Ethnography

Abstract

Literally, ethnography means writing about people, or writing an account of the way of life of a particular people. In early anthropology, what was aimed at was a descriptive account that captured a distinctive culture. Initially, ethnography was contrasted with ethnology, which was concerned with the historical and comparative analysis of cultures based on ethnographic accounts, the latter often being produced by travelers and missionaries. Over time, the term ethnology has fallen out of favor, and ethnography has come to refer to a combination of theoretical interpretation of cultures and firsthand investigation carried out by anthropologists themselves. Moreover, the term has a double meaning, referring both to a form of research and to the product of that research: ethnography as a practice produces ethnographies. And, recently, a distinction has sometimes been drawn between doing ethnography and using ethnographic methods. This has been employed by some anthropologists in an attempt to mark off their own practice from what passes for ethnographic work within sociology and other areas (Wolcott 1999).