"Ethnography, in the simplest sense, refers to the writing or making of an abstract picture of a group of people. “Ethno” refers to people, and “graph” to a picture. The  term was traditionally used to denote the composite findings of social science field-based research. That is, an ethnography represented a monograph (i.e., a written account) of fieldwork (i.e., the first-hand exploration of a cultural or social setting). In contemporary research, the term is used to connote the process of conducting fieldwork, as in “doing ethnography.”

Caines, K. E. (2010). Ethnography. In N. J. Salkind (Ed.),Encyclopedia of Research Design (pp. 431-434). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

George Marcus and Dick Cushman’s piece “Ethnographies as Texts” from the 1982 Annual Review of Anthropology identifies nine characteristics of ethnographic writing:

1. a narrative structure organized by topic, chronology, or a problem;

2. the unintrusive presence of the ethnographer in the text;

3. common denominator people, not as characters but just “the people;”

4. based on ethnographic data produced through fieldwork;

5. a focus on everyday life situations, what they see as a case study merger of interpretive and realist goals;

6. an emphasis on the native point of view;

7. establishing specificity and sufficient context for any generalizations made;

8. the use of disciplinary jargon to signal anthropological scholarship; and,

9. contextual exegesis of native concepts and discourses.

Polish some of the research skills that will be necessary for research, writing, and presentation across multiple academic disciplines. 

For information about taking field notes, see our Note Taking guide.