This is the first in a series of notes to fifteen lectures for my class ITSF5001: Ethnography and Participant Observation.
The book is about apprenticeship---that of Vai and Gola tailors in Liberia in the 1970s, my own, and, by extension, yours (Lave 2011: 1)
  1. The classical summary of the goals of ethnography in Malinowski's famous introduction to Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1961 [1922]: 25)
     
  2. A definition through distinctions
     
    1. (with an emphasis on the second part of ethno-GRAPHY)
      graphos
        mark
        description      		 / logos
        word
        (Derrida...)
        science

      That is:
      Ethno-graphy / Ethno-logy
      / Anthropo-logy
      / Socio-logy
      / Psycho-logy
      text-in-interaction
        (you and the people you study)      		 / text-in-tradition
        (you and your audience (peers, etc.))

       

    2. (with an emphasis on the first part of ETHNO-graphy)
      3. ethnos
        (group in the particularity of its moment in time)      		 /
      / socio- : group in its universality
      / anthropo- : humanity in general
      / psycho- : a human being in its universality

       
  3. Another definition in several step:

    ... the term "ethnographic practice," rather than "theory and practice" or "fieldwork and theory," is employed throughout---making it impossible, I hope impossible, to forget the theoretical character of empirical inquiry and the empirical character of theoretical inquiry. (Lave 2011: 157)

    ethnography is:

    1. the making of a mark, the writing of a text, "fieldnotes"

      2. leading to

    2. the making of another mark, the writing of another text, an "ethnography"
    3. about people doing something together in the particularity of their moment in time (ethnos)
    4. written so as to say something to someone (a dissertation committee, professional peers, interested outsiders)

    note that:

    1. What the initial mark consists of (text, photos, video, etc.) is not relevant but there MUST be a mark.
    2. The final text can take many shapes (from dissertation to trade paperback or documentary) but there will always be a final text if the whole activity is to be identifiable as research).
    3. There MUST be a recognition of the someone to whom the text is to make sense. The ethnographic art lies in using this recognition as a descriptive lever without sacrificing to research- grounded intuitions.

    4. OUTLINE OF THE COURSE

  4. a note on imagining the movement from issue to final statement through questioning and techniques