Doing Critical Ethnography

Critical ethnography shares many methods and goals with more traditional approaches to ethnography. Both attempt to explain social phenomena from the participants' point of view; both privilege local knowledge and experience; and both use participant observation, interviews, focus groups, and general immersion into a local context to generate these insights. The process of doing critical ethnography bears much resemblance to doing ethnography that is interpretive in nature (Schensul, Schensul, & LeCompte, 1999). Immersion is a key part of both ethnographic and critical ethnographic research:

Both ethnographers and critical ethnographers formulate research questions; consult and are in conversation with the existing research literature; collect data through various means (for example, observation, interviews, document review); and code our data by searching for patterns and outlying cases. Because there is a chapter in this volume on ethnography (Chapter Seven), I will not repeat that information here. Instead I will discuss some of the issues and considerations that critical ethnographers generally face during various phases of the research process.

Background Assumptions

Critical ethnographers ascribe to a set of assumptions that guide our work. As previously explained, these assumptions include (1) that power shapes people's experiences, relationships, and everyday occurrences; (2) that marginalization and oppression exist; (3) that surface-level appearances are not always accurate; and (4) that social change is possible. Critical ethnographers do not spend time attempting to illustrate or prove these basic assumptions because they are already grounded in existing research. We move forward from these previously established points.

Topic Selection

Critical ethnographers can choose from the same range and variation of topics as any other researcher, but the topics are always approached from a particular angle. Our choice of topic and context is often guided by an interest in examining power and oppression, but because we believe power and oppression are always present, we can direct our examination just about anywhere. Indeed, topic selection “begins with a passion to investigate an injustice (for example, racism); social control (language, norms, or cultural rules); power; stratification; or allocation of cultural rewards and resources to illustrate how cultural meanings constrain existence” (Thomas, 1993, p. 36). It can sometimes be difficult to narrow in on a particular area of study because the focus of critical ethnography is often on contexts and situations that are meant to hide the ways power and oppression operate.

Study Design and Method

Decisions about how to design a research project and the methods to employ for data collection are central to all research and greatly influence the degree to which a project is critically oriented. Critical ethnographers identify data sources that are most likely to provide “insider” perspectives of the given topic. We do not assume that all data are equally useful, and we are alert to data sources that may be reinforcing patterns of privilege and oppression and those that may be resisting the status quo. A critical ethnographer may, for example, decide to pay special attention to the voices of gay and lesbian people within a community struggling with homophobia and heterosexism. If the knowledge shared by these individuals contradicts the knowledge offered by straight men and women in the community, the researcher would need to figure out the meanings behind the differences and may decide that the perspectives of the gay and lesbian individuals need to be heard more.

Data Analysis and Interpretation

Although data analysis in critical ethnography follows similar techniques as in other qualitative research (for example, coding, asking questions, making comparisons, looking for patterns and negative cases), critical ethnographers are especially interested in the nonliteral meanings of language and other forms of communication. We might, for example, examine how certain phrases (such as “at risk” or “welfare mothers”) carry particular meanings within a community or how silence (that is, the absence of talk) communicates particular messages. Because we assume the presence of unbalanced power relations and structures that are meant to obscure these, we pay close attention to the various, and sometimes competing, meanings embedded in our data.

Writing It Up

Critical ethnographers think about the intended and unintended audiences and consequences of our work. Our goal is to speak truth to power, and yet we also must protect the anonymity of our participants. In other words, although our research must be specific enough to spark changes in policies and practices and among those in positions of power, we have to be careful that the way we write up our research is not compromising the trust and identities of those with whom we conducted the research. We are also alert to instances that merely exoticize or romanticize particular people or circumstances. Because critical ethnography is aimed at social change, we consider which venues will be most effective for sharing our findings.