Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
3
A Wilderness Guide
Methods and Techniques
To a person uninstructed in natural history, his country or seaside stroll
is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-
tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall.
—Thomas Huxley
The ethnographer is a human instrument. With a research problem, a theory of
social interaction or behavior, and a variety of conceptual guidelines in mind, the
ethnographer strides into a culture or social situation to explore its terrain and to
collect and analyze data. Relying on all its senses, thoughts, and feelings, the
human instrument is a most sensitive and perceptive data-gathering tool.The infor-
mation this tool gathers, however, can be subjective and misleading. Fieldworkers
may lose their bearings in the maze of unfamiliar behaviors and situations.
Ethnographic methods and techniques help guide the ethnographer through the
wilderness of personal observation and identify and classify accurately the bewil-
dering variety of events and actions that form a social situation. The ethnographer's
hike through the social and cultural wilderness begins with fieldwork.
FIELDWORK
Fieldwork is the hallmark of research for both sociologists and anthropolo-
gists. The method is essentially the same for both types of researchers—
working with people for long periods of time in their natural setting. The
ethnographer conducts research in the native environment to see people and
their behavior given all the real-world incentives and constraints. This natural-
ist approach avoids the artificial response typical of controlled or laboratory
conditions. Understanding the world—or some small fragment of it—requires
studying it in all its wonder and complexity. The task is in many ways more
difficult than laboratory study, but it can also be more rewarding (see
Atkinson, 2002; McCall, 2006; O'Reilly, 2005; Spindler, 1983).
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