ethnographic essay example

15 Great Ethnography Examples

Ethnography is a research method that involves embedding yourself in the environment of a group or community and recording what you observe. It often involves the researcher living in the community being studied. This leads to a much richer understanding of the people being examined than doing quantitative research.

The thing I love about ethnography is that it paints a thorough picture of people’s lives. It is, in its own way, the most raw, honest, and detailed form of academic research.

In my previous blog posts, I have discussed my admiration for thick description as a way to pierce beyond stereotypes and view the world through the lens of our subjects.

And there’s no doubt that ethnographic research has helped us learn so much more about how people navigate their cultural circumstances.

Below are some examples of ethnography – both abstract (with the hope that it helps students think about some ways they can do ethnography) and real-life (with the hope that you will read some inspiring ethnographic studies).

Ethnography Examples

To start, here are some ways you could potentially do ethnography:

• Ethnography of Indigenous People: There are many examples of ethnographic studies that look at indigenous cultures and how they’re similar or different to Western culture. Beware of the trap of colonialism during this work.
• Mundane Ethnography: Remember, ethnography doesn’t have to happen in a far off land. You can do autoethnography where you study yourself , or a study of somewhere very banal, like your workplace or home.
• Educational Ethnography: There is a rich history of teachers and researchers using ethnographic methods in classrooms to explore how learning happens.
• Ethnography in a Shop: Be the ethnographer within a supermarket by interacting with the people there on a daily basis (maybe as the cashier) and observe how people interact and collide within the space.
• Working-Class and Immigrant Ethnography: Many sociologists use ethnographic methods to take an inside look at how people on the margins of society grapple with global concepts like capitalism, globalization, and race.
• Digital Ethnography: Since the rise of the internet, there have been many researchers interested in the digital lives of people. Some of my favorite studies have revealed how we create our identities online.

My Favorite Ethnographic Research Books

1. learning to labour.

Author: Paul Willis

One of my favorite ethnographic works, Learning to Labour follows working-class ‘lads’ in the British Midlands as they participate in counter-cultural and ‘anti-social’ behaviors.

The most fascinating aspect of this book is the rich elucidation of how these working-class boys reject narratives of upward mobility and revel in rejecting mental work at school. But at the same time, they create their own value hierarchies.

In fact, the boys don’t even leave school when they are legally allowed, despite giving a veneer of being anti-school. Instead, they remain there, because there is their own social and even educational value they can get out of it. They prize the manual labor they do in class and, after leaving school, continue to prize physical labor in the workplace while deriding and dismissing mental labor.

2. Being Maori in the City

Author: Natacha Gagné

When indigenous people live in urban environments, their authenticity as indigenous peoples is often brought into question.

Thus, Gagné’s examination of Maori identity in Auckland presents a valuable insight into how people continue to live out their indigenous identities in a changing, urbanized, and colonized landscape.

Gagné spent two years living with Maori people in Auckland and highlights in the book how their identity continues to be central to how they interact both with one another and with broader society.

3. Ethnography of a Neoliberal School

Author: Garth Stahl

While a wide range of academic research has looked at how neoliberalism can affect education, an ethnographic approach allows Stahl to demonstrate how it turns up as lived experience.

Neoliberalism is an approach to governance that focuses on the corporatization of society. In education, this means that schools should be run like companies.

There is no better example, of course, than charter schools .

In my favorite chapter, Stahl demonstrates within one anonymized charter school how teachers are increasingly subjected to performance quotas, KPIs, and governance that narrow down the purpose of education and give them very little freedom to exercise their expertise and provide individualized support to their students.

4. Coming of Age in Samoa

Author: Margaret Mead

Margaret Mead’s groundbreaking ethnography, Coming of Age in Samoa , had implications for two important reasons:

• It highlighted the importance of feminist perspectives in ethnographic research.
• It challenged a universalizing stage-based conceptualization of human development.

Mead’s work was conducted at a time when the Western world was in a moral panic about adolescents’ stress and emotional behaviors. The prevailing idea – promoted mainly by male psychologists – was that most of those behaviors were a natural part of the developmental cycle.

Mead, however, saw that female Samoan adolescents had much different experiences of adolescence and would not have fitted into the western mold of how a female adolescent would behave or be treated.

The Samoan society’s liberal ideas around intimacy and the lower levels of academic stress placed on the girls meant they lived very different realities with far less stress and social pressure than their Western counterparts.

5. Ghetto at the Center of the World

Author: Gordon Mathews

Mathews’s Ghetto at the Center of the World explores a multiethnic high-density housing complex in Hong Kong.

While seen by many locals as a ghetto (despite its relative safety!), Mathews shows how the motley group of residents, migrants, and tourists in the building live rich lives at what appears to be ground zero of globalization.

For the people in the building, globalization has offered opportunities but hasn’t solved all their problems. Each person that Mathews follows has their own story of how they navigate a globalized world while maintaining hope for a better future.

Additional Influential Ethnographic Studies

• Argonauts of the Western Pacific – This study was notable because it presented a turn toward participant observation in ethnography rather than attempts at fly-on-the-wall objectivity.
• The Remembered Village – A study of caste systems in India, this study is most notable for its methodological influence. Srinivas, the author, lost his field notes, but he continued on with presenting his findings, causing widespread controversy about its methodological merits.
• Space and Society in Central Brazil – This study explores the experiences of the Panará indigenous people of Brazil as they attempt to secure protected space from the colonialization occurring around them. It’s notable for its insights into how the Panará people organize themselves both culturally and spatially.
• White Bound – This book follows two groups, a white anti-racist group and a white nationalist group, and explores how each deals with whiteness. While the groups have fundamentally different goals, even the anti-racist group continue to contribute to white privilege .
• City, Street and Citizen – Suzanne Hall’s study of the mundane city street explores how multiethnicity is played out in globalized cities. It is a fascinating look at how lives take place within shared spaces where social contact occurs.

Ethnography is, in my humble (and of course subjective) opinion, the most exciting form of primary research you can do. It can challenge assumptions, unpick social norms, and make us all more empathetic people.

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 5 Top Tips for Succeeding at University
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 50 Durable Goods Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 100 Consumer Goods Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 30 Globalization Pros and Cons

3 thoughts on “15 Great Ethnography Examples”

Thanks very much for that. I am an early childhood teacher, already published on the topic of bilingual and multilingual children in our sector. One of my lecturers has suggested an ethnographic study of some of our immigrant children. Not sure where to start with that, but this has put me in the right frame of mind. Thanks again

Dear Chris,

Any suggested topic on ethnographic research i can start with here in the hospital where i am working. I am a nurse for cardiovascular patients undergoing open heart surgeries.

As you’re in a high risk setting, you might be best asking your managers at the workplace about this one. You could also consider an autoethnography where you do a study on yourself within the settings.

Best of luck with the study.

Regards, Chris

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Methodology

• What Is Ethnography? | Definition, Guide & Examples

What Is Ethnography? | Definition, Guide & Examples

Published on March 13, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on June 22, 2023.

Ethnography is a type of qualitative research that involves immersing yourself in a particular community or organization to observe their behavior and interactions up close. The word “ethnography” also refers to the written report of the research that the ethnographer produces afterwards.

Ethnography is a flexible research method that allows you to gain a deep understanding of a group’s shared culture, conventions, and social dynamics. However, it also involves some practical and ethical challenges.

Table of contents

What is ethnography used for, different approaches to ethnographic research, gaining access to a community, working with informants, observing the group and taking field notes, writing up an ethnography, other interesting articles.

Ethnographic research originated in the field of anthropology, and it often involved an anthropologist living with an isolated tribal community for an extended period of time in order to understand their culture.

This type of research could sometimes last for years. For example, Colin M. Turnbull lived with the Mbuti people for three years in order to write the classic ethnography The Forest People .

Today, ethnography is a common approach in various social science fields, not just anthropology. It is used not only to study distant or unfamiliar cultures, but also to study specific communities within the researcher’s own society.

For example, ethnographic research (sometimes called participant observation ) has been used to investigate  football fans , call center workers , and police officers .

Advantages of ethnography

The main advantage of ethnography is that it gives the researcher direct access to the culture and practices of a group. It is a useful approach for learning first-hand about the behavior and interactions of people within a particular context.

By becoming immersed in a social environment, you may have access to more authentic information and spontaneously observe dynamics that you could not have found out about simply by asking.

Ethnography is also an open and flexible method. Rather than aiming to verify a general theory or test a hypothesis , it aims to offer a rich narrative account of a specific culture, allowing you to explore many different aspects of the group and setting.

Disadvantages of ethnography

Ethnography is a time-consuming method. In order to embed yourself in the setting and gather enough observations to build up a representative picture, you can expect to spend at least a few weeks, but more likely several months. This long-term immersion can be challenging, and requires careful planning.

Ethnographic research can run the risk of observer bias . Writing an ethnography involves subjective interpretation, and it can be difficult to maintain the necessary distance to analyze a group that you are embedded in.

There are often also ethical considerations to take into account: for example, about how your role is disclosed to members of the group, or about observing and reporting sensitive information.

Should you use ethnography in your research?

If you’re a student who wants to use ethnographic research in your thesis or dissertation , it’s worth asking yourself whether it’s the right approach:

• Could the information you need be collected in another way (e.g. a survey , interviews)?
• How difficult will it be to gain access to the community you want to study?
• How exactly will you conduct your research, and over what timespan?
• What ethical issues might arise?

If you do decide to do ethnography, it’s generally best to choose a relatively small and easily accessible group, to ensure that the research is feasible within a limited timeframe.

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There are a few key distinctions in ethnography which help to inform the researcher’s approach: open vs. closed settings, overt vs. covert ethnography, and active vs. passive observation. Each approach has its own advantages and disadvantages.

Open vs. closed settings

The setting of your ethnography—the environment in which you will observe your chosen community in action—may be open or closed.

An open or public setting is one with no formal barriers to entry. For example, you might consider a community of people living in a certain neighborhood, or the fans of a particular baseball team.

• Gaining initial access to open groups is not too difficult…
• …but it may be harder to become immersed in a less clearly defined group.

A closed or private setting is harder to access. This may be for example a business, a school, or a cult.

• A closed group’s boundaries are clearly defined and the ethnographer can become fully immersed in the setting…
• …but gaining access is tougher; the ethnographer may have to negotiate their way in or acquire some role in the organization.

Overt vs. covert ethnography

Most ethnography is overt . In an overt approach, the ethnographer openly states their intentions and acknowledges their role as a researcher to the members of the group being studied.

• Overt ethnography is typically preferred for ethical reasons, as participants can provide informed consent…
• …but people may behave differently with the awareness that they are being studied.

Sometimes ethnography can be covert . This means that the researcher does not tell participants about their research, and comes up with some other pretense for being there.

• Covert ethnography allows access to environments where the group would not welcome a researcher…
• …but hiding the researcher’s role can be considered deceptive and thus unethical.

Active vs. passive observation

Different levels of immersion in the community may be appropriate in different contexts. The ethnographer may be a more active or passive participant depending on the demands of their research and the nature of the setting.

An active role involves trying to fully integrate, carrying out tasks and participating in activities like any other member of the community.

• Active participation may encourage the group to feel more comfortable with the ethnographer’s presence…
• …but runs the risk of disrupting the regular functioning of the community.

A passive role is one in which the ethnographer stands back from the activities of others, behaving as a more distant observer and not involving themselves in the community’s activities.

• Passive observation allows more space for careful observation and note-taking…
• …but group members may behave unnaturally due to feeling they are being observed by an outsider.

While ethnographers usually have a preference, they also have to be flexible about their level of participation. For example, access to the community might depend upon engaging in certain activities, or there might be certain practices in which outsiders cannot participate.

An important consideration for ethnographers is the question of access. The difficulty of gaining access to the setting of a particular ethnography varies greatly:

• To gain access to the fans of a particular sports team, you might start by simply attending the team’s games and speaking with the fans.
• To access the employees of a particular business, you might contact the management and ask for permission to perform a study there.
• Alternatively, you might perform a covert ethnography of a community or organization you are already personally involved in or employed by.

Flexibility is important here too: where it’s impossible to access the desired setting, the ethnographer must consider alternatives that could provide comparable information.

For example, if you had the idea of observing the staff within a particular finance company but could not get permission, you might look into other companies of the same kind as alternatives. Ethnography is a sensitive research method, and it may take multiple attempts to find a feasible approach.

All ethnographies involve the use of informants . These are people involved in the group in question who function as the researcher’s primary points of contact, facilitating access and assisting their understanding of the group.

This might be someone in a high position at an organization allowing you access to their employees, or a member of a community sponsoring your entry into that community and giving advice on how to fit in.

However,  i f you come to rely too much on a single informant, you may be influenced by their perspective on the community, which might be unrepresentative of the group as a whole.

In addition, an informant may not provide the kind of spontaneous information which is most useful to ethnographers, instead trying to show what they believe you want to see. For this reason, it’s good to have a variety of contacts within the group.

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The core of ethnography is observation of the group from the inside. Field notes are taken to record these observations while immersed in the setting; they form the basis of the final written ethnography. They are usually written by hand, but other solutions such as voice recordings can be useful alternatives.

Field notes record any and all important data: phenomena observed, conversations had, preliminary analysis. For example, if you’re researching how service staff interact with customers, you should write down anything you notice about these interactions—body language, phrases used repeatedly, differences and similarities between staff, customer reactions.

Don’t be afraid to also note down things you notice that fall outside the pre-formulated scope of your research; anything may prove relevant, and it’s better to have extra notes you might discard later than to end up with missing data.

Field notes should be as detailed and clear as possible. It’s important to take time to go over your notes, expand on them with further detail, and keep them organized (including information such as dates and locations).

After observations are concluded, there’s still the task of writing them up into an ethnography. This entails going through the field notes and formulating a convincing account of the behaviors and dynamics observed.

The structure of an ethnography

An ethnography can take many different forms: It may be an article, a thesis, or an entire book, for example.

Ethnographies often do not follow the standard structure of a scientific paper, though like most academic texts, they should have an introduction and conclusion. For example, this paper begins by describing the historical background of the research, then focuses on various themes in turn before concluding.

An ethnography may still use a more traditional structure, however, especially when used in combination with other research methods. For example, this paper follows the standard structure for empirical research: introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion.

The content of an ethnography

The goal of a written ethnography is to provide a rich, authoritative account of the social setting in which you were embedded—to convince the reader that your observations and interpretations are representative of reality.

Ethnography tends to take a less impersonal approach than other research methods. Due to the embedded nature of the work, an ethnography often necessarily involves discussion of your personal experiences and feelings during the research.

Ethnography is not limited to making observations; it also attempts to explain the phenomena observed in a structured, narrative way. For this, you may draw on theory, but also on your direct experience and intuitions, which may well contradict the assumptions that you brought into the research.

If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Normal distribution
• Degrees of freedom
• Null hypothesis
• Discourse analysis
• Control groups
• Mixed methods research
• Non-probability sampling
• Quantitative research
• Ecological validity

Research bias

• Rosenthal effect
• Implicit bias
• Cognitive bias
• Selection bias
• Negativity bias
• Status quo bias

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6- Drafting Your Ethnographic Essay

Chapter 6 provides a step-by-step process for developing, writing, and revising your ethnographic research essay.

Finding a Focus, Choosing a Controlling Idea for Your Research

The first step in finding a focus is to read through all of your fieldnotes two times. As you read, notice when and where you become particularly interested in what you have written. Circle, mark or note these passages in some way. Write a brief summary of each idea/passage on a separate sheet. After you identify what interests you most, move on to search for patterns that will lead you to focus.  You can follow the step-by step-process below as a path to create a kind of umbrella or guiding focus statement for your essay:

• Read through the list you compiled from your fieldnotes and identify which parts of your fieldnotes interest and engage you most. Look at the larger arc. Are most of your points taken from your thoughts and feelings or are you more interested in the analysis observation?
• Search for patterns in your list, and make a new list of those patterns. Keep an eye out for things that strike you as meaningful and interesting and that happen again and again.  As you explore patterns, also look for things connected to those patterns.  Find patterns within patterns. how do you connect ideas with language?  Do you seem to repeatedly use the same phrases?  When and with respect to what observations?  This may help identify relevant patters of observation.
• From your list of patterns and connections, select the ONE larger idea/pattern that interests you most. You know you’re on to something if you find a pattern and can see how it connects to other observations you’ve made during your research and /or to what other scholars or writers have said.
• Take that one interesting idea/pattern and develop an “umbrella” statement or a broad focus statement. You can start, for drafting purposes, with something as simple as “In this paper, I will…(discuss, explore, explain, analyze, etc.).”  Here you are articulating the big idea for your essay. You can always return to the statement to make is more sophisticated in the context of a focus paragraph later,
• Expand that statement by breaking the pattern that you are focusing on into any number of supporting observations. Follow your initial broad or umbrella focus statement with that break down. “First, I will….Second…Third….” with each of those statements specifying the supporting material. These first, second, and third statements provide the framework for the body sections of your research essay.

As you examine patterns you find in your own comprehensive observation list and look for an idea, theme, or metaphor to connect them, keep in mind the ways in which a focus moves from observations to a more developed discussion of the ideas you note.  As you connect the dots of your pattern, you may begin to understand where your essay could “land,” which implications become most compelling to you, and which elements for discussion could make clear the complexity of reality and truth.  When you identify some of these more powerful elements, take the time to write about any connections you see between those patterns or expand on any unfinished thoughts. From this list, you need to choose the idea/pattern that interests you most, that you think you can really write about, and that you can support with other observations from your notes. You have found your focus!

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• 1a- Connecting to Ethnographic Writing
• 1b- Identifying with Ethnographic Writing
• 1c- Rhetorical Strate­gies for Ethnographic Writing
• 2a- Writerly Ethos
• 2b- Under­stand­ing Pla­gia­rism
• 2c- Eth­i­cal Conun­drums in Com­munity Research
• 3a- Examining Culture as Text
• 3b- Selecting a Research Site
• 3c- Access to Your Research Site
• 3d- Rhetorical Strategies for Research Proposals
• 4a- Rhetorical Strategies for Writing Observations
• 4b- Considering Types of Fieldnotes
• 4c- Expanding and Revising Fieldnotes and Observations
• 5a- Searching for Sources: Keywords, Databases, Catalogs, and Shelves
• 5b- Ethical Considerations when Conducting Research of Secondary Sources
• 5c- Impact of Technology on Conducting Research of Secondary Sources
• 5d- Sorting Sources and Eating Books
• 5e- Popular Culture Source Material
• 5f- Summarizing Sources
• 5g- Building an Annotated Bibliography
• 6a- Introducing your Research
• 6b- Presenting the Methodology and Focus
• 6c- Selecting Examples and Evidence
• 6d- Selecting Effective Secondary Source Evidence
• 6e- Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Documenting Source Material
• 6f- Concluding in a Meaningful Way
• 6g- Reviewing and Revising Your Essay
• Supplemental Modules
• How to Use this Textbook
• Teaching with EC
• How to Become a Contributing Author

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The Autoethnography: Ten Examples

Instructions, choosing a topic.

For our final project for the class, you will be asked to select a subculture that you have currently chosen to be a part of or one that you will choose to connect yourself to and to investigate this subculture in a larger research paper called an autoethnography.

For this immediate assignment, I would like you to identify two subcultures that you are currently a part of and that you would find interesting to research. For each of the subcultures you identify, I would like you to give a brief description (three to four lines or more if necessary) that gives an overview of what the subculture is and your position in the subculture (how long you’ve been a part of it and how you feel about it).

From these two options, you will be choosing a topic for your final research paper. We will be sharing these ideas with the entire class. Please be as specific as possible. Your topics must fulfill the following criteria:

You must be able to do background and preliminary research on your topics. In other words, written and visual material must be readily available for analysis.

Topics must be local and accessible.

There must be a place, field site, or event space for the topic that you will be able to visit at least twice during the semester.

There must be at least two people you can interview who have different roles relevant to the topic.

Topics must be new and cannot overlap with research topics in any other course work.

Interviewing

The purpose of the interview is to help you gain insight into the perspective of another member of your subculture. This can be valuable on a number of levels and for a number of reasons. It can help you understand the subculture more as an outsider, offer additional information you can use to examine your own positionality, and provide interesting narrative content for the final project.

As you plan for your interview, consider what information you would like to get out of the interview, and write out your questions accordingly.

For this assignment, write up a minimum of ten questions you plan to ask your interviewee. Make sure the questions are in an order that is logical. This will allow you to know what you intend to get out of an interview and enable you to adapt when an interviewee inadvertently answers more than one question at a time or shares information you would like to ask about in greater depth.

Make sure you ask leading questions rather than questions that can be answered with one-word responses. It is helpful to incorporate phrases such as these into your interview questions: “Tell me a story about the time…”; “Can you explain in detail when…”; “Describe your favorite memory about . . “; “At length, describe….”

This kind of questioning will help your interviewee to feel comfortable and willing to share more information about which you can then ask follow-up questions.

Interviews can be conducted in various ways: through online chats, via telephone or in person. Each method has its own plusses and minuses, so be aware that they will yield different products.

In-person interviews are usually the most productive in that they allow you to take notes on the interviewee’s manner, dress and composure in addition to getting your verbal answers. The benefit on online interviews conducted in writing is that they are already written up for you, and the task of writing up in-person interviews is time-consuming. You will miss out on observation details, however, in any form that is not face-to-face.

Please bring to class at least one set of questions with a brief description of whom you will be interviewing, what you already know about that person and what you would like to learn from her or him. Ultimately, you will be picking two people to interview and writing questions for each interview.

Observations

When we engage in autoethnographic writing, it is important to try to re-create the spaces we are visiting—in other words, to explore the field sites where we are spending our time.

As part of our larger assignment, you need to identify a field site that will be relevant for your subculture. This can be a location where it meets, a place where history, event or memory is held.

For this assignment, I want you to walk into a space or event related to your subculture and spend at least twenty minutes there. You will be engaging in a stream-of-consciousness freewrite, making notes on everything you experience with your five senses. As in earlier assignments, I will then ask you to create a narrative from the details you have noted.

Rely on all five of your senses to convey not just what the space looks like but what it feels like. Sight, smell, touch, sight, sound are all important to consider as we try to re-create an environment we are experiencing for an outsider. Do not edit! Just write for the entire twenty minutes in the space without picking up your pen or pencil or relinquishing your keyboard, and see what you come up with!

As you did with earlier assignments, you should write the narrative version of your notes as close to the time of observation as possible.

Putting It All Together

When trying to incorporate your research into a final paper, it is important to realize that you will not be using all of it. As in our essays earlier in the semester, you will be drawing on important pieces of it to make your larger arguments (parts of the observation, pieces of the interview, etc.). You should not try to use all of the information you gathered in the final paper. Any kind of personal and qualitative writing is about making choices and creating narratives and subtext while maintaining your own voice as a participant-observer.

The most important thing to do is to find common threads in your research, identify your main themes and use the information you have gathered, combined with your own narrative understanding or experience, to create your final piece.

Your final paper will end up being roughly six to ten pages long, given the amount of data you have collected. It is important to ask questions as you go through this final drafting process, so please feel free to contact me at any point about concerns and ideas.

When transcribing interviews, please include only your questions and the full responses that will appear as quotes or paraphrases in your final paper. Since transcribing is time-consuming, this will be the most efficient use of your time. I ask you to attach these documents as well as the observations you completed to the final paper.

You will be asked to present your findings and read a brief piece of your project on the last day of class.

Student Samples

These essays went through multiple drafts at each point. Observations, interviews, and the final draft were all peer and instructor reviewed.

Adriana explores Anarchism in New York.

Tyana explores the group Student Activists Ending Dating Abuse (SAEDA).

Hannah explores the world of computer programmers.

Heather explores the world of Bronies.

Jillian explores modern artistic taxidermy.

Emma explores a religious institution for the first time.

William explores the world of Manhattan Drag.

Joomi explores National Novel Writing Month.

Justine explores the world of Manhattan-based metal band Steel Paradise.

Neziah Doe explores science culture on YouTube.

Teaching Autoethnography: Personal Writing in the Classroom Copyright © by Melissa Tombro is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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How to Write an Ethnography Essay or Research Paper

How to Write an Ethnography Essay

Ethnographic writing is very common in colleges and universities. It involves ethnographic essays, research papers, and assignments. These papers are written at different levels in colleges and universities.

Therefore, as a student you have to be well versed on how these papers are written for you to score good grades.

If you have been looking for a guide on how to handle ethnographic essays look no further because this article provides you with all information you need to know about ethnographic writing and different topics that you can use to practice.

What is an Ethnography Essay or Paper?

An ethnographic essay is a piece of writing that focuses on a subculture, culture, or group. The emphasis and focus is usually on observation, field notes, and observations.

The understanding that any ethnographic paper seeks is the way people think and live their everyday life. Therefore, spending time with people is necessary for the writer to determine how people live and what they are interested in.

An ethnographic essay should have an introduction, literature review, methodology, data analysis, and conclusion.

How to Write an Ethnography Essay?

The following are important tips that one should consider when writing an ethnographic essay :

1. Research on Existing Studies on the Topic

By researching on the existing knowledge, you will be able to know areas of the topic that have already been explored and identify areas that need additional new knowledge.

Also, you are able to identify questions about the topic that have been left unanswered and the gaps that still exists. Additionally, you will be able to write your work confidently without the danger of duplicating the work of other people.

2. Research on the Topic or Focus Group

The purpose of researching on the topic or focus group is to test your hypothesis. For example, you can answer some research questions, try various methods of collecting data and record observations in real time. You can also learn about the ethics of the focus group.

This helps refine the topic and familiarize with the context of what you will write about. Also, you may get insight on any obstacle that you may have overlooked.

3. Use both Primary and Secondary Data when Conducting Research

When researching you should collect data through observation in real time, interviews, and focus groups. These are first hand sources of information that are authentic.

Also, you should use published studies and articles which present you with the ideas of how others have conducted ethnographic research.

4. Develop a Thesis Statement

While conducting your research, formulate a thesis statement which will be the main argument of the paper. It should describe what you are exploring in your research.

It is the main idea of your paper and not necessarily the questions that the topic poses.

It should be straight to the point and brief with no jargon to help the reader understand what your ethnography paper is all about

5. Use Retrospective or Prospective Study Design

Retrospective design involves the study of the past while prospective design involves data collection about an event that is ongoing.

The design you use depends on whether you want to pick up memories from people about an event of the past or if you want to find out something that is actually transpiring.

6. Take Notes during the Ethnographic Study

Taking notes will help clarify the observations made, provide audit trail for your research and look for patterns in data. Participants’ notes helps record observation in the real time that they happened and prevents the efforts of try to remember what was observed later.

Also through notes preconceived notions are avoided and relevant thoughts for your analysis captured.

7. Write the Introduction

The introduction of an ethnographic essay should provide the background information about the issue being written about.

A good ethnographic introduction should include a thesis statement that presents an argument and a proper investigation on why the topic is important to investigate.

Here you set the tone for the entire paper. Therefore, the introduction should be catchy to motivate the reader to continue reading.

8. Write the Background Information

This is where the information that gives the reader the context of what your ethnography paper is all about is written. The information included here should be relevant to your hypothesis or argument.

Geographical place where the research took place should also be included. Also, the literature review which consists of what has been written previously about the topic should be included.

Additionally, provide an explanation of how your research contributes to the understanding of the topic.

9. Write the Methodology

This is where you include how you as the ethnographer collected information and data. You can also include the limitations as well as the biases in the data process.

Data collection entails how you observed the data, the exact data you observed and how you recorded it.

10. Write the Findings

These include the actual representation of your research which is data, quotes, keywords and illustrations. To do this you can choose a method of presentation which can be charts, tables, diagrams, and photographs.

Everything that is included in this part should be clear and concise for the reader to get the relevant facts of your research.

Everything that does not relate to your arguments directly should not be included in this part because it is unnecessary.

To keep it as simple as possible think of it as a presentation for non-specialists in your field of specialization.

11. Conclude your Ethnography

This is where you provide the summary for your paper. For any conclusion of an ethnography to be good it must include the argument that is presented on the thesis statement.

Also, it should provide the context of how your research fits into the larger researches already conducted about the topic. The language used to write it should be understandable by non-specialists. It should be clear and direct with no jargon.

Ethnography Essay Example Topics

• Access the different career paths among children from rich families and poor families.
• Outline the link that is seen as obvious between drug trafficking and violence experienced in South American Countries
• In details, discuss the effectiveness of parenting practices used by African American parents to socialize their children
• Analyse the perception of success and failure in low and middle class families compare to high social class families.
• What policies can departments dealing with the welfare of children put in place to ensure that the rate of juvenile delinquency in America has achieved a significant drop. 
• How religions especially Hinduism and Islam have influenced the perception of gender socialization
• The effects of continued terrorism acts on migration and what that means for the tourism sector of affected countries
• The plight of the homeless people in America and the rise of insecurity in urban centres
• The discrimination of the minority races in America and its effects in the rise of incarceration rates in involved communities
• The acceptance and opposition of euthanasia in Brazil and the effects it has on the population over time
• How the increased adaptation of modern lifestyles of the western culture in Africa have impacted the traditional ways of African communities
• The process of immigrants adapting to life in America and how it leads to the struggle to fit in
• The toil for the American dream and its influence on criminality among the majority of African Americans
• The rise of globalization and its impact on the economy of majority of African countries
• The increased rate of drug abuse in Tertiary institutions and its effects on the quality of graduates

With over 10 years in academia and academic assistance, Alicia Smart is the epitome of excellence in the writing industry. She is our chief editor and in charge of the writing department at Grade Bees.

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Ethnography Essay Examples

When to use ethnography.

According to Wolcott (1999) ethnography research can be used when one or more of the following conditions is/are satisfied: While you are probing for meaning of cultural norms and views. While you have to examine the use of certain behaviors or practices. While examining social...

Ethnography as a Research Method

The book “Downwardly Global: Women, Work, and Citizenship in the Pakistani Diaspora” by Lalaie Ameeriar investigates reasons for immigrant unemployment and underemployment. The author grew up in Canada, where she experienced problems common for people of color. In the research, she describes the current situation...

Ethnographic Fieldwork and Cultural Anthropology

Ethnographic research is the logical depiction of explicit human societies, unfamiliar to the ethnographer. Every ethnographer has its own particular manner of leading exploration and these various thoughts can be transmitted and comprehended in various manners. Since there is nobody set thought of how an...

Ethnographic Research of Muslims on the Basis of the 30 Days Series and Personal Experience

The contemporary world is composed of individuals from different cultures. Each culture is characterized by its unique set of beliefs, behaviors, language, diets, association, dressing, language, occupation, geographical location, among others. Though different cultures have different ways of doing things, the beliefs and norms of...

Ethnography: Cultural Practices of the Rainforest People

In the Ethnography: Wisdom from a Rainforest, by Stuart A. Schlegel, he described a large number of cultural practices. He went from describing the time when the whole Figel community got together to plant rice seeds to giving a short speech to the spirits when...

Ethnography: Forms of Peasant Resistance

In 1985, James C. Scott released his book ‘Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance:’. Scott book Weapon of the Weak is a study of peasant resistance in a small Malaysian village Sedaka primarily based on his fieldwork. Within the nineteen-seventies Scott brought...

Interconnection of Anthropology and Ethnography

This is a summary of the article “An Anthropology of Art: The Reflection on its History and Contemporary Practice” by Howard Morphy and Morgan Perkins”. In the article, writers begins by addressing the definition of art, Anthropology of art is a subfield of social anthropology...

Social Ethnography by Seth Holmes: the Lives of Mexican Migrant Farmers

'Fresh Fruit Broken Bodies' By Seth Holmes explores how the mexican migrant farmer population suffer. Seth spends a year and a half living and working with migrant farm workers. His accounts are from the fieldwork that he reported through writing and interviews with his surroundings...

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About Ethnography

Ethnography (from Greek ἔθνος ethnos "folk, people, nation" and γράφω grapho "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures, method central to knowing the world from the standpoint of its social relations.

Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography studies include a brief history, and an analysis of the terrain, the climate, and the habitat. Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining the behaviour of the participants in a given social situation and understanding the group members' own interpretation of such behaviour.

Ethnography originated in early anthropology in the 1800s. The roots of ethnography can be traced back to the colonization of the 'New World', when anthropologists became interested in exploring races and cultures outside Europe. Gerhard Friedrich Müller developed the concept of ethnography as a separate discipline whilst participating in the Second Kamchatka Expedition (1733–43) as a professor of history and geography.

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