Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
A macrolevel study focuses on the large picture. In anthropology, the large
picture can range from a single school to worldwide systems. The typical
ethnography focuses on a community or specific sociocultural system.
Spindler and Spindler's series,
Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology,
pro-
vides some of the best examples of contemporary ethnographies. They include
studies of the Yanomamo (Chagnon, 1997), Dinka (Deng, 1972), Amish
(Hostetler & Huntington, 1971), Hutterites (Hostetler & Huntington, 2002),
Tiwi (Australian aborigines; Hart & Pilling, 1979), Navajo (Downs, 1972),
Blackfeet (McFee, 1972), Krsna (Daner, 1976), and even a retirement com-
munity (Jacobs, 1974). Some of the best educational ethnographies in the
series include a study of a residential school for Indian children (King, 1983)
and one of an elementary school in Harlem (Rosenfeld, 1971). Each study
attempts to describe an entire cultural group—its way of life and social and
cultural systems. Clearly, a researcher who conducts either a micro- or
macrolevel study can connect the findings of that study to the next larger sys-
tem that affects it. (See Ogbu, 1978, for a successful example of a multilevel
ethnography.) The link between a fine-grained microlevel study and a broad
study of corporate America, for example, is a difficult stretch. In fact, gener-
alizing from most microlevel studies is difficult. Ethnographic work, whether
at the microlevel or macrolevel, involves detailed description. The decision to
undertake a micro- or macrolevel study is partially a function of the ethnogra-
pher's talents or proclivities. Some ethnographers are better at detailed frame-
by-frame analysis of events or parts of events. Other ethnographers are more
interested in larger sets of observable interrelationships with potentially
greater generalizability. Microlevel studies require as much time to conduct as
macrolevel studies; an ethnographer conducting a microlevel study, however,
can spend as much time on one facet of a social event as another researcher
spends conducting a macrolevel study involving 20 different people in 10
social settings. The selection of a micro- or macrolevel of study depends on
what the researcher wants to know, and thus what theory the study involves
and how the researcher has defined the problem under study.
OPERATIONALISM
One of the more focused concepts in fieldwork is that of
operationalism.
A dis-
cussion of operationalism is as much a call for it as it is an indication of the
direction ethnography is taking. Operationalism, simply, means defining one's
terms and methods of measurement (Anderson, 1996, p. 19). In simple descrip-
tive accounts, saying that “a few people said this and a few others said that” may
