Fundamental Elements in Ethnography
Ethnography Research
Addressing ethnographic inquiry
Frances J. Riemer
Groping in the dark
When I began my first ethnographic research project, I wasn’t an ethnographer. I was a teacher and a student, living in the city, pondering questions about education and social mobility, poverty and work. I had enrolled in a doctoral program and taken classes in research methods, but I became an ethnographer by doing the things that ethnographers do. I learned how to ask questions by asking, and how to watch, listen, and to document the moments of everyday practice by watching, listening, and recording. My experience was what ethnographic evaluator David Fetterman (1989, p. 26) described when he wrote, “Ethnography is what ethnographers actually do in the field. Textbooks …together with lectures – can initiate the newcomer to the field and refresh the experienced ethnographer, but actual fieldwork experience has no substitute.” During this entire ethnographic research effort however, I felt as though I was groping in the dark, making decisions with the discomforting tentativeness of most first time ethnographers. Uncertainty was my own repetitive refrain. Over and over I asked myself questions like, is this an appropriate site to do research? Should I be spending more time there instead of here? Should I be observing more, or observing less? How can I make myself more visible? How can I make myself invisible? Months passed before I came to understand that uncertainty was a fundamental part of the ethnographic method. Much more time passed before I began to feel even slightly comfortable fumbling with the unfamiliar. In addition to my own somewhat bewildering experience, I’ve also heard students speculate about ethnographic research after reading a classic ethnography conducted in an exotic locale or a more recent ethnography conducted in a classroom or neighborhood somewhere in the US. But all too often, they are enticed by the lure of
Addressing ethnographic inquiry
Frances J. Riemer
Groping in the dark
When I began my first ethnographic research project, I wasn’t an ethnographer. I was a teacher and a student, living in the city, pondering questions about education and social mobility, poverty and work. I had enrolled in a doctoral program and taken classes in research methods, but I became an ethnographer by doing the things that ethnographers do. I learned how to ask questions by asking, and how to watch, listen, and to document the moments of everyday practice by watching, listening, and recording. My experience was what ethnographic evaluator David Fetterman (1989, p. 26) described when he wrote, “Ethnography is what ethnographers actually do in the field. Textbooks …together with lectures – can initiate the newcomer to the field and refresh the experienced ethnographer, but actual fieldwork experience has no substitute.” During this entire ethnographic research effort however, I felt as though I was groping in the dark, making decisions with the discomforting tentativeness of most first time ethnographers. Uncertainty was my own repetitive refrain. Over and over I asked myself questions like, is this an appropriate site to do research? Should I be spending more time there instead of here? Should I be observing more, or observing less? How can I make myself more visible? How can I make myself invisible? Months passed before I came to understand that uncertainty was a fundamental part of the ethnographic method. Much more time passed before I began to feel even slightly comfortable fumbling with the unfamiliar. In addition to my own somewhat bewildering experience, I’ve also heard students speculate about ethnographic research after reading a classic ethnography conducted in an exotic locale or a more recent ethnography conducted in a classroom or neighborhood somewhere in the US. But all too often, they are enticed by the lure of