I'm sure others will give you more specific answers, but I'd say that you shouldn't worry about time, but rather information. The amount of time it takes to develop an ethnography is going to largely depend on the size and complexity of the group you're studying.
Daniel Goldman I agree with you on that. The complexity and size of the group matters a lot.
Thank you.
Asasira Justus, it's good to first realize there's no recipe or step-wise approach to ethnographic research. It is, like you mention yourself, very much dependent on the phenomenon you study to answer what "the minimum duration" is to collect data.
One of my anthropology teachers always said that the traditional cultural anthropologist would aim for a full year as the bare minimum, just so that he or she would be able to observe the full circle of a year and the impact of each season on the culture under study. Nowadays this is not always so anymore as we've expanded to fields where seasons are not necessarily a good indicator for what we study.
One way to answer your question is that an ethnographic study never has a natural ending. As it is an interpretive inquiry, there will never be this 'eureka' moment where suddenly everything makes sense. During your fieldwork you may come to realize that initial questions are not interesting anymore, or when you're finally able to answer some questions a whole new set of ideas pops up.
As a guideline, however, one could say that the ethnographer can stop with the fieldwork once he or she is able to give a detailed enough and insider perspective description of what is being studied, with enough 'evidence' (observations, quotes, artefacts, interpretations) to support the claims being made. Generally, however, I would say people tend to underestimate the intensity and duration of conducting ethnographic fieldwork. There's no answer there waiting to be uncovered, so it's a lot of hard work before you're able to say that you are able to stop data collection and start writing about your experiences and observations.
Thijs Willems This is very helpful. I get you loud and clear. It is true to study culture or the insider view is very dynamic and can vary from time to culture and the person doing the study.
I don't think one will have to have limit his or her self to a particular time period. it will be dependent on you targeted objectives and what the researcher intends to study.
The early anthropologist would say minimum 1 year. This would be case even then in today scenario.But in practical, it should have also to considerate the funding time and course length period. Coming back to direct answer, it depends on your research questions, familiarity with the natives and gate keeper. If the research question is simple and single, it will require only one month after the access through gatekeeper. And complex questions it might required full length of study and extended period of time atleast 10 months. largely, it depends on your experience, expertise and skills. If new on this research, it will take time.
Kwabena Darko Akuamoah and Lalnundika Darlong I agree with you. This what was in my mind, though I was not sure whether there is a time limit or not. You responses are helpful and are grounding me further in this method.
I think for early-stage researchers it is important to get acquainted with the method of ethnographic fieldwork more intensely. This takes quite some time and so I suggest six to twelve months for the first independent ethnographic research project. Later on, it becomes more flexible and you have to adjust to course schedules, the topic you are researching and funding opportunities. Nevertheless, the 'initiation' should be done properly because it forms how you approach fieldwork afterwards...
Echoing Lalnundika Darlong in practical situations like a corporate environment the researcher must either make a strong case for the extended period of study or find a way to deliver fast, digestible, and possibly shallower insights. Anthropology and Ethnography are academic fields but in the business world Ethnography is taking a new shape that requires speed of business. It is not the same as the classic anthropology, from which it is derived, and you will need to have very effective observation and interactive tools in order to satisfy the funders of your ethnographic project. The kind of deep, iterative ethnography that many of us studied in university does not appeal to businesses. Only the results do. Unless you are a fantastic salesman with a strong track record of delivering insights, my experience tells me that one cannot typically afford to pitch a year-long project.
Jacob Horton I hear you loud.
Thank you for a well thought idea and response to my question! Good to hear that you are answering from experience.
Jacob Horton, while I fully agree with your observation that it is difficult to conduct deep ethnographic research in business settings (difficult but definitely not impossible), I am not sure whether I agree with that this implies "to deliver fast, digestible, and possibly shallower insights". In fact, isn't this a reduction of ethnography's core qualities and that what sets it apart from other methodologies? In my opinion and experience, whenever I am urged to deliver fast results, it is best to simply refrain from calling this type of study ethnography. Why not use some 'lighter' terms? For instance, you can definitely share some insights to businesses based on a few observations and some interviews. But I would hesitate calling this ethnographic.
I agree with Jacob. It is one of the good opportunities to provide first-hand evidence even if the field is not so easy to access. In my PhD project (Köllner 2012), for example, I conducted an internship for more than eight months in a Russian company as part of my fieldwork in order to understand what really is going on. So it is possible!
Thijs Willems Yes. To be clear, I agree that 8-12 months is an appropriate estimate for good ethnography. My point is that a researcher may face repeated pressure to shrink that timeframe. Thijs's and Tobias Köllner 's experiences demonstrate that good work is, of course, possible in a corporate setting. Samsung also put the practice to good use, as a famous example. I am merely pointing out the importance of alignment on expectations and offering a warning from my own experience.
Jacob Horton I thank you. This is more specific! I think, there is no need to shrink the time frame as this may not bring all the expected data in the study. If I may ask, what did Samsung do? May be I could borrow a leaf from its experience.
Actually, in none of the answers, a reason was given why field research should last for at least one year, although it's pretty simple. It's not just because "it takes time" to learn and apply the methods of field research or to integrate into the research environment etc. It's because if you want to conduct an ethnographic study of a specific village, region or whatever environment, you should be able to observe all the activities, festivals etc. that happen within the cycle of one year.
Hans Brandeis, this was implicitly addressed when I mentioned that anthropologists, traditionally at least, would do fieldwork for at least 1 full year to observe all seasons and experience of a cycle of year (with related rituals etc.)
However, in many contemporary studies one could wonder to what extent this is still a good indicator for answering the question how long data collection should ideally last.
I may be old fashioned, but I'd say one year minimum and ideally over a lifetime, depending on one's goals. I personally believe ethnography is best built upon deep trust between anthropologists and their collaborating subjects. This can only develop over years. In my own case, it has taken years of repeated visits to grow trusting relationships in which mutual interests are well understood and meaningful knowledge has emerged. It seems to me that ethnography must be more than in-and-out reporting typical of most journalism, but limited funding and the demands for quick results from funders, for publication, etc., subverts the unique contributions that long-term ethnographic research can and do make.
Implicit is the answers I have read is the premise that the amount of time required is, in no small part, a function of the questions, issues and problems to be addressed. I knew one anthropologist who carried out a study of fish markets in only six months, during the fishing season and before the monsoon rains.
In my case, my initial fieldwork lasted 18 months, involved a study of values and deviance and required the development of a good deal of trust. Now that I have good, trusting friends in the original village, I have always returned there over a 40 year period.
There is no fixed time period for field research, nor should there be.
Hans is right on the mark with the issue of observing the cycles of life over the course of a year. This is how I was trained as an ethnographer. I think with one's initial fieldwork, at least a year is necessary. If one returns to the same location in the future, shorter stays become fine. There is an unfortunate tendency in fields outside of anthropology to conflate qualitative research and ethnography. They are not the same thing. Ethnography involves trying to live as the people being studied as much as possible.
An additional reason for long-term fieldwork is that it can take a very long time to become accepted in a community. When I did my dissertation fieldwork, which lasted 1.5 years, my next-door neighbor basically wouldn't talk to me for the first six months. Then one day I was walking through the village and he called me over and said, "let's drink." From that point onward, he was very willing to talk to me and that opened the door to many others talking to me, as he was a leader in the village. And a further problem was that although I had many years of Japanese study, I couldn't understand many of the people at my field site because they had a very heavy dialect that even other Japanese don't understand. It took a long time to get control of the local dialect (nine months).
The business context is a very difficult one in which to do ethnography, although it is not impossible. I have worked in a store as an ethnographer and I know others who have done ethnographic work in a business environment--but it normally involves becoming an employee and working as other employees do. Again, we need to be very careful not to conflate qualitative research with ethnography.
To get accurate and good information about twenty years and still some!
@Gene Ammarell, yes I agree with you, especially when your are writing about biography of a minority (slaves, youth, women and others) or at times too trying to get people to tell the truth can take you many years.People are ready to talk to you but is it the truth. What I am experiencing at the moment is horrible. Yes, talking about building trust with your participants and so forth but we should not lose sight of the funding. If your funding for data collection is limited, it can take you many years as possible.
Emmanuel's point is quite important here. Ethnography involves developing trust and rapport with people. Trust takes a long time to build in any context and is particularly difficult in contexts where there may be some danger to those from whom one is trying to learn. Business contexts are like this--the people we want to talk to may be quite uncomfortable stating what they actually feel because if it is negative and gets back to those in power, jobs are on the line. This is one of the many reasons that ethnography takes a long time. Several years ago, I was at a party and met a guy with whom I started talking about research. He told me he was doing ethnography, after which I asked where and he said in a prison. I thought this was quite interesting, so I asked him how long was his fieldwork. He replied, "two weekends!". That's not ethnography. Sorry.
Each of the àbove replies contains valid advice. A full year or more, funding permitting, seems advisable for the intitial research, establishing relationships, familiarizing oneself with the subject matter, the people involved, the locale(s), and the data collection. If the focus is a particular topic/group, such as an organization, a yearly cycle might not be quite as pertinent, but that length of time would give the opportunity to observe/participate in unique, onetime, fortuitous occurrences. As was mentioned, subsequent research for briefer periods might suffice to keep up the relationships, familiarize oneself with changes,
I would say 24 months, but it depends on the means at your disposal and the issues you want to understand
There is no axiomatic period of time. Although it was widely accepted that one year (at least) is required for an ethnographic work, but, as others suggested, it depends on the purpose, on the specific context etc. I carried out a field work (as part of gender counselling work) in Nepal for about 3 and a half weeks and succeeded to produce a book about this experience ("Patrons of Women: Literacy Projects and Gender Development in Rural Nepal" published by Berghahn in 2011).
Esther, I agree overall with your point, but I would not really view 3.5 weeks of fieldwork as ethnography, unless you had significant prior fieldwork experience at the same site. It is certainly fieldwork, and it could be excellent research, but I would not see such a short stay by itself as representing ethnography. The length of time really does matter, because it generates trust and what is called an "experience near" understanding of a context. I don't think you can really get that understanding in only three weeks. This gets back to my earlier post arguing that there is a tendency in many fields to (incorrectly) conflate fieldwork or any form of qualitative research with ethnography. For something to be ethnography it needs to, of course, involve use of ethnographic methods, such as participant observation (as one element), and also time. I see a minimum of 6 months as being necessary for good ethnographic research and it is much better if one spends at least a year at one's field site. Again, that doesn't mean there are not other forms of fieldwork that can be done in shorter time periods and produce very good results--but they are not ethnography.
Thank you John for your challenging response. I think that ethnography is meant to serve our efforts to learn about social phenomena and human behavior. That means, to my understanding, that our research purpose, our relevant professional, academic, personal, etc., background, just as "prior fieldwork experience at the same site" can determine or justify the length of time in the field (and be considered as ethnography)
.
Esther, I agree that is the purpose of ethnography, but in one meaning of the term, ethnography is a methodology. Many different methodologies can help us to learn about social phenomena and human behavior. Quantitative methods such as using questionnaires to obtain aggregate data that can be analyzed with statistics can do this--but that's not ethnography (although as an ethnographer I have used quantitative methods, as well). One's research purpose, professional/academic background influences any form of research we do . Again, that doesn't make all research ethnography.
Ethnography is actually both a methodology and the written product of one's research. There is a nice description of ethnography here: https://www.thoughtco.com/ethnography-definition-3026313. The author notes, and I agree with this definition, that "[a]s a method, ethnographic observation involves embedding oneself deeply and over the long-term in a field site of study in order to systemically document the everyday lives, behaviors, and interactions of a community of people." Of course, the definition of long-term is open to debate, but the normal viewpoint in anthropology is that it involves measures of months or years, not days or weeks.
It depends on what the subject is and the working environment. It doesn't matter how much time you spend on the field. You can achieve some data. But you can never think like a native.
what are your research questions? what type of data do you plan to collect? Observation is fun but it isn't nearly enough to answer research questions. Do you have interview questions based on culturally valid concepts? How will you avoid blending your ideas with those of informants? Ethnography does not going somewhere, asking a few questions and going home. Ethnography is a method of conceptualization and data collection and most importantly data analysis. At the heart of ethnographic research is speech: language = culture, so you need a method to analyze language data in order to cull out cultural themes.
Read"
Fleisher, M.S. (2018). A twitch or blink: An ethnographer’s path to understanding culture, a lecture. In M. Maltz & S.K. Rice (Eds). Pp. 163-177. In Doing Ethnography in Criminology: Discovery through Fieldwork. Springer.
and,
Fleisher, M.S. (2015). The culture of violent behavior: Language, culture, and worldview of prison rape. In J. Miller & W.R. Palacios (Eds.), Qualitative Research in Criminology: Advances in Criminological Theory, v. 20, pp. 101-131. Ignore the content of the research. Analytic methods and theory are what you seek.
Thank you Mark. This is very helpful. However, am unable to access the reference materials you shared. Do you mind sharing the full documents with me?
Iiteris, I really disagree with you on the amount of time spent in the field. It makes a very significant difference, because it takes time to develop a rapport and trust with your interlocutors. You are right that you will never think like a native, but that doesn't mean that you cannot develop a deep understanding of their lifestyles. You can do short-term research, but doing fieldwork is not equal to doing ethnography.
Mark's point about language and culture is very good, although I'm not sure I agree with the idea that language = culture unless the definition of language is quite broad, although I'm going to need to think about that. We're getting into Sapir-Worf territory with that one, which remains an interesting question. But Mark's point underscores the importance of time--it takes a long time to gain enough command of a language to be able to recognize and understand those twitches and blinks Mark's title alludes to (which is also nicely alluding to Geertz). Again, length of time matters if you want to do ethnographic research. It isn't about just achieving some data; it's an entire methodology and approach to data collection and analysis.
Many of the recent contributions add important points - establishing trust as well as the perhaps simpler “rapport” might take time. Understanding what one hears and sees does as well. Gaining a sense of the totality of what one is looking at and for. And, whatever one’s initial design, the situation(s) one encounters might lead to a change of direction or interest.
[email protected]... email me. Ethnography is an approach to understanding the complexities of culture and behavior. There is no single approach. Trust, rapport are cited by researchers who think ethnography is the counterpart to a survey approach. That's naïve
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Comment