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1. An Essay on Ethnography
Tania Sultana
Faculty of Sociology
South Asian University
Ethnography is a practice and an expression with a capacious historical past that necessarily
included political, philosophical, spiritual aesthetic elements. The study of ethnography is to
define culture, people and society and “who they are and what they might become”. In brief, it
grew out of a master discourse of colonization. Observing the history of ethnography, it is found,
the style and approach of writing ethnography is not a constant process. During the changing of
time the process is also evolving. And its subject matter and praxis are also changing. Due to the
evolving of ethnography how it is different from its earlier period‟s ethnography, this is the
important question of Ethnography. Earlier ethnography was only bounded with social
ethnography but in modern and postmodern time „social ethnography is replaced by „cultural
ethnography. Postmodern ethnography is an ethnography that goes beyond its traditional
counterpart by expanding its reflexivity and its commitment to the groups it studies; it questions
its truth claims and experiments with new mode of repenting. Postmodern ethnography derives
its new goals from post modernism. That‟s why it rejects grand narrative and „Meta theories‟ of
modernism, with their pre -conceived and sweeping statements. „Reflexivity‟ is a paramount
concern of postmodern ethnography, based on the belief that for too long, the rule and power of
the researcher have been ignored by ethnographers.
In anthropology, „ethnography is the systematic description of the single contemporary culture
often through fieldwork. It is the practice of ethnographic research based on direct observation of
and reportage on a people‟s way of life. Ethnographic „product‟ is considered as writings of
anthropology where ethnography considered in postmodern time as a „text‟. On the other hand,
the way and style of writing ethnography is known as its process. „On the Writing of
Ethnography‟ by Vincent Crapanzano, he defines ethnography is a symptom of a particular
confrontation between two or more individuals the ethnographer and those others whom he
refers. The ethnographic writing process mainly depends on three things- 1. Data collection 2.
Observation and 3. Interpretation.

2. First one is based on field work which is the process of observing and collecting data. The
second one is the production of a written description and the third one is the analysis of the
subject under study. Studies of day to day life, tribal and village societies, customarily included
descriptions of the natural landscape and material condition of everyday life and analysis of these
in support of other theoretical arguments are subject matter of study of ethnographer. They
always formed special dimension of culture, belief and practices.
The beginning of ethnography‟s journey started from 1492 to postmodern time. During this long
period the method of ethnography changes a lot. During the time of Renaissance to the
enlightenment era, starting from the late 17th
century, travel accounts become very popular.
„Reason‟ and „reality‟ were key aspects of this period. Many important anthropological questions
were posed in the age of Enlightenment where people became especially in the relation between
nature and society, the definition of human kind and what distinguishes a natural condition of
humanity from cultural condition. Later on, anthropologists advocated their ability to function as
advisor to colonial administrator. They helped the ruler to understand the natives. In this way
they got an opportunity to learn the native, they observed them very closely. In that period,
anthropologists were not able to consider ethnography deeply. Ethnography was not fully
established before the methodological concerns addressed by Malinowski and Radcliffe Brown
gained authority in the anthropological community. But their way of thinking and writing
process was different from postmodern ethnography.
Malinowski who is considered as a functionalist tried to view culture scientifically and by
applying reason. His functionalism theory allowed for a more complete picture of how the
working of different aspects of a society related to each other. His functionalism was basically a
theory of needs and responses. Every culture and custom exists to fulfill a purpose it means
which people used to satisfy their needs. Malinowski for developing his functionalist theory
distinguished seven basic needs and their cultural response- metabolism, commissarial means
(providing oneself with food), reproduction, movement, activities, growth, training, health and
hygiene. His system was he begins to go on outings with the natives and to spend night at a time
with them.
On the other hand, Rad Cliffe Brown considered as structural functionalist for his research firstly
he drew a structure and then based on this structural frame he started his fieldwork

3. Both Malinowski and Radcliffe Brown‟s study method was they tried to compare their study
with their own culture. They went to the fieldwork as a researcher. Their motto was study of the
“Other” society. Though they mixed with the local people to learn their language and culture but
there was always a complexity of superiority and inferiority by the Researcher where natives
were always inferior and the researcher were superior. There writing was field based writing, that
was criticizes by modern and postmodern Ethnographers.
After the colonial period ethnographer starts rethinking ethnography newly whether ethnography
is science, history, literature or anything else. Or is there really any relationship between all of
these fields? Then they give the answer that „ethnography is neither scientific nor political but
ethnography itself is contextualized by a technology of writing communication‟.
During the modern period of ethnography, it is seen the ethnographer use different kinds of signs
to interpret culture. Their only intention was only to analyses „how to study of culture‟ In „Thick
Description: Towards an Interpretative Theory of culture‟ by Clifford Geertz, he argues thick
description means to interpret very light description in a very deep way. In his book he discusses
the role of the ethnographer. The ethnographers‟ aim is to observe, record and analyzes culture.
The ethnographer must interpret signs to gain their meaning within the culture itself. How signs
are sometimes work as a medium to explain a very difficult issue. The ethnographers used to
„take a very general issue and they tried to apply it and extended it where it applied and where it
is capable of extension, and they desist where it did not apply or could not be extended‟. He
suggests that it is necessary to learn four things to study culture as a „thick description‟.
According to Geertz, “An ethnographer must present a thick description which is composed not
only of facts but also of commentary, interpretation”. His only work was to extract meaning
structures that make up a culture and he believed that a factual account will not suffice for these
meaning structures are complexly layered are on top and into each other so that all the fact might
have to be system of interpreting and intercrossing its general meaning which ethnography
should study.
a. Interpretative study b. The subject of interpretation is the flow of social discourse c.
Interpretation deals with extrovert expressions d. Ethnographic description is
microscopic.

4. Clifford Geertz in his Thick description says that cultural analysis should be an interpretative
practice which traces the manner in which meaning is ascribed. The raw observational material
collected by an ethnographer is not sufficient if we are to achieve a thick description of a culture.
Interpretative ethnography according to Geertz should produce the codes required for decoding
social events. Data collection and interpretation are limited to what local informants can tell us.
Therefore the thickest of descriptions can only be based on extrovert expressions of culture.
Ethnographic description is microscopic. According to Geertz ethnographic findings describe
local behaviors and truths as serve as an ethnographical miniature. We always view specific and
contextualized happenings, and these make up the thick description.
From this context, the example we see, “wink of an eye” we can clarify it from thick
description‟s perspective. When a man winks is he merely rapidly contracting his right eyelid or
is „he practicing a burlesque of a friend faking a wink to deceive an innocent into thinking
conspiracy is in motion?‟ An ethnographer must have to be capable of explaining to understand
any new culture. Then from thin description it will turn into thick description.
In the period of postmodernism, ethnography is seen as a „text‟. James Clifford, in his book
“Writing Culture” focuses that the relationship between ethnography and literature and science
are interdisciplinary. „The poetics and politics are also inseparable.‟ (partial truth). Science is not
above historical and linguistic process. James Clifford says that during the seventeenth century
qualities such as the rhetoric, fiction and subjectivity were eliminated from science and these
qualities were localized in the category of literature.
De Certeau notes that the fiction of literary writings were scientifically condemned for lacking
„umivocity‟ the supposedly unmistakable according of natural science and professional history.
Ethnographies are considered to provide partially of cultural and historical truths. Ethnographic
writing can properly be called „fiction‟ in the sense of something made or fashioned. Thus
interpretative social scientists have recently come to view good ethnographies as „true fiction‟.
Here James Clifford brings forward the work by Richard Price, „First Time: The Historical
Vision of an Afro American people‟ which gives a good example of serious partiality.
Ethnography skillfully fashions ethnographic material as „art fact‟ where ethnography is
considered as coherent fiction but rather than emphasizing any sense of falsehood which

5. suggests partiality of cultural and historical truths. Using of different kinds of metaphors and
rhetoric terms help to develop a new relationship between literature and ethnography. Excessive
use of metaphors (means what is saying meaning is different) has incurred critique of
ethnography being to „literary‟ than scientific.
Again he focuses on the methodological shift of ethnography. With the break of colonialism in
many countries across the world, the enduring power inequalities constraining ethnographic
practice changed so that the role of the ethnographer changed from a sympathetic authorative
observer to provider of an unflattering appraisal of observations. The emergence of new rules of
the game wherein the „observed people‟ dictate the rules of ethnography which the ethnographer
has to follow such as supporting land claims of American Natives as pre-condition to study them
have become common place . Besides, the emergence of the indigenous ethnographers offers
new perspectives of vision and depths of understanding. Also the „Others‟ culture is also in a
state of flux which poses the challenges in adopting the dynamic portraits of cultural situations in
the wake of altered power dynamics between the participant observer and the observed.
Moreover, ethnography has imbibed substantial influences and cross specializations from a range
of other disciplines and critiques. Also eminent is rejected of „visualization‟ which predominated
western cultures as a form of accounting culture which had to accommodate other senses and
taste of the „others‟ in order to be more relevant and contextual. James Clifford then suggest that
the observer can study the subject from a privileged vintage point is changing to being more
empathic and more discursive and „reflexive‟ form of ethnography.
Representation is the important issue in writing ethnography. The question of „Who is
representing whom‟ in the ethnographic journey is a valid question. History of ethnographic
work reveals a separation of the subjectivity of the author from the objective referent of text but
in the postmodern ethnography which starts from 1960s the balance scales tipped since
ethnographer wrote about their field experience more systematically. This writing style is called
collect and „recollects‟ idea and make some new and most perfect thing. This subsequently led to
more self-reflexive field account and thereby becoming more dialogical in accommodating views
of the people studied. Malinwaski‟s field writing was questioning by James Clifford because of
his field writing. Clifford argues that if any ethnographer writes his note in front of the

6. questioner then there is a chance of misinterpretation. Sometimes mentality does not work
properly.
George E. Marcus in the book “Writing Culture” says that ethnography as “Text‟ that must
should be experimental. There are also some systems of representing ethnography as text. The
most basic characteristic of realist writings are:
a. The narrative structure of total ethnography.
b. The non-interfering presence of the ethnographer in the text.
c. Common denominator people or suppression of individual existence in ethnographic
writing.
d. The marking of fieldwork experience to establish the authority of text but only as a
marginal and relatively unintegrated aspect of the full text.
e. The focus on everyday life situations providing the best synthesis of interpretative and
realist goals
f. Representation of the native point of view
g. The stylistic extrapolation of particular data aimed towards generalization
h. Ornamentation or decoration of text by jargons as a symbolic statement of the
anthropological competence of the author and as a reinforcement of the generalizing
style.
i. Contextual interpretation of native concepts and discourses.
So we see, ethnography has become a way of talking about theory, philosophy and epistemology
while holding to the traditional tasks of interpreting different ways of life. In postmodern
ethnography, an ethnographic writer has an audience in his mind and this way he shapes the way
of his writings. It is a synthesis of interpretation on part of the ethnographers and the
interpretation on the part of the reader.
Another important thing is the use of “us” and “them” or „Others”. „..Ethnographies have been
punctuated with explicit us-others differences, in which the „us‟ is referred to the West and in the
contrast „Others‟ is used for the village, group or culture as subject of the ethnography.‟ This is
an important distinction between colonial period of ethnography and postmodern time of
ethnography, where they did not mark any distinguishes between this two. Experimental

7. ethnographies have shifted to a „me-other‟ form of contrast. The authority of text is set in a
hermeneutic context and what then follows is naturally open to the rhetorical support of
description and claims by personal testimony. Ethnography might not become so much a
coherent interpretation of the other as the mix multiple of negotiated realities written into
ethnographic text of dispersed authority.
Changes have also come up in the representation of gender. Earlier when in the ethnographic
studies in the word „men‟ was referred it meant people but with time doubt about the gender
representation has come up due to the presence of feminists. Thus ethnographers have to be
gender sensitive in their way of representation.
Vincent Crapanzano in his writing „Communication: On the writing of ethnography‟ he has
raised a question, why writing of ethnography is a „blind spots‟? Because it self-conscious as
anthropology and is traditionally concerned with texts, has ignored the structural presuppositions
and implications of the text. The confrontation does not end before the ethnography, it ends
within the ethnography.
In this postmodern period of anthropology, it really very difficult to say, which process and
which field are better for ethnographers. The ethnographer must have to be inventive and
reflexive in setting up the topics and people as subjects of study and observation. This
postmodern ethnographic time is more developed than the earlier period of ethnography.
Therefore it is undeniable to say that, during this postmodern period ethnographers‟ work
flourished a lot. They try to look everything more vigorously, more enthusiastically.
Bibliography.
1. Ed. Clifford,James.1955. „Partial Truths‟. Writing Culture, p 1-26
2. Ed. Rabinow, Paul. „Representations Are Social Facts: Modernity and Post -Modernity in
Anthropology‟. Writing Culture,p.233-261
3. Geertz, Clifford. „Thick Description: Toward an Interpretative Theory of Culture‟, p1-14
Hypergeertz.jku.at/Geertz text/Thick_Description.htm

8. 4. Crapanzano, Vincent „On The Writing Of Ethnography‟,Dialectical Anthropology,Vol.2,
no1, p 69-73
5. Malinowski, „Anthropology and anthropologists‟,p 1-35
6. Ed. Clifford, James1955. „On Ethnographic Surrealism‟. Comparative Studies in Society
and History,Vol.23,no.4.pp.539-564
7. Oxford Sociology Dictionary, definition of ethnography.
8. Low.M Setha, Lawrence Denise „Locating Culture‟,The Anthropology of Space and
Place,p 3-57.