1. Ethnography and
Participant Observation
PAUL ATKINSON
MARTYN HAMMERSLEY
Presented by
Ferry JAOLIS

2. Science and Social Life: 3 Dimensions
• Differences in views about which of the natural
sciences is to be taken as paradigmatic for scientific
method.
• There can be various interpretations even of any
method held to be characteristic of particular sciences
at particular times.
• There can be disagreements about what aspects of
natural scientific method should and should not be
applied to social research.

3. ETHNOGRAPHY vs
SCIENCE
1 Relies on artificial settings (in the case of experiments)
2 Relies on what people ‘say’ than ‘do’ (in survey)
3 Reducing ‘observable’ meanings.
4 A ‘static’ social phenomena.

4. Natural science is…
• Cultural disillusionment
• A highly destructive weaponry
• An oppressive force that dominates the modern world
• Sometimes associated with ‘male’ aggression and
‘patriarchy’
LINK WITH THE
SCIENCE MODEL HUMANITIES

5. QUESTIONING THE OBJECTIVITY OF SOCIAL RESEARCH: ETHNOGRAPHY
1 2
• Findings of social • Is it possible to become
research (including a ‘social scientific
ethnography) were knowledge’?
too ‘masculin’. • The findings reflect
• Limited by a male only presuppositions
point of view. and sociohistorical
• A bourgeois social circumstances.
science, advocates of • The ability of these
black sociology. research to produce
knowledge that is
‘universally valid’.

6. The criticism against ethnography
• OBJECTIVITY:
– The observers presence may in itself contribute to results that are
inaccurate; Since the observed behavior is not usual behavior, hence
the derived results are false because it does not depict normal
behavior.
– Reflect only the masculinity assumptions of researchers.
– The possibility of ethno to become knowledge which is impossible due
to the production of the ethno works only constructions, based on
presuppositions ; cannot be universal knowledge.
– The ‘literary’ models and motifs of the ehnographers are similar to
each other.
This whole criticism were lately turn to ‘skepticism’ or ‘relativism’

7. Another debate about ethnography
• The relationship of it to social and political practice:
– Most ethnography has been directed toward contributing to
disciplinary knowledge rather than solving practical problems.
– An applied anthropology movements in USA indicating a stand where
the ethnographers direct their orientation to solving practical
problems.
– In Britain, ironnically, this ‘applied ethnography’ trends has been more
obvious to commercial market research than in gov-funded work.
– These trends causing some modifications of ethnographic practict
– These trends also arisen out from the concern about the lack of
impact that ethnographic has on social & political practice, which in
turn, demanding more that practitioners themselves must included in
the research to make it more practically relevant, this led to
‘collaborative research’.

8. The end of the debate…contd.
• The main goal of ethnography is ‘the production of
knowledge’, of which should not be replaced with the
pursuit of practical goals, because:
– The practical goals are no more worthy than the pursuit of
knowledge in terms of time and effort.
– The goals themselves sometimes not practically
achieveable.
• Conclusion on this that we have to stay focus on the
production of knowledge and not misprioritize it with the
goal of practical solution to the social and political world.

9. Rethoric and Representation
• Recently, there are more attention to the aesthetics and
ethics of ethnographic texts: authority and authorship,
connection among rhetoric, representation, and logic
generally.
• This rhetoric follows the theoretical and methodological
tendencies like feminism, poststructuralism, and
postmodernism, especially from cultural and social
anthropologist, recently by sociologists.
• Regardless those various tendencies, the ‘broad theme’ of
rhetoric among all disciplines are: conventionality of
ethno texts, representation of ‘Self’ and ‘Other’ in such
texts, the character of ethno as textual genre, the nature
of ethno argumentation, and the rhetoric of evidence.

10. Rethoric and Representation
• …..
• Among social and cultural anthropologists,
the standard ethno or monograph was
sometimes a taken-for-granted format.
• In 1973, Geertz, claiming that those
anthropological writings could be regarded
as ‘ fiction’, because; crafted by their
authors, shaped by ‘literary’ conventions These two experts
and devices.
sought to
• In 1986, Clifford and Marcus’ works on
illuminate the
Writing Culture, is a sign of critical
awareness on ethno textuality, ‘literary’
emphasizing the textual imposition that antecedents that
anthropology exerts over its subject are similar among
matter, also the interplay of the ‘literary’. anthropologists

11. The ‘literary’ critics of Atkinson
• Atkinson (1982) track the origin of these ‘literary’
and ‘parallels’ of the social ethno associated with
Chicago school, USA He criticize the literary also.
• In 1990, Atkinson identifies the
recurrent/repeated textual methods and motifs
that ethno construct their texts, using a various
major devices and tropes (kiasan/figure of
speech):
– Narrative forms used to convey accounts of social
action and causation.
– Uses of various figures of speech such as metaphor,
irony, and synecdoche.

12. Rethoric and Representation
• Some aspects of ‘literary’ antecedents
criticized were:
– For anthropology, an attention to literary as well as biographical
affinities between the work of Malinowski and Conrad (by
Clifford, 1988), between surrealism and French ethno (Cllfford,
1988), and in the poetic writing of Benedict and Sapir (Brady,
1991)
– Atkinson (1982) revealed an identification of Chicago school
urban ethno with the naturalistic and realistic novels of American
literature.
– In Britain, the sociologists like Booth and Rowntree have major
affinities/closeness with several literary models.
– Even famous author/writer of fictional products such as Dickens,
provide real mixtures of realism, melodrama, and grotesque that
similar to the sociological tradition.

13. Fight against the literary criticism of ethno
• In 1990, a group of British anthro revealed the different
textual styles according to different regional biases and
preoccupations, criticizing back the ‘literary critics’ for
treating anthro ethno as a undifferentiated textual type.
• In 1988, Van Maanen explores various modes of ethno
writing, contrasting the style of ‘realist’ (typically being
central, more impersonal) and ‘confessional’ (typically
being marginal, more personal) among sociologists and
anthros.

14. Implications of rhetorical turns:
• Has ethical and political implications
• A paradox between the ethnographers and the
ethnography as textual product:
– On one hand is the ethno’s epistemological, personal, and
moral commitment to his/her hosts, an assimilation
between the observer and observed in ‘social and culture’,
a ‘shared social world’.
– On the other hand, the classic text of ethno itself claimed a
radical distinction between the Author and the Other. For
example, in the methods of ‘realist’, the Author has
privilege voice to the text written, but the voice of the
Other is muted. Regarding this, a movement occurs to
produce more ‘dialogic’ forms of ethno writing replacing
the ‘monologic’ ones (a work example of Dwyer, 1982).

15. The role of ‘participant observation’:
• The rhetorical turn has intimately related to a
‘postmodern’ tendency in the construction of
ethnography; explores the discontinuities, paradoxes, and
inconsistencies of culture and action.
• Thus, the postmodern author seeks to eliminate the
distance between the observer and the observed. The
use of ‘participant observation’ thus is to produce a
‘dialogue’ that shows the ‘cooperative and collaborative’
nature of the ethno situation (Tyler, 1986).