Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that answer the question.
Query: What is ethnography used for?
Ethnography (from Greek ἔθνος ethnos "folk, people, nation" and γράφω grapho "I write") is the systematic study of people and cultures. It is designed to explore cultural phenomena where the researcher observes society from the point of view of the subject of the study. An ethnography is a means to represent graphically and in writing the culture of a group. The word can thus be said to have a double meaning, which partly depends on whether it is used as a count noun or uncountable.[1] The resulting field study or a case report reflects the knowledge and the system of meanings in the lives of a cultural group.[2][3][4]
This form of research requires the scholar to partake in the use of, or observe others use, a designed object or system. Design-based Ethnography has become a common tool where design is observed as a social practice. It describes a process in which a researcher will partake in traditional observant style ethnography, and observe potential users complete activities that can inform design opportunities and solutions. Other ethnographic techniques used by Design Studies scholars would fall more in line with anthropologists usage of the method. These techniques are observant and participant ethnography. The observant style requires the scholar to observe in an unobtrusive manner. Observations are recorded and further analyzed. The participant style requires the scholar to partake in the activities with their subject. This tactic enables the scholar to record what they see, but also what they themselves experience.
Clinical ethnography is a term first used by Gilbert Herdt and Robert Stoller in a series of papers in the 1980s. As Herdt defines it, clinical ethnography
This what differentiate netnography to big-data analysis that often relies on machine (sentiment analysis, word cloud) and also to digital ethnography or digital anthropology. These terms : netnography, digital ethnography, and digital anthropology are often used interchangeably, but they are very different.
Video ethnography is the video recording of the stream of activity of subjects in their natural setting, in order to experience, interpret, and represent culture and society. Ethnographic video, in contrast to ethnographic film, cannot be used independently of other ethnographic methods, but rather as part of the process of creation and representation of societal, cultural, and individual knowledge. It is commonly used in the fields of visual anthropology, visual sociology, and cultural studies. Uses of video in ethnography include the recording of certain processes and activities, visual note-taking, and ethnographic diary-keeping. 
As ethnography developed, anthropologists grew more interested in less tangible aspects of culture, such as values, worldview and what Clifford Geertz termed the "ethos" of the culture. In his fieldwork, Geertz used elements of a phenomenological approach, tracing not just the doings of people, but the cultural elements themselves. For example, if within a group of people, winking was a communicative gesture, he sought to first determine what kinds of things a wink might mean (it might mean several things). Then, he sought to determine in what contexts winks were used, and whether, as one moved about a region, winks remained meaningful in the same way. In this way, cultural boundaries of communication could be explored, as opposed to using linguistic boundaries or notions about the residence. Geertz, while still following something of a traditional ethnographic outline, moved outside that outline to talk about "webs" instead of "outlines"[33] of culture.
Among the dangers of ethnography are that it can become indistinguishable from a kind of embedded journalism or blog with academic jargon giving it the veneer of academic legitimacy but without actually meeting the classic requirements for ethnography.[50] A series of tests can be applied to determine whether work is actually ethnography or academic journalism depending on the focus of the study (an "ethnos"), the scientific hypotheses and questions, whether there is model building, whether there are cross-cultural comparisons, and the purpose, uses and forms of the work.
While the SPEAKING model is a valuable model to EOC, as well as the descriptive framework most commonly used in ethnography of communication, Cameron cautions that Hymes' model should be used more as a guide than a template, because adhering to it too narrowly may create a limiting view of the subject of its study. Ethnography of communication, according to Cameron, should strive not only to "address such 'descriptive' questions as 'what speech events occur in such-and-such a community?' and 'what are the components of speech events X, Y, and Z?'", but also to explain "why particular events occur and why they have particular characteristics."
Area studies Critical ethnography Ethnoarchaeology Ethnography of communication Ethnology Ethnosemiotics Immersion journalism Living lab Online ethnography Ontology Participant observation Realist ethnography Video ethnography
Critical ethnography incorporates reflexive inquiry into its methodology. Researchers employing this approach position themselves as being intrinsically linked to those being studied and thus inseparable from their context. In addition to speaking on behalf of subjects, critical ethnographers will also attempt to recognize and articulate their own perspective as a means of acknowledging the biases that their own limitations, histories, and institutional standpoints bear on their work. Further, critical ethnography is inherently political as well as pedagogical in its approach. There is no attempt to be purely detached and scientifically objective in reporting and analysis. In contrast to conventional ethnography which describes what is, critical ethnography also asks what could be in order to disrupt tacit power relationships and perceived social inequalities.
is the intensive study of subjectivity in cultural context...clinical ethnography is focused on the microscopic understanding of sexual subjectivity and individual differences within cross-cultural communities. What distinguishes clinical ethnography from anthropological ethnography in general is (a) the application of disciplined clinical training to ethnographic problems and (b) developmental concern with desires and meanings as they are distributed culturally within groups and across the course of life.
"Interrogating Ethnography: Why Evidence Matters" is a 2017 book by Steven Lubet of Northwestern University Law School, critiquing methods used it the discipline of ethnography. Writing in "Contexts", Syid Ali of Long Island University called it "an essential critique of the most public-facing product sociology has to offer."
Involves investigation of very few cases, maybe just one case, in detail. Often involves working with primarily unconstructed data. This data had not been coded at the point of data collection in terms of a closed set of analytic categories. Emphasizes on exploring social phenomena rather than testing hypotheses. Data analysis involves interpretation of the functions and meanings of human actions. The product of this is mainly verbal explanations, where statistical analysis and quantification play a subordinate role. Methodological discussions focus more on questions about how to report findings in the field than on methods of data collection and interpretation. Ethnographies focus on describing the culture of a group in very detailed and complex manner. The ethnography can be of the entire group or a subpart of it. It involves engaging in extensive field work where data collection is mainly by interviews, symbols, artifacts, observations, and many other sources of data. The researcher in ethnography type of research looks for patterns of the group's mental activities, that is their ideas and beliefs expressed through language or other activities, and how they behave in their groups as expressed through their actions that the researcher observed. In ethnography, the researcher gathers what is available, what is normal, what it is that people do, what they say, and how they work.[12]
Froelich sought to better understand his and Larsen's findings and returned in 1940 with his wife and daughter for further explorations. At this point his journey led him to join a whaling crew and write what is now a well known ethnography. The value of this ethnography comes from its emphasis on the interrelatedness and combined usefulness of ethnographical and archaeological research".
Ethnographers have approached the study of the Internet in a range of different ways. A variety of terms refer to various formulations of methodological approaches to cyber-ethnography. Many of these seek to maintain their own dialog with the established tradition of ethnography. Each formulates its relation to the established anthropological tradition in different (and sometimes inconsistent) ways. Some think that ethnographies conducted online involve a distinctive methodological approach. Others think that cyber-ethnography is not a distinctive form of ethnography although researching the Internet ethnographically forces us to reflect on fundamental assumptions and concepts of ethnography.
"The Precise Ethnographer" – Ethnographers often create the illusion that field notes are data and reflect what "really" happened. They engage in the opposite of plagiarism, giving undeserved credit through loose interpretations and paraphrasing. Researchers take near-fictions and turn them into claims of fact. The closest ethnographers can ever really get to reality is an approximate truth. "The Observant Ethnographer" – Readers of ethnography are often led to assume the report of a scene is complete – that little of importance was missed. In reality, an ethnographer will always miss some aspect because of lacking omniscience. Everything is open to multiple interpretations and misunderstandings. As ethnographers' skills in observation and collection of data vary by individual, what is depicted in ethnography can never be the whole picture. "The Unobtrusive Ethnographer" – As a "participant" in the scene, the researcher will always have an effect on the communication that occurs within the research site. The degree to which one is an "active member" affects the extent to which sympathetic understanding is possible.[62]
Salvage ethnography is the recording of the practices and folklore of cultures threatened with extinction, including as a result of modernization. It is generally associated with the American anthropologist Franz Boas; he and his students aimed to record vanishing Native American cultures. Since the 1960s, anthropologists have used the term as part of a critique of 19th-century ethnography and early modern anthropology. 
As a method of data collection, ethnography entails examining the behaviour of the participants in a certain specific social situation and also understanding their interpretation of such behaviour.[5] Dewan (2018) further elaborates that this behaviour may be shaped by the constraints the participants feel because of the situations they are in or by the society in which they belong. Ethnography, as the presentation of empirical data on human societies and cultures, was pioneered in the biological, social, and cultural branches of anthropology, but it has also become popular in the social sciences in general—sociology,[6] communication studies, history—wherever people study ethnic groups, formations, compositions, resettlements, social welfare characteristics, materiality, spirituality, and a people's ethnogenesis.[7] The typical ethnography is a holistic study[8][9] and so includes a brief history, and an analysis of the terrain, the climate, and the habitat. In all cases, it should be reflexive, make a substantial contribution toward the understanding of the social life of humans, have an aesthetic impact on the reader, and express a credible reality. An ethnography records all observed behavior and describes all symbol-meaning relations, using concepts that avoid causal explanations. Traditionally, ethnography was focussed on the western gaze towards the far 'exotic' east, but now researchers are undertaking ethnography in their own social environment. According to Dewan (2018), even if we are the other, the ‘another’ or the ‘native’, we are still ‘another’ because there are many facades of ourselves that connect us to people and other facades that highlight our differences. [5]
Within the context of ethnography, the term 'realism' is often used to refer to the assumptions that some kinds of ethnographic work make about the phenomena to be investigated, and how these are to be understood. However, 'ethnographic realism' has also been used to refer to a style of writing that narrates the author's experiences and observations as if the reader were witnessing or experiencing events first hand. A work written using ethnographic realism may be referred to as a realist ethnography, and classified as a subgenre of ethnography.
Other notable ethnographies include Paul Willis's Learning to Labour, on working class youth; the work of Elijah Anderson, Mitchell Duneier, and Loïc Wacquant on black America, and Lai Olurode's Glimpses of Madrasa From Africa. But even though many sub-fields and theoretical perspectives within sociology use ethnographic methods, ethnography is not the sine qua non of the discipline, as it is in cultural anthropology.
The performative mode is also manifested in ethnographic film, such as "Incidents of Travel in Chichen Itza" by Jeff Himpele and Quetzil Castaneda. In this visual ethnography of cultural event of the spring equinox involving new age tourism at a sacred Maya site in Mexico, the ethnographers both document the event and provide an ethnographic questioning of the meanings that are projected on the physical heritage objects that attract 50,000 tourists to the equinox at Chichen. In this film, unlike the performative documentaries of Michael Moore in which there is a specific take away message and argument, the ethnographic filmmakers create an open-ended, polyphonic film in which the audience is provided greater opportunity to define the meanings, messages, and understandings of what the film represents. In general, documentaries, especially educational documentaries are scripted such that the audience is persuaded to accept a specific lesson or message, the performative mode of documentary is used to break from a monological or monotone understanding not only through the use of dialogical principles of dialogical anthropology, but of experimental ethnography. The Himpele and Castaneda therefore create an ethnographic documentary that expands the idea of experimental ethnography as a set of principles for writing a text to producing and postproducing ethnographic film.
There are different forms of ethnography: confessional ethnography; life history; feminist ethnography etc. Two popular forms of ethnography are realist ethnography and critical ethnography. (Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design, 93)
Cyber-ethnography, also known as virtual ethnography, and most commonly online ethnography, is an online research method that adapts ethnographic methods to the study of the communities and cultures created through computer-mediated social interaction. Online ethnography has by far the wider use. As modifications of the term ethnography, cyber-ethnography, online ethnography and virtual ethnography (as well as many other methodological neologisms) designate particular variations regarding the conduct of online fieldwork that adapts ethnographic methodology. There is no canonical approach to cyber-ethnography that prescribes how ethnography is adapted to the online setting. Instead individual researchers are left to specify their own adaptations. Netnography is another form of online ethnography or cyber-ethnography with more specific sets of guidelines and rules, and a common multidisciplinary base of literature and scholars. This article is not about a particular neologism, but the general application of ethnographic methods to online fieldwork as practiced by anthropologists, sociologists, and other scholars.
A growing trend in anthropological research and analysis is the use of multi-sited ethnography, discussed in George Marcus' article, "Ethnography In/Of the World System: the Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography". Looking at culture as embedded in macro-constructions of a global social order, multi-sited ethnography uses traditional methodology in various locations both spatially and temporally. Through this methodology, greater insight can be gained when examining the impact of world-systems on local and global communities.
The descriptors operate reflexively by finding in the coffee what they mean, and each is used to make the other more explicit. Much the same may be said about rules-in-games or the use of accounts in ordinary action. This reflexivity of accounts is ubiquitous, and its sense has nearly nothing to do with how the term "reflexivity" is used in analytic philosophy, in "reflexive ethnographies" that endeavor to expose the influence of the researcher in organizing the ethnography, or the way many social scientists use "reflexivity" as a synonym for "self-reflection." For ethnomethodology reflexivity is an actual, unavoidable feature of everyone's daily life.