Ethnography

Conceptual Overview

The origins of ethnography are sometimes traced to the unknown sources of the Greek historian Herodotus, but modern versions of ethnography did not begin to emerge until the 19th century. A problem faced by the early ethnographers was just how to set off their own cultural depictions as different in kind from the writings of others such as travelers, missionaries, adventurers, and governmental and military officials. Anticipating the eventual emergence of scientific cultural study, a member of the pioneering Societes des Observateurs de l'Homme, Joseph-Maria Dégerando, suggested in 1800 that the problem “with observations of explorers on savages is their incompleteness [which was] only to be expected given the shortness of their stay, the division of their attention, and the absense of any regular tabulation of their findings.” While the beginnings of a professional ethnography appear during the early 19th century, another 100 or so years would pass before a more or less intensive form of fieldwork would become the recognized method of ethnography.

The turn to firsthand experience in ethnography is credited in Britain to Bronislaw Malinowski, a Polish anthropologist, who, under house arrest by the British and conveniently confined to the South Pacific for the duration of World War I, found himself living alongside the natives of the Trobriand Islands for several years. In America, Franz Boas is credited with pushing the ethnographer from the university and museums into the lifeworlds of those about whom they wrote. The crucial contribution of both men was to urge students to stop relying on secondhand reports (correspondent or native) and to go to the field themselves to collect their own data.

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