Riska Sutriyati
Sebelas Maret University of
Surakarta
2011
I.
DEFINITION
What is Ethnography? Ethnography is
derived from the word “Ethno”
means society or nation, and “Graph” means description or
presentation. According to Hammersley and Athikon (1983: 2 in Jensen and
Jankowski, 1991: 153), Ethnography is:
“Simply one social research method, albeit an unusual
one, drawing on a wide range of sources information. The ethnographer
participates in people’s lives for an extended period of time, watching what happens;
listening to what is said, asking questions, collecting whatever data are
available to throw light on issues with which he or she concerned.”
So we know that
Ethnography is a method to do qualitative research by searching, describing the
culture of a society in depth and over a great deal of time, even often months
or years to get the professionalism of the result. Although the culture here is
wide in meaning, but generally Ethnography is centered to the patterns of
activities, language, beliefs and the way of life. The main point of
ethnography is an effort to shows the meaning of action from the event that
happen to the people in a community that we want to understand about.
