ETHNOGRAPHY

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.

II.          OBJECTIVE

Some people may feel strange when they hear the word “ethnography” itself, and what the Ethnograpy is for.  The objective of Ethnography is to understand about the point of view of the people’s life, related to the ethnographer’s life. Therefore, ethnography studies involved learning activity about the human world that have learnt to see, listen, speak, think and act in different ways. So ethnography does not only learn about society, but also learn from society. According to James Spradley in Banyusumilir’s blog on December 16, 2008, Ethnography is done for certain objectives. The first is for understanding the ethnic group and the second is for serving the human. It means that Ethnographer can give the problem solving from the research which she or he has done.

III.       FEATURES

The features of Ethnography are:

1.      Combining the participative and non-participative observations to obtain the whole description of the certain society, community, institution or situation

2.      Emphasizing to documentations or description of daily experiences of the people by observing and interviewing naturally

3.      Doing in depth in interview continuously and participative observation constantly

4.      Seldom beginning the research by hypothesis early

IV.       RESPONSIBILITY OF A ETHNOGRAPHER

In this method, if someone wants to take Ethnography as her or his research, she or he must have some responsibilities such following:

1.      Doing the natural observation of the regular attitudes of entire individuals learnt in the certain society being researched

2.      Describing the conclusion carefully

3.      Giving the special action to the result of the research in the different contexts

V.          CAPABILITY TO BE ETHNOGRAPHER

Actually to be ethnographer is not easy. She or he must have some capability such as:

1.      logic of discovery

2.      clever to be actor in various situations

3.      having sensitiveness and art

4.      having creativities to write and make tactics to eavesdropping and tracer

VI.       ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES

The advantages of ethnography are:

1.      Giving the ethnographer the comprehensive view of the culture problem researching

2.      Being able to detect the problems which other methods can not be, because it is considered to be able to find out and dig out the information in depth by the wide sources

3.      Being able to obtain the more accuracy of description happening in the certain society

The disadvantages of ethnography are:

1. There is no statistic to check the valid data of the ethnographer’s conclusion, so it is possible there will be a deviation from the ethnographer

2. The specific variable being researched is not clear, because the research is begun without the specific hypothesis to emphasize or object it

3. There is no generalization

4. It needs long time to get a good result

VII.    STEPS TO INTERVIEW

According to James Spradley, there are twelve steps to interview in Ethnography method. The ethnographer has to:

1.      determine the informants

2.      interview the informants in speech events

3.      make ethnographic notes

4.      give the descriptive question

5.      analyze the ethnographic interview

6.      make a domain analysis

7.      give the structural questions as the next stage after identifying of domain

8.      make a taxonomic analysis

9.      give the contrast questions

10.  make a component analysis

11.  find out the cultural themes

12.  write a ethnography

VIII. CONCLUSION

   Although Ethnography needs a long time in a certain setting, in depth of interview and a big energy to be observatory participant, it can analyze in depth and detail to give reflection of micro human life, and in its application it cannot leave other methods. May it be able to be useful for us as the teachers or lecturers to face the micro culture which begins reduced by macro globalization so the existence of ethnography can become a research method which will solve it.