This is the first in a series of notes to fifteen lectures for my class ITSF5001: Ethnography and Participant Observation.
  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)
      2. 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 its particularity)      		 /
      / socio- : group in its universality
      / anthropo- : humanity in general
      / psycho- : a human being in its universality

       
  3. Another definition in several step:

    4.   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 a group in its particularity (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.