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ANT 100: Notes on how to read ethnography

A. Nading

Ethnography is a genre of writing, distinct from fiction, journalism, history, and scientific

reporting. Ethnography (literally writing about people), is the life-blood of anthropology.

As the studied result of fieldwork and interpretation, it is the form in which our data andtheory come together most clearly. It begins with two fundamental postures, common tothe liberal arts.

The first isKnowing thatwe dont know. If anthropology teaches us nothing else, it is that

although the world of others is fascinating and strange, it is worthwhile to know it onits own terms.

The second is accepting that there are multiple ways of understanding the world.

Normally we think of this in disciplinary terms. Ethnography asks us to understandhuman experience through even more radically different conceptual frameworks, namely,

those of different cultural and social groups. There is no single truth to be reached atthe end of most ethnographies.

Further points to consider

Ethnographies are about groups, not individuals. Ethnographers draw

on the experiences of a limited number of individuals, but those people arealmost always types of social persons.

Ethnographies describe processes. Events occur, but ethnographers,

unlike journalists, are interested in what those events like the Balinesecockfight, tell us about bigger social processes (e.g. Balinese social

organization in a postcolonial context).

Ethnography is experience-near. Anthropologists try their best toeliminate bias, but as situated observations, the stories they tell are always

partial. Anthropologists, unlike many other social scientists, are explicitabout the politics and contingency of knowledge production, and you

should be, too.

As a special genre, ethnography requires a special kind of reading. In reading anethnography, it is helpful to think about the following points:

1. Argument. The book as a whole will have an argument, like any paper you writeor shorter article you read. The argument will be stated (and probably re-statedand refined) in the Introduction. Chapters reinforce that argument, but each

chapter also makes its own point. Thus, you need to look for arguments in bothplaces.

2. So what? Books will make arguments for good reasons. As yourself, What isthe author trying to teach me by making this argument?

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3. Ethnographic data. What evidence is author using to reinforce her argument?Weiners data was a thick description ofkula and funerary ritual, which

reinforced her argument about the struggle between individual fame and socialpersonhood and the gendered dynamics of Trobriand politics.

4. Comparison. Ethnographic data is always implicitly (and hopefully explicitly)comparative. Weiner was implicitly comparing her study to Malinowskis, forexample. As a reader, you can do your own comparing. As you read, think aboutwhether what the ethnographer is describing reminds you of anything else youve

read or experienced. Be adventurous in your comparisons, and use them toenhance your understanding.

5. Interpretation. Ethnography is not an attempt to tell the definitive truth aboutthe human condition. After Geertz, it is interpretive and partial. The author will

bring her interpretations to the data, and you should bring yours.6. Style of presentation. Is the author telling a straight, start-to-finish story? In

ethnography, this is probably not the case. This does not make it bad writing.Ethnographies are documents about some aspect of what it is like to be a person

in a particular sociocultural context.