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Introduction

Ethnographic studies are usually holistic, founded on the idea that humans are best understood in the fullest possible context, including: the place where they live, the improvements they've made to that place, how they are making a living and providing food, housing, energy and water for themselves, what their marriage customs are, what language(s) they speak and so on.Ethnography has connections to genres as diverse as travel writing, colonial office reports, the play and the novel.[4] Many cultural anthropologists consider ethnography the essence of the discipline.[5] It would be a rare program in graduate cultural anthropology that didn't require an ethnography as part of the doctoral process.[6]
[edit]Evaluating Ethnography
Ethnographic methodology is not usuallyevaluated in terms of philosophical standpoint (such as positivism and emotionalism). Ethnographies nonetheless need to be evaluated in some manner. While there is no consensus on evaluation standards, Richardson (2000, p. 254)[7] provides 5 criteria that ethnographers might find helpful.
Substantive Contribution: "Does the piece contribute to our understanding of social-life?"
Aesthetic Merit:"Does this piece succeed aesthetically?"
Reflexivity: "How did the author come to write this text…Is there adequate self-awareness and self-exposure for the reader to make judgments about the point of view?"
Impact: "Does this affect me? Emotionally? Intellectually?" Does it move me?
Expresses a Reality: "Does it seem 'true'—a credible account of a cultural, social, individual, or communal senseof the 'real'?"
[edit]Data Collection methods

One of the most common methods for collecting data in an ethnographic study is direct, first-hand observation of daily participation. This can include participant observation. Another common method is interviewing, which may include conversation with different levels of form and can involve small talk to long interviews. A particular approach totranscribing interview data might be genealogical method. This is a set of procedures by which ethnographers discover and record connections of kinship, descent and marriage using diagrams and symbols. Questionnaires can be used to aid the discovery of local beliefs and perceptions and in the case of longitudinal research, where there is continuous long-term study of an area or site, they can actas valid instrument for measuring changes in the individuals or groups studied.
[edit]Differences across disciplines

The ethnographical method is used across a range of different disciples, primarily by anthropologists but also frequently by sociologists. Cultural studies, economics, social work, education, ethnomusicology, folklore, geography, history, linguistics, communication studies,performance studies, psychology, usability and criminology are other fields which have made use of ethnography.
[edit]Cultural and social anthropology
Cultural anthropology and social anthropology were developed around ethnographic research and their canonical texts which are mostly ethnographies: e.g. Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922) by Bronisław Malinowski, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) byMargaret Mead, The Nuer (1940) by E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Naven (1936, 1958) by Gregory Bateson or "The Lele of the Kasai" (1963) by Mary Douglas. Cultural and social anthropologists today place such a high value on actually doing ethnographic research that ethnology—the comparative synthesis of ethnographic information—is rarely the foundation for a career.[citation needed] The typical ethnographyis a document written about a particular people, almost always based at least in part on emic views of where the culture begins and ends. Using language or community boundaries to bound the ethnography is common.[8] Ethnographies are also sometimes called "case studies."[9] Ethnographers study and interpret culture, its universalities and its variations through ethnographic study based on...