Reflection on ‘What is Ethnography?’ by Hammersley and Atkinson

Ethnography according to Hammersley and Atkinson “involves the researcher participating overtly or covertly, in people’s daily lives for an extended period of time” (1995: 3). This informs me that ethnography is a method of observatory research where the researcher can alter how much participation they will have within their chosen study field. By preforming this research covertly, the information collected should be more accurate. Research is still interpreted differently by everyone, but there will be untainted information. Preforming the ethnographic study overtly, could lead to more personal bias seeping through, but it does allow the element of interviews to come into play, which is important for developing research already collected.   Hammersley and Atkinson continue their definition with the fact that the researcher is “watching what happens, what is said, and/or asking questions through informal and formal interviews, collecting documents and artefacts.” (1995: 3) This explanation tells of the combination of the interview process but also shows a little bit of the method discourse analyse, which will come through when analysing what the participants have said. It’s interesting to see a method this well rounded, because it has the ability to use these other research methods to expand the research, while still being known as ethnography. 

To educate ourselves on different cultures, a way of observing them needs to be applied. The reason ethnography works so well is because it looks at people in their everyday lives. As Hammersley and Atkinson point out ‘Human behaviour is continually constructed, and reconstructed, on the basis of people’s interpretations of the situations they are in’. (1995: 8) This tells me that people adapt to the world around them they adapt to survive the situations they are put in. It’s important when researching to take into account the participants cultural, social, economical, etc. situation because their answers will more than likely be influenced by those concepts. By researching using the ethnographic approach, researchers would have been able to see the context influencing their answer and could adapt their findings around this.

Overall, I like the method of ethnography, because of the many ways in which it investigates culture and the freedom around how you preform the research. It does potentially, like any other research method, have the potential to be tainted by bias, but it is an in-depth observation process that can yield great research.

Bibliography:

Hammersley, M. and P. Atkinson. (1995) ‘“What is ethnography?” in Ethnography: Principles in Practise,’ Routledge.