Ethnography is two things: (1) the fundamental research method of cultural anthropology, and (2) the written text produced to report ethnographic research results.  Ethnography as method seeks to answer central anthropological questions concerning the ways of life of living human beings.  Ethnographic questions generally concern the link between culture and behavior and/or how cultural processes develop over time.  The data base for ethnographies is usually extensive description of the details of social life or cultural phenomena in a small number of cases.

            In order to answer their research questions and gather research material, ethnographers (sometimes called fieldworkers) often live among the people they are studying, or at least spend a considerable amount of time with them.  While there, ethnographers engage in "participant observation", which means that they participate as much as possible in local daily life (everything from important ceremonies and rituals to ordinary things like meal preparation and consumption) while also carefully observing everything they can about it.  Through this, ethnographers seek to gain what is called an "emic" perspective, or the "native's point(s) of view" without imposing their own conceptual frameworks.  The emic world view, which may be quite different from the "etic", or outsider's perspective on local life, is a unique and critical part of anthropology.  Through the participant observation method, ethnographers record detailed fieldnotes, conduct interviews based on open-ended questions, and gather whatever site documents might be available in the setting as data.

         As a qualitative research method and product, ethnography can be distinguished from three other ways of investigating and writing: quantitative research, public policy research, and journalism.  The kinds of guiding questions which are addressed through these kinds of research are importantly different from those which can be addressed ethnographically.  Because these differences can be confusing to students, causing them to spend valuable time in the field focused on something un-ethnographic, they are described briefly here.

•  Quantitative research usually arrives at percentages (of people who believe certain premise or do a certain thing) or otherwise counts instances of a phenomenon, and as such deals less descriptively with a larger number of cases than pure ethnography does.  One of its main methods is widely distributed surveys or questionnaires.

Example: Which birth control methods are most widely used in West Africa, and how are birth rates affected over a five year period?
 
• Public policy research, which might be performed either qualitatively or quantitatively or both, is generally geared towards providing information that helps policy makers decide how a certain phenomenon might be understood in terms of better or worse social outcomes.

Example:  What kinds of access do West African women have to what kinds of birth control, and is this appropriate from public health, religious, and cultural standpoints?  Should government do something to affect this situation, and if so what and how?
 

• Journalism attempts to provide objective (not interpretive) outsider news information in a quick, timely manner, often against a deadline.  Journalists write for the kinds of audience that the newspaper, magazine, or other publication which hires them attempts to reach.  General questions regarding culture are not usually considered crucial to the endeavor as they are in ethnography.

Example:  What is newsworthy about current West African family planning for the particular group(s) who are likely to read my story?
 

• Hamabata, Matthews Masayuki

1990   Crested Kimono: Power and Love in the Japanese Business Family.  Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Basso, Keith H.

1979  Portraits of "The Whiteman": Linguistic Play and Cultural Symbols among the Western Apache.  New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Thorne, Barrie

1994  Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School.  New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
• Stack, Carol B.

1974   All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community.  NY: Harper & Row.

• "Out of the Garden of Eden: Morality Play in the Life of an Inuit Three-year-old" by Jean L. Briggs provides an emic view of Inuit childrearing practices.

• "From China to Canada - the Immigration Experience of a Chinese Refugee Group in Toronto" by Guang Tian illuminates the cultural processes which drive immigration from an insider's perspective.

• The American Ethnologist is a journal which publishes a variety of anthropological articles, many of which are ethnographically based.  Although full-text articles are not available here, you can still access a large number of abstracts which describe ethnographic research.  Especially relevant ones include the following abstracts in volume 25, number 4 (November, 1998):

*  "Heart Like a Car": Hispano/Chicano Culture in Northern New Mexico" by Brenda Bright
*  "Global Desirings and Translocal Loves: Transgendering and Same Sex Sexualities in the Southern Philippines" by Mark Johnson