When I began studying anthropology, we debated the degree to which rigorous scientific methods should be applied in our work. Essentially, ours was a soft science that focussed on listening with intensity, questioning everything, and digging into the whys and wherefores of a culture. Being an ethnographer was a bit like being a 2 year old: why, why, but why???
We compared our approach to sociologists who surveyed, surveyed, surveyed, then added up the numbers and provided means and margins of error.
We expected to be hired by universities and museums with years to pursue our studies and ponder our experiences. But now there is a desire to hire ethnographers in a wider range of research environments and some of these ask us to package our results in statistical terms that translate into accountable ROIs.
I studied research design, sampling, data collection & analysis, and interviewing. But mostly I studied how other anthropologists went into the field, to listen and translate what they experienced into terms that Westerners could understand. Over time, we felt our way through the traps of labels like "gender" or "kinship," in our attempts to express each culture using its own standards, so that our audiences might begin to experience what it felt like to be "other."
If today there is a call for more qualitative results, it seems to be coupled with the expectation of quantifiable results: an ROI. If so, ethnography may bend itself out of shape trying to become a practical field with business- approved targets. Ethnography could become a science aimed at discovering which strings to pull to get more people to buy; its end being to manipulate cultures, not understand them.
Intel's People and Practices Research (PaPR). Sociologists and ethnographers live in emerging markets to identify products that local people might want.
The core of ethnography is research where people are interviewed in a “natural” setting. But don't underestimate this friendly-sounding approach. "Trained ethnographers do more than talk with people – they rely on a set of analytical tools that require experience and specialized training."
Alert Magazine: Ethnography. How to know if it’s right for your study...
By Gavin Johnston & Melinda Rea-Holloway