarizing
40

41. Recording Observation and Interview:
Fieldnotes
▸ Fieldnotes are the traditional means in
ethnography for recording observational
and interview data.
▸ The making of fieldnotes has been part of
the invisible oral tradition of craft
knowledge, and many who embark on
their first project have to find their own
way of doing things.
41

42. ▸ Audio-recording
▸ Photography and video-
recording
▸ Transcription
Digitally Recording Observations and
Interviews
42

43. Analytic notes, Memos, and Fieldwork
Journals
▸ As we have emphasized, the formulation of precise
problems, hypotheses, and an appropriate research
strategy is an emergent feature of ethnography.
This process of progressive focusing means that
the collection of data must be guided by the
developing clarification of topics for inquiry.
▸ The construction of analytic notes and memos
therefore constitutes precisely the sort of internal
dialogue, or thinking aloud, that is the essence of
reflexive ethnography.
43

44. Data Storage, Indexing, and Retrieval
▸ The coding of the data in terms of categories provides an
important infrastructure for later searching and retrieval. It
can also play an active role in the process of discovery, as
Webbs noted in one of the earliest methodological texts
▸ However, over recent years, the software has evolved to
develop functions that reflect more fully the array of
opportunities presented by digital technology. Over the
same period, digital technologies themselves have become
more widespread, more affordable, and better adapted to
the needs of field researchers.
44

45. The Process of
Analysis
8

46. ▸ Qualitative Description
▸ The analysis process leads ethnographer into grounded theorizing (Glazer
and Straus, 1967).
▸ Data analysis of ethnographic research can be done through some steps
(James P. Spradley, 2007):
46
The Process of Data Analysis

47. 1. Domain Analysis
Having general description of certain objects under study,
drawing theme or categorizing themes to be the focus of analysis .
2. Taxonomy Analysis
Drawing the domains into more specific details to understand the
internal structure.
47
The Process of Data Analysis

48. 3. Componential Analysis
Contrasting elements by finding out specific characteristics on
every internal structure. The intended data could be collected and
through observation, interview and contrastive questionnaire.
(triangulation process)
4. Cultural Theme Analysis
To find relationships between/among domains and draw the whole
relationships among them. The result finally becomes foundation
to set the exact/final topic of the research.
48

49. Spradley in Ary, et al. (2010), there are some steps considered:
1. Finding out projects
2. Doing ethnographic interview (guiding questions)
3. Collecting ethnographic data: general observation (physical characteristics,
experience being part of particular group of people), focused observation
on participants, in-depth interview, etc. for gathering data.
4. Ethnographic notes (field notes and other documents)
5. In-depth data analysis (New questions, hypothesis, richer data, notes and
deeper analysis).
6. Writing Ethnography
49
The Process of Data Analysis

50. Writing
Ethnography
9

51. The disciplines of reading
and writing
▸ Writing ethnography is a key part of the entire research process
▸ Ethnography is inescapably a textual enterprise
▸ Written language is an analytical tool not a transparent medium of
communication.
▸ It is an appreciation of texts as the products of reading and writing
▸ There are different genres of ethnographic writing, involving different
kinds of ethnographic representation.There are different styles,
different theories, and different audiences.
▸ Each mode of writing can produce complementary or even contrasting
analyses

52.  Ethnographic texts do not have an arbitrary relationship to the
ethnographic field
 There is no single best way to represent any aspect of the social world
 Each mode of writing can produce complementary or even contrasting
analyses
 Ethnographers write but their writing is shaped by what they have read.
 The good ethnographer cannot hope to succeed without a habit of wide
reading.
 The ethnographer ideally develops a broad, comparative perspective on
the literature.

53. Styles of ethnographic writing
▸ an ethnography informs its reader through narrative
immersion, often using sensory detail and storytelling
techniques alongside objective description and
traditional interview style.
▸ Textual approaches that are possible include thematic
and chronological arrangements.

54. Types and instances
Ideal Types
Actual Types

55. ▸ Ideal types can be developed in relation to processes as
well as organizations
▸ The classic idea of the rite of passage is a case in point.
▸ Gennep (1960) first developed a grammar of such rituals,
he proposed a basic, underlying structure that can be used
to capture the common properties that make rituals of
birth, marriage, death and other life-course transitions
(such as religious initiations) essentially similar.

56. Ethnography and rhetoric
▸ Metaphor and synecdoche
▹ Metaphors run the risk of becoming aids gone wild, overwhelming their unfortunate creator in the
end, like the apprentice sorcerer's accomplices. Therefore, the reflective ethnographer will need
to experiment with figures of speech, testing them against the data and looking for their
extensions and limitations as well as their ability to organize data around a single subject.
▹ The master-trope of the metaphor is complemented by that of synecdoche. This is a form of
representation in which the ‘part’ stands for the ‘whole’
▸ Narratives  show how people act and react in particular social circumstances.
▸ Irony and topos  An ironic tone is highly characteristic of the social scientist’s stance. The
interpretative cultural scientist frequently trades in implicit or explicit contrasts.
▸ Audiences, styles, and genres  background assumptions, knowledge, and expectations they bring to
the ethnographic text.
▸ Writing and representations
▸ Writing and responsibility
▸ Ethnographies in the digital age

57. Ethics
10

58. Ethics
The
Issue
informed
consent
privacy
harm
exploitati
on
Consequences
for future
research

59. Informed consent
▸ is raised most sharply by covert participant
observation, it arises in other forms of ethnographic
work too.
▸ The fact that research is taking place is made explicit, it
is not uncommon for participants quickly to forget this
once they come to know the ethnographer as a person.
▸ Indeed, ethnographers seek to facilitate this by actively
building rapport, in an attempt to minimize reactivity.

60. Privacy
▸ A frequent concern about ethnographic
research is that it involves making public things
that were said or done in private.
▸ it is also sometimes feared that making the
private public may have undesirable long-term
consequences

61. Harm
▸ The sorts of damaging consequences that may be involved in.
Ex: medical experiments on patients or physicists’
investigations of nuclear fission
▸ arise as a result of the actual process of doing the research
and/or through publication of the findings
▸ being researched can sometimes create anxiety or worsen it,
and where people are already in stressful situations research
may be judged to be unethical on these grounds alone.

62. Exploitation
▸ It is claimed that research involves the exploitation of those studied: that
people supply the informationwhich is used by the researcher and yet get
little or nothing in return.
▸ The argument about the exploitative potential of ethnographic research leads
commentatorsto make a variety of recommendations:that researchers
should give something back, in the way of services or payment; that
participants should be empowered by becoming part of the research process;
or that research should be directed towards studying the powerful and not the
powerless.

63. Consequences for
future research
▸ Research that is subsequently found objectionable by the
people studied and/or by gatekeepers may have the effect that
these and other people refuse access in the future.
▸ If this were to happen on a large scale, ethnographic research
would become virtually impossible.

64. ▸ Diverse perspectives : ethical absolutism, ethical situationism, ethical relativism,
Machiavellianism
▸ Taking a view: giving people control over data relating to them, feeding back
information about the
research findings, or publishing information on the basis of ‘the public’s right to know’.
▸ The issue of ethical regulation:
• different attitudes and strategies can be adopted to deal with ethical regulation.
• ethnographers must weigh up how to deal with any conflicts between their own ethical judgements
and those of ethical regulators, and between the demands of regulation and the methodological or
practical requirements
of their research.

65. 65
Conclusion
Ethnographic qualitative research is a qualitative
study of individuals or groups with the aim of
systematically describing cultural characteristics
more deeply in their own time and space.
Ethnographic research was initially widely used in
anthropological research and developed in various
fields of science such as medicine, health,
psychology, education, and other social sciences.

66. 66
THANK YOU