How Does an Ethnographer Start?

The first generation of ethnographers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries engaged in what has come to be known as salvage ethnography (Gruber 1970), an attempt to document the rituals, practices, myths, and languages of traditional cultures facing extinction from dislocation or modernization. However, over the past fifty years this emphasis on what Harry Wolcott (1999) has called place-based “ethnographic broadside” (p. 25), that is, the desire to document everything about a particular society, has shifted to a problem focus in which a particular problem or topic of interest guides the entire research endeavor. Such problems are guided and propelled by a specific set of research questions. As Margaret Mead (1928) explained about her own ethnographic research in Samoa, “I have tried to answer the question which sent me to Samoa: Are the disturbances which vex our adolescents due to the nature of adolescence itself or to the civilization? Under different conditions does adolescence present a different picture?” (pp. 14–17). More recently Rebecca Bliege Bird's questions about gender differences in fishing strategies guided her research among the Meriam (Torres Strait Islanders). Bird (2007) asked, “Are the differences in fishing preferences between the sexes predicted by resource variance or child-care trade-offs?” (p. 443).

Along with logistical opportunities and constraints, these questions shaped the decisions Mead and Bird, like other ethnographers, made about the location of their fieldwork, the focus of their study, and their data collection methods. Because ethnographic research involves extended fieldwork, ethnographers must identify and gain access to a field setting that will provide data sufficient to answer their research questions. Mead traveled to Samoa to collect data that would answer her questions; Bird traveled equally far, to the Meriam Islands on the northern Great Barrier Reef, for information on gender, familial responsibilities, and the division of labor. But as David Fetterman (1989) asserts, “The ideal site for investigation of the research problem is not always accessible” (p. 42). The ideal is always balanced by the possible, and concerns about travel funds, available time, and gaining access are always at the fore. Resources to support fieldwork are an issue; travel to foreign locales is costly, and next to impossible, unless outside funding can be secured.

Access, whether to a Pacific village or to a community center in the researcher's own neighborhood, also involves the consent and support of gatekeepers, that is, individuals who control access to something or some place. Ethnographers who hope to study learning and teaching in formal settings, for example, are dependent on the cooperation of school boards, school principals, and classroom teachers. In her research on social class and parental intervention in elementary school settings, Annette Lareau (2000) studied in two schools. Although she was granted access to both, her reception by school personnel differed drastically: she was welcomed by one school and regarded with some distrust at the other. Lareau traced the difference in reception to her points of contact at each school. She arrived at the first after two years as a graduate assistant on another project at the school. The school-based administrators knew her and welcomed her presence. They were interested in her research question, and the presence of previous researchers had made the school personnel “a bit blasé about the entire matter” (p. 203). She accessed the second school through the district office, and consequently had a far more formal relationship with the school principal and classroom teachers. In other situations, gatekeepers are not school principals, but central government officials and headmen. In my own research in Botswana I worked through several layers of gatekeepers: officials in Botswana's national government, department chairs and faculty at the University of Botswana, village chiefs, church leaders, and literacy teachers, to name just a few.

In addition to gaining access from gatekeepers, ethnographers, like other researchers, must obtain approval from institutional review boards (IRBs) in order to conduct research. Every university, as well as hospitals and government agencies, has an IRB that oversees all research conducted by faculty, staff, and students that involves humans as the subjects of a study (see also Chapter Two). The role of the IRB is to protect participants in proposed research projects.

However, ethnographic research differs from many other kinds of research in both length and depth of relationship with informants. Ethnographers have a distinctive obligation to the people they are studying. Anthropologists abide by a code of ethics developed and advanced by the American Anthropological Association (AAA) (www.aaanet.org/committees/ethics/ethcode.htm). It's important to note that ethnographers from other disciplines abide by the discipline's code of conduct; sociologists follow the Code of Ethics of the American Sociological Association (ASA) (www.asanet.org/about/ethics.cfm), whereas psychologists follow the Ethical Principals of Psychologists and Code of Conduct of the American Psychological Association (www.apa.org/ethics/code/index.aspx). Approval from an IRB requires submission of an application and the assurance that individuals who participate in a study will have given their informed consent. According to the AAA, informed consent includes “communication of information, comprehension of information, and voluntary participation” (American Anthropological Association, 2004, p. 1). However, although informed consent usually involves a signed form, in certain circumstances, such as when people are unable to sign or distrustful of signing their name to official-looking documents, ethnographers can request that oral informed consent be considered sufficient. In addition, the ethnographer must also guarantee the confidentiality of all research participants and that they will be neither harmed nor exploited by their participation.