Ethnography

The Nature of Ethnography:

Ethnography began with the awareness of the existence of more than one culture. As humans learned to travel, we documented the differences encountered among the people of different lands. From as far back as Greek myths, historians have documented the strangeness of others’ ways. We also know of the missionaries in the 19th century that were crucial in developing anthropological methods in most continents through letters and diaries. But when did this travel writing break off into what researchers consider the ethnography that we know today? What does the fieldwork of ethnography truly encompass?

It was not until 1871 that the English Quaker, Edward Burnett Tylor, with his book entitled Primitive Culture, brought the idea of culture into a meaningful relation. He studied the differences among the cultures and brought them ethnographic facts. Even though many of the facts entertained were later proven false, the ethnographic concepts have been the basics still used today.

At the same time, the American lawyer Lewis Henry Morgan, who was studying the local Native American Indians, published the book Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity (1871). This book discussed social organization and family kinship terminologies at the small-scale society level. A culture-based concept was beginning to emerge. This is the education that ethnography was bringing to anthropologists everywhere. Culture is the basis that differentiates people.

One of the biggest problems the anthropologists of the time faced was that they would generalize facts from only single instances. An example of this is how ethnography was seen as a complete record. Once a snapshot of a culture was taken the study was done. We now know that this is not the case. The study of a culture is constantly changing and growing. Concepts such as this were assumed and not proven. The first documented ethnographic expedition was British. It was to the Torres Strait Islands between Papua New Guinea and the Cape York Peninsula of Australia. Its mission was to study native societies by collecting the facts. No more were travelers in charge of gathering data. Ethnography was evolving professionally.

At the same time, the British published the first ethnographic study book entitled Notes and Queries in Anthropology. It compiled a series of questions and blank spaces to gather answers aimed at studying other cultures. This book was of little use and of even less consequence for several reasons. First, in an ethnographic study the questions should change and be tailored to the interviewee. Second, translating the questions according to the culture you are visiting can be tricky and should not be done literally. Third, we now know that using a standard question technique is not nearly enough for an effective ethnographer. Observation and description also should be used as techniques for research to be deemed valuable, valid, and reliable.

The ethnographic tradition as we know it in the United States today actually derives from one single man. Franz Boas (1858-1942), who was born in Germany, and got his doctorate at the University of Kiel in 1881, influenced most of the leading anthropologists of our time. He spent most of his career at Columbia University where he taught the four fields of anthropology: archaeological, cultural, linguistic, and physical. Boas stressed studying cultural differences and their historical development. He brought us two ideas that are still debated today: cultural relativism (“He meant that every culture is to be judged by its own premises.” ) and cultural determinism. He also was a big proponent of women as students and professionals in the field.

Meanwhile, a Polish anthropologist by the name of Bronislaw Manilowski settled in the Trobriand Islands of New Guinea. He became and coined a new term and field of research: participant observation. As defined by Paul Bohannan and Dirk van der Elst in asking and Listening, “That is to say: the ethnographer lives with the people he or she studies, as closely as they will allow, and as fully as he or she can tolerate.” He was not the first to use this method. “However, Malinowski did formalize the method as a basis for writing ethnography, and he did train a whole generation of anthropologists to do ethnography that way. Today every adequate ethnographer does his or her fieldwork in the native tongue of the people being studied.”

While Boas was interested in the texts and collecting the spoken language, Malinowski was interested in interacting among people. They both had the language piece in common. The native language spoken by the researcher was crucial. On the other hand, the method of collecting was very different. Returning to England after the First World War, Malinowski became known as the leading ethnographer of the British school. When we talk about the two different schools, this is the difference that we are talking about: Boas represents the American school, while Malinowski represents the British school. This differentiation continued for several decades.

The next step in history came in 1926 with Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard, known as E-P. E-P studied with Malinowski but differed with him in that he pioneered, “that understanding why people do it the way they do it is the theory.” This is what ethnography is today. All of a sudden, understanding why people do things in a culture has been given more importance. This in itself had never before been researched. It is now part of the researcher’s job to observe the behavior of her subjects as to gather answers. This was a complex matter. It is very hard to interview a subject about her own culture and ask why she does something they are not aware of. What E-P realized is that every culture has very legitimate reasons for doing what they do. As outsiders, we may question their motives, but it is usually ignorance or lack of understanding. It is also very hard for researchers to find these answers without submerging themselves in the culture. This can bring the researcher culture shock but it is a necessary step in the process.

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A Working Definition:

So, now that the history and nature of ethnography has been exposed, let’s discuss what ethnography is exactly. Let’s begin with a simple definition. “.... The branch of anthropology that deals with the scientific description of specific human cultures.” Beginning with a dictionary’s definition is always a smart way to go, but this is a little too simplistic for this paper. Let’s get a little deeper and let me give you yet another definition that might interest you. This one came from an article entitled “Ethnography and Archaeology - How do archaeologists use the study of people in the present to learn about people on the past?” by Carol McDavid. It states: “An ethnography is the study of a group of living people - how they live, how they interact, what they believe, how they behave, what kinds of objects they use, and what they do. It focuses on one group at one place in time - ethnographers (also sometimes known as ‘cultural anthropologists’ or ‘behavioural anthropologists’ or ‘social anthropologists’) generally spend a great deal of time living with and interacting with the group of people they are studying.”

Different definitions may add different perspectives to the origins of ethnography. Bohannan and Elst bring us the following two quotes. “The oldest organized approach is found in anthropology. Anthropologists invented what we call ‘ethnography’, which is its label for ‘an orderly description of people with exotic lifeways’ -exotic, that is, to the reader: there are a growing number of ethnographers reporting on their own societies. The ‘ethno’ comes from the same root as ‘ethnic’: the ‘other’ people.”

“Ethnography, the approach which anthropologists pioneered, is no longer ‘merely’ the description of the lifeways of exotic and faraway folk; it is now both a vast and growing reference library, and a busy enterprise for making people from different cultures comprehensible to each other. Its subject matter ranges from the familiar to the mind-boggling.”

I believe the above covers not only the gamut of definitions of ethnography but it also reflects a little of how time has changed our ideas on this research field. Unfortunately, it also reflects how much of an imperfect science it can be. Due to the intrinsic nature of the observer being also the researcher, this field of study stands to be constantly under attack. It is the job of the fieldworker to make sure to set clear premises and to convey them to the reader. This may at times be a challenging task.

Unfortunately, being a qualitative research other issues also arise. For example, there is the constant balance for the researcher to try to remain unbiased in all scientific pursuits. Specifically in ethnographic studies and by the nature of the observer being in the middle of the fieldwork, she will always affect her surroundings in some way. This inevitable involvement has to be acknowledged in the data gathering for results to be valid. In fact, the case may be that involvement is more desirable and sought for data collecting. In some circumstances cultures will not trust a researcher that does not join in the musical events.

Time is also a very important factor for an ethnographer. It is imperative to plan ahead and be organized about the amount of time to be spent within a culture. It is crucial to have enough time to study your subjects and to gather the data needed for the research. If the scope of the data is too narrow, then the results will not be valid nor reliable. On the other hand, too much time spent within the culture can also be detrimental to the process. If the time is too prolonged the researcher is jeopardizing staying neutral and being able to document the data concisely and objectively, making the study null.

This kind of research is based on what is known as “primary source” research. What this means is that the researcher is obtaining his data directly from the source. There is no third vehicle. For example, if a historian was reading a document and basing his research on this document, this would be a secondary source and nor primary. This makes this kind of research very valuable. Yet the researcher must be careful not to interfere or become bias with the primary source. This is a time risk.

So far this paper has discussed the history of ethnography and its definition. The next question that I would like to address is what makes for an effective ethnographer. Many of the difficulties that an ethnographer encounters when beginning her research are in the essence of her own culture. It is very difficult separating oneself from what we know, our own belief system. This is exactly what we have to do though to study another culture. An effective fieldworker will submerge themselves in another tradition to research it. This is no easy task. Usually culture shock will initially occur. There will be emotional distress. As I have previously discussed, there are also the issues associated with any qualitative research study of personal bias that cannot be separated. All researchers must stay as neutral as possible and/or must acknowledge their involvement in their own research.

The most important things to keep in mind when doing an ethnographic study is to keep the study in the context of the culture being studied; to keep the study holistically (“that is, with regard for all of its interrelated aspects” ); and to record it based, not on the researcher’s point of view, but the participants’ perspective. This kind of study is inherently based on the understanding of human behaviour and, as such, obviously subjective. Thus, it is only through experience and research that the observer can best gather and collect data. It is for this reason that my origin and upbringing in this island will be a great asset to this study. It is a research of social interaction in its natural habitat. This is also why this type of research, ethnography, is best suited for this educational question.

An ethnographer’s involvement in the culture may take many shapes. One can be just as an observer and an interviewer. “One is the student-child-apprentice learning role of the ethnographer.” This may lead her to learn the music and dances of the people that she is studying. In fact, this engagement may be preferable at times for better understanding of social and even political issues and events. One can be as a documenter and historian. This can be through dictation of the written word, through newspaper articles, books, audio and video recordings. Technology has enormously widened our range of possibilities. The internet has made it possible for us to view what is happening on one side of the world from another while conversing and sharing information in real time. This is very exciting for our field, but it will hopefully not omit the actual time spent doing the fieldwork.

In this particularly case, we have an archipelago of islands that have remained pretty intact. The transmission of music has not been affected by this technology much. Music is still a source of entertainment. Yet, its performance is taken quite seriously. The culture is centered around the joy of singing and dancing. It is in the people’s hearts and souls. Learning to sing, play an instrument and to dance is not a question of if but a question of when. Music is learned both at the informal and formal level.

Music & Music Education in the Canary Islands

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Wednesday, January 2, 2008 6:02 PM

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© 2008 Emma Rodríguez Suárez