formation and origination of how society came into existences

1. ETHNOGRAPHY
• The Semantic field of
the word anthropology

3. INTRODUCTION
• widely in the social sciences and the humanities.
• The term “ethnography” first appeared in England in the 1830s. It was coined after a
German model to characterize the burgeoning literature in English on the manners and
customs of the “races” (ethna) of the world.
• By the end of the 19th century ethnography had become the general term for
qualitative data on other cultures and societies, and also for the field inquiries that
produced them.
• Since the 1950s, it has moved progressively into the arena of contemporary societies
generally, including modern industrial societies, and now deals consciously with the
entirety of the human record

4. The primary objective of professional ethnography is therefore both descriptive and
synthetic.
The extrapolation of patterns from what can be recorded of the everyday life of a
community for the purpose of comparison and contrast with similar data from
and the further development of our theoretical understanding of social and cultural
processes. The ethnographer’s cross-cultural training enables him to record and make
sense of the experience of a community of which he has no previous experience
according to an agenda developed from a broad exposure, both personal and
to cultural variation in general, in order to make cross-cultural comparisons that will
assist in the study not only of particular cultural processes, but also of the human
condition in general— human nature, irrespective of cultural variation. This is too large
an objective to be achieved routinely. A number of specializations have therefore
evolved, some perennial, others changing with intellectual interest.

5. ETHNOGRAPHY AS METHOD
• It is field-based
It is conducted in the settings in which real people actually live, rather than in
laboratories where the researcher controls the elements of the behaviors to be
or measured.
• It is multifactorial.
It is conducted through the use of two or more data collection techniques - which may
be qualitative or quantitative in nature - in order to get a conclusion. It requires a long
term commitment i.e. it is conducted by researcher who intends to interact with people
they are studying for an extended period of time. The exact time frame can vary from
several weeks to a year or more. It is inductive.