Qualitative Research, History of

Colonial Ethnography

Qualitative research during this second phase (17th to the 19th century) was regarded in terms of colonial ethnography. During this period, ethnographic descriptions and analyses, written by Western explorers, missionaries, and colonial administrators, were deposited in church archives and/or local and national archives. Many of these early writings sought to civilize the world. These accounts are regarded by some contemporary ethnographers as biased, and attempts are made to separate more recent ethnographies from earlier Western reports. Colonial administrators, fostering a type of colonial pluralism, created a new type of anthropology, which did not focus on natives and their social processes, and highlighted the positive preservation effects of indirect rule. This period would [Page 707]later shift in emphasis to encapsulate Auguste Comte's comparative method and theories surrounding the social evolution of culture and civilization. These evolutionary theories led to the creation of a cultural classification system handbook to guide the ethnographers' observations and provide the basis for the classification of traits. Ethnographic findings based on this classification of cultural traits were housed in the Human Relations Area Files at Yale University. The two main themes of this period—colonial ethnography and evolutionary schemes and cultural traits—were challenged by decolonization movements in Africa and Asia and critiques of ideas related to the primitive. This phase saw the introduction of news terms such as underdeveloped and third world. Research opportunities available to the ethno graphic researcher decreased dramatically as ethnographers were regarded as partially responsible for the underdeveloped nature of third world countries. Ethnographers thus turned their attention to linguistic analysis, American society, and the files based at Yale University.

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