Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
THE ETHNOGRAPHY
An ethnography attempts to be holistic—covering as much territory as possi-
ble about a culture, subculture, or program—but it necessarily falls far short
of the whole.An ethnographically informed report in applied studies typically
has even greater limitations than an ethnography because it develops under
greater time and funding constraints.
The success or failure of either report or full-blown ethnography depends
onthedegreetowhichitringstruetonativesandcolleaguesinthefield.These
readersmaydisagreewiththeresearcher'sinterpretationsandconclusions,but
they should recognize the details of the description as accurate.The ethnogra-
pher's task is not only to collect information from the emic, or insider's, per-
spective but also to make sense of all the data from an etic, or external social
scientific, perspective. An ethnographer's explanation of the whole system
may differ from that of the people in the field and at professional meetings.
Basic descriptions of events and places, however, should sound familiar to
native and colleague alike (with the logical exception of accounts of aberrant
behavior or newly discovered ideas or thought processes).
Verbatim quotations are extremely useful in presenting a credible report of
the research. Quotations allow the reader to judge the quality of the work—
how close the ethnographer is to the thoughts of natives in the field—and to
assess whether the ethnographer used such data appropriately to support the
conclusions. The ethnographer therefore must select quotations that are typi-
cal or characteristic of the situation or event described. Using atypical conver-
sations or behaviors to make one's point in not science, and the reader will
probably detect the spurious nature of such material.
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Conveying findings in the most appropriate medium is a vital, but often
overlooked, last step in ethnographic reporting. The ethnography or the
ethnographically informed report is the most common medium for present-
ing findings. I usually include charts, pictures, and, whenever possible, com-
puter-projected screens along with my text in presentations. Ethnographic
research with policy implications in particular requires sophisticated multi-
media presentations to draw an audience. In any type of research, the report
or presentation must be in the language each audience understands best:
“academese” for academics, “bureaucratese” for bureaucrats, plain English
for most U.S. communities, and the predominant language of the people
under study. Unless the ethnographer couches the research findings in a lan-
guage the audience understands, the most enlightening findings will fall on
deaf ears. Just as learning to speak the languages of the natives under
study is essential to research, learning to speak the languages of the study's
