Editing Ethnography (section)

===Cultural and social anthropology===
[[Cultural anthropology]] and [[social anthropology]] were developed around ethnographic research and their [[canon (basic principle)|canonical]] texts, which are mostly ethnographies: e.g. ''[[Argonauts of the Western Pacific]]'' (1922) by [[Bronisław Malinowski]], ''Ethnologische Excursion in Johore'' (1875) by [[Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay]], ''[[Coming of Age in Samoa]]'' (1928) by [[Margaret Mead]], ''[[The Nuer]]'' (1940) by [[E. E. Evans-Pritchard]], ''Naven'' (1936, 1958) by [[Gregory Bateson]], or "[[The Lele of the Kasai]]" (1963) by [[Mary Douglas]]. Cultural and social anthropologists today place a high value on doing ethnographic research. The typical ethnography is a document written about a particular people, almost always based at least in part on [[emic]] views of where the culture begins and ends. Using language or community boundaries to bound the ethnography is common.<ref>Naroll, Raoul. ''Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology.''</ref> Ethnographies are also sometimes called "case studies".<ref>Chavez, Leo. ''Shadowed Lives: Undocumented Workers in American Society'' (Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology). 1997, Prentice Hall.</ref> Ethnographers study and interpret culture, its universalities, and its variations through the ethnographic study based on [[fieldwork]]. An ethnography is a specific kind of written observational science which provides an account of a particular culture, society, or community. The fieldwork usually involves spending a year or more in another society, living with the local people and learning about their ways of life. Ruth Fulton Benedict uses examples of Enthrotyhy in her serious of field work that began in 1922 of Serrano, of the Zuni in 1924, the Cochiti in 1925 and the Pina in 1926. All being people she wished to study for her anthropological data. Benedict's experiences with the Southwest Zuni pueblo is to be considered the basis of her formative fieldwork. The experience set the idea for her to produce her theory of "culture is personality writ large" (modell, 1988). By studying the culture between the different Pueblo and Plain Indians, She discovered the culture isomorphism that would be considered her personalized unique approach to the study of anthropology using ethnographic techniques.

[[File:Bronisław Malinowski among Trobriand tribe.jpg|thumb|right|[[Bronisław Malinowski]] among [[Trobriand Islands|Trobriand]] tribe]]
[[File:Noć muzeja 2014, Čakovec - poljoprivredni izlošci.jpg|thumb|right|Part of the ethnographic collection of the [[Međimurje County Museum]] in [[Croatia]]]]
A typical ethnography attempts to be [[holistic]]<ref name="Ember 2006">Ember, Carol and Melvin Ember, ''Cultural Anthropology'' (Prentice Hall, 2006), chapter one.</ref><ref name="Heider, Karl 2001">Heider, Karl. ''Seeing Anthropology''. 2001. Prentice Hall, Chapters One and Two.</ref> and typically follows an outline to include a brief history of the culture in question, an analysis of the [[physical geography]] or terrain inhabited by the people under study, including [[climate]], and often including what biological anthropologists call [[habitat]]. Folk notions of botany and zoology are presented as ethnobotany and ethno-zoology alongside references from the formal sciences. Material culture, technology, and means of subsistence are usually treated next, as they are typically bound up in physical geography and include descriptions of infrastructure. Kinship and social structure (including age grading, peer groups, gender, voluntary associations, clans, moieties, and so forth, if they exist) are typically included. Languages spoken, dialects, and the history of language change are another group of standard topics.<ref>cf. Ember and Ember 2006, Heider 2001 op cit.</ref> Practices of child rearing, acculturation, and emic views on personality and values usually follow after sections on social structure.<ref>Ember and Ember 2006, op cit., Chapters 7 and 8</ref> Rites, rituals, and other evidence of religion have long been an interest and are sometimes central to ethnographies, especially when conducted in public where visiting anthropologists can see them.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Turner |first1=Victor |last2=Turner |first2=Victor Witter |title=The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual |date=1970 |publisher=Cornell University Press |isbn=978-0-8014-9101-6 }}{{page needed|date=February 2020}}</ref>

As ethnography developed, anthropologists grew more interested in less tangible aspects of culture, such as values, worldview and what [[Clifford Geertz]] termed the "ethos" of the culture. In his fieldwork, Geertz used elements of a [[Empirical research|phenomenological]] approach, tracing not just the doings of people, but the cultural elements themselves. For example, if within a group of people, winking was a communicative gesture, he sought to first determine what kinds of things a wink might mean (it might mean several things). Then, he sought to determine in what contexts winks were used, and whether, as one moved about a region, winks remained meaningful in the same way. In this way, cultural boundaries of communication could be explored, as opposed to using linguistic boundaries or notions about the residence. Geertz, while still following something of a traditional ethnographic outline, moved outside that outline to talk about "webs" instead of "outlines"<ref>Geertz, Clifford. ''The Interpretation of Culture,'' Chapter one.</ref> of culture.

Within cultural anthropology, there are several subgenres of ethnography. Beginning in the 1950s and early 1960s, anthropologists began writing "bio-confessional" ethnographies that intentionally exposed the nature of ethnographic research. Famous examples include ''[[Tristes Tropiques]]'' (1955) by Lévi-Strauss, ''The High Valley'' by Kenneth Read, and ''The Savage and the Innocent'' by [[David Maybury-Lewis]], as well as the mildly fictionalized ''Return to Laughter'' by Elenore Smith Bowen ([[Laura Bohannan]]).

Later "[[reflexivity (social theory)|reflexive]]" ethnographies refined the technique to translate cultural differences by representing their effects on the ethnographer. Famous examples include ''Deep Play: Notes on a Balinese Cockfight'' by [[Clifford Geertz]], ''Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco'' by [[Paul Rabinow]], ''The Headman and I'' by Jean-Paul Dumont, and ''Tuhami'' by Vincent Crapanzano. In the 1980s, the rhetoric of ethnography was subjected to intense scrutiny within the discipline, under the general influence of [[literary theory]] and [[postcolonial|post-colonial]]/[[post-structuralist]] thought. "Experimental" ethnographies that reveal the ferment of the discipline include ''Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man'' by [[Michael Taussig]], ''Debating Muslims'' by Michael F. J. Fischer and Mehdi Abedi, ''A Space on the Side of the Road'' by Kathleen Stewart, and ''Advocacy after Bhopal'' by Kim Fortun.

This critical turn in sociocultural anthropology during the mid-1980s can be traced to the influence of the now classic (and often contested) text, ''Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography'', (1986) edited by [[James Clifford (historian)|James Clifford]] and [[George E. Marcus|George Marcus]]. ''Writing Culture'' helped bring changes to both anthropology and ethnography often described in terms of being 'postmodern,' 'reflexive,' 'literary,' 'deconstructive,' or 'poststructural' in nature, in that the text helped to highlight the various epistemic and political predicaments that many practitioners saw as plaguing ethnographic representations and practices.<ref>Olaf Zenker & Karsten Kumoll. ''Beyond Writing Culture: Current Intersections of Epistemologies and Representational Practices.'' (2010). New York: Berghahn Books. {{ISBN|978-1-84545-675-7}}. pp. 1–4</ref>

Where Geertz's and [[Victor Turner|Turner's]] interpretive anthropology recognized subjects as creative actors who constructed their sociocultural worlds out of symbols, postmodernists attempted to draw attention to the privileged status of the ethnographers themselves. That is, the ethnographer cannot escape the personal viewpoint in creating an ethnographic account, thus making any claims of objective neutrality highly problematic, if not altogether impossible.<ref>Paul A. Erickson & Liam D. Murphy. ''A History of Anthropological Theory,'' Third Edition. (2008). Toronto: Broadview Press. {{ISBN|978-1-55111-871-0}}. p. 190</ref> In regards to this last point, ''Writing Culture'' became a focal point for looking at how ethnographers could describe different cultures and societies without denying the subjectivity of those individuals and groups being studied while simultaneously doing so without laying claim to absolute knowledge and objective authority.<ref>Erickson & Murphy (2008). A History of Anthropological Theory, pp. 190–191</ref> Along with the development of experimental forms such as 'dialogic anthropology,' 'narrative ethnography,'<ref>{{cite web |first1=Kristen |last1=Ghodsee |title=Writing Ethnographies that Ordinary People Can Read |work=Anthropology News |date=May 24, 2013 |url=https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/kristenghodsee/files/writing_ethnographies.pdf }}</ref> and 'literary ethnography',<ref>Literary Ethnography http://literary-ethnography.tumblr.com/</ref> ''Writing Culture'' helped to encourage the development of 'collaborative ethnography.'<ref name="ZenkerKumoll">Olaf Zenker & Karsten Kumoll. Beyond Writing Culture: Current Intersections of Epistemologies and Representational Practices. (2010). New York: Berghahn Books. {{ISBN|978-1-84545-675-7}}. p. 12</ref> This exploration of the relationship between writer, audience, and subject has become a central tenet of contemporary anthropological and ethnographic practice. In certain instances, active collaboration between the researcher(s) and subject(s) has helped blend the practice of collaboration in ethnographic fieldwork with the process of creating the ethnographic product resulting from the research.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Nolas |first=Sevasti-Melissa |last2=Varvantakis |first2=Christos |date=2019-09-01 |title=Field Notes for Amateurs |url=https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/27291/1/%5B15585727%20-%20Social%20Analysis%5D%20Field%20Notes%20for%20Amateurs.pdf |journal=Social Analysis |language=en |volume=63 |issue=3 |pages=130–148 |doi=10.3167/sa.2019.630308 |issn=0155-977X}}</ref><ref name="ZenkerKumoll"/><ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Lassiter | first1 = Luke E. | year = 2001 | title = From 'Reading over the Shoulders of Natives' to 'Reading alongside Natives', Literally: Toward a Collaborative and Reciprocal Ethnography | journal = Journal of Anthropological Research| volume = 57 | issue = 2| pages = 137–149 | doi=10.1086/jar.57.2.3631564| s2cid = 147547789 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Lassiter | first1 = Luke E. | year = 2005| title = Collaborative Ethnography and Public Anthropology | journal = Current Anthropology | volume = 46 | issue = 1| pages = 83–106 | doi=10.1086/425658| s2cid = 147418975 }}</ref>