Skip to main content

SAGE Social Science Thesaurus

Search from vocabulary

Concept information

Preferred term

ethnographic writing  

Definition

  • Ethnography is an in-depth description of a culture or group of people sharing a culture. It is a fairly straightforward idea until one begins to ask troubling questions, such as: What is a culture? What are the boundaries of the group of people we are describing? Who describes them and upon what terms? What is the point of view of the description? The questions can become more difficult and even esoteric: “Who is privileged? Is it the narrator or the people?” “How objective or subjective can the narrator be?” “Should the narrator attempt to be objective?” The entire issue of reflexivity has come to the fore in ethnographic writing over the past 20 years or so. [Source: Encyclopedia of Anthropology; Ethnographic Writing]

Belongs to group

URI

http://data.loterre.fr/ark:/67375/N9J-QSR5ZMKH-W

Download this concept: