3 Field Methods and Ethnography

Close your eyes for a moment. Imagine you are an anthropologist waking up in the morning, packing your bag for the day as you head out to conduct research. Recall the various examples we encountered in Chapter 1 as we were introduced to many anthropologists and their research studies, past and present. As you set out for your day, who influences you as you think about your project? Where are you as you pack your bag? What objects are you placing in your bag? Open your eyes and jot down a few notes as you ask yourself some of these questions. Add some answers to the following: Where are you headed? How big is that bag? When will you be back home? What does home even look like—is it home for now, the home you grew up in, or home for a year or two? How far away is this residence from the place you are going for the day? What will be familiar to you and what will make your eyes wide with curiosity and wonder when you get to your destination? Is home part of your destination in the overall course of your study? What have you read, seen, or heard that might prepare you for your encounters?

If you compared your notes with those of your classmates and colleagues, you will likely find a wide range of sights, sounds, and scenery. For some this “home” is not actually home and perhaps somewhere you have relocated for a few months or several years; getting there likely required some form of major transportation whether by train, plane or car. Where you are heading to for the day might range from a public space, a local town square, a café to meet with someone for an interview, a farm, a university, a child care center, a concert or a sports stadium. Maybe you are heading out to go to a library where you sit quietly and read for the day or a community center where you can learn more about the town you are living in and the people that reside there. Maybe you are on foot, getting ready to brave a crowded subway with the rest of the city’s commuters. Perhaps your backpack is small and just big enough for a phone and recorder, a pen, and a small notebook. Or it is larger and packed with food or water for the day along with the materials listed above. For some of us, maybe our plan for the day is to go out to a neighborhood not far from where we grew up—a place where we are now researching with fresh eyes, informed by new questions that did not guide our day-to-day living before we were anthropologists.

Given how vast our images of fieldwork are and the wide range of ways “the field” has been described across the history of the discipline, it benefits us to spend some time establishing what fieldwork actually is and how different methods and approaches can help us be “in the field” more effectively as we collect all sorts of data and immerse ourselves in experiences that are later synthesized into reports, articles or books called ethnographies.

What is fieldwork?

Fieldwork is the main research method for cultural anthropologists who are immersing themselves in the culture or cultures they want to study. Breaking down this compound word “fieldwork” into two halves, we find both the definition and the debates that have marked the history and development of the discipline of anthropology. Field. Work. The term “fieldwork” sometimes appears in natural and social sciences outside of the specific discipline of anthropology because it stands as a counterpoint to laboratory work. A biologist may conduct controlled experiments within a laboratory setting but a biologist may also go out into the field to observe animal behavior as it takes place in situ and in natural environments. Because culture is always-already social and contextual, researchers who focus on studying human experiences and cultures often depend on fieldwork (though it should be noted that anthropologists, especially those who specialize in science and technology studies, may also find themselves conducting fieldwork within laboratories).

The field itself can be anywhere that culture exists. Since culture is everywhere, the field may be halfway across the world or in one’s own hometown. The field can also be multi-sited and include a place far away, online, or somewhere close by, taking an anthropologist to two or more countries split across an entire year or more of research. Where an anthropologist goes and how they define their field or fieldwork depends on the people, phenomena, or flows that an anthropologist wants to study.

Approaches might vary from project to project for the same anthropologist. Susan Greenhalgh has written several ethnographies that demonstrate a wide range of approaches to fieldwork. Her ethnographies have included books like Just One Child which includes fieldwork in China and interviews with interlocutors, some of whom were made accessible through years of experience with the Population Council. Greenhalgh also writes in formats such as auto-ethnography, analyzing her own experiences as a patient during physician encounters in the book Under the Medical Gaze. She also explores issues of body image in Fat Talk Nation, using insights gleaned from her time teaching a course called “Woman and the Body” at two universities in the United States. While all three books fall within the subfield of medical anthropology, they range in topics of focus as well as in definitions of where the “field” is located and her relationship to interlocutors in each of those sites. Clearly, the field is more than what it was once thought to be—a place “out there” and “over there,” often thought of as elsewhere from wherever the anthropologist typically resides or works.

At one point in the discipline, the field was conceptualized as separate from home. For many, the field was a place where someone could leverage an outsider’s perspective on things often taken for granted when someone is deeply immersed in a way of life. This thinking about fieldwork has shifted over the years as anthropologists questioned assumptions about objective perspectives and critiqued what a “neutral” perspective even means.

Conceptual and applied history

In its early days, the study of cultures had been limited to armchair ethnography where ideas and theories were explored using either secondary data or through speculation. Intellectuals and scholars would read about distant cultures and peoples, perhaps through documents written by missionaries or naval officers. Anthropologists would then come up with these ethnographies from their proverbial armchairs. They would write about other people and come up with their findings about cultures without going out into the field to directly collect data and experience the very phenomena that were being studied.

Eventually, ethnography evolved to include rising up off one’s armchair, leaving home or university, and exploring the world and writing about it via firsthand experiences. One benefit to this method was the inclusion of fieldwork and gathering primary data. However, this also led to assumptions about how much “being there” for a short period of time was adequate exposure needed to truly understand any culture. These questions would later expand into asking how, when, and with whom our encounters frame the type of information we have access to and the conclusions that come out of that information. Rather than being tempted to create oversimplified and homogeneous depictions of any particular culture, anthropology and its methods, including fieldwork, would grow to be more nuanced as it called for practitioners to define the contours of their own positioning and perspective.

Although others began this practice of learning by conducting fieldwork, the practice of leaving one’s armchair and moving “off the verandah” was widely popularized by Bronislaw Malinowski. Born into aristocracy, Malinowski was a Polish count who later attended the London School of Economics. During the early 1900s, Malinowski went to the Trobriand Islands near New Guinea to conduct fieldwork. While there, World War I broke out, leaving Malinowski stranded to live in the islands from 1915-1917. This extended period of time in the region forced Malinowski to immerse himself in the practices he wanted to better understand, moving from observing things in limited capacity largely from the comfort of his front porch or verandah. This deeper immersion into culture is now understood as participant observation. There were three elements of participant observation for Malinowski: to learn language, to live in culture, and to participate in everyday life.

All three elements aim to break down mediating barriers between anthropologists and the cultures they are trying to understand—communicating directly and able to access nuances and symbolism in language, spoken and unspoken, as well as experiencing culture and everyday life firsthand wherever possible. Malinowski’s findings from his time in the Trobriand Islands were published in an ethnography called The Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922). One example of findings that were made possible through more immersive approaches like participant observation was his examination of a practice called kula, a way of exchanging gifts between islands and sometimes seen as a precursor to trading. We will discuss this practice in more depth in our discussion of economic systems but here, it stands as a concrete example of cultural practices that were documented through participant observation.

Between leaving the armchair and coming off the proverbial verandah, anthropologists had been conducting “fieldwork from the confines and comforts of their verandah where they might technically have traveled to the ‘field’ but stayed on their porches with limited observational notes supplemented by interviews conducted in the context of informants coming to them. Practices continued to evolve in the discipline so that anthropologists planned on leaving armchairs and verandahs, going to places where experiences mattered most. Recall also from our previous chapter that Franz Boas, the “Father of Modern Anthropology” built his theoretical constructs from a “fieldwork first” emphasis which led to underscoring cultural relativism and countering any previous notions of unilineal evolution.

Participant observation continues to be one of the most distinguishing methods of anthropology that separates it from other disciplines. Other methods such as conducting interviews, studying the archives or other historical documents, and writing observations down in a notebook might be common across disciplines but participant observation specifically calls out the idea that the researcher participates in the things they are observing. They come off the verandah and in doing so, blur the lines of separation that are often presumed to be indicators of a supposedly objective observer and subject who cannot see outside of their lived existence. We will delve into these presumptions in a moment to both challenge the notion of such a clear objective/subjective perspective and show how that challenge marks an important shift in anthropology as we know it today. Participant observation allows researchers to take into account experiential understanding and can help inform other complementary methods and tools such as interviews, focus groups, and surveys.

It should be noted that this does not mean that an anthropologist mimics or becomes the same as someone from the group they are studying. In fact, it is crucial to reflect on the ways in which power and privilege influence how people move through any society. Additionally, the practical timeline of research projects as well as choices in positioning may influence how one wants to orient their participant observation. For example, if an anthropologist were conducting fieldwork today to better understand the beliefs and practices of forensic nurses, the anthropologist would not necessarily go through training and academy to become a nurse themselves. Instead, they may choose to use other participatory methods the way that Sameena Mulla reveals in her ethnography The Violence of Care: Rape Victims, Forensic Nurses, and Sexual Assault Intervention (2014). Mulla draws from her experiences and observations as a rape crisis advocate volunteer in Baltimore who often worked in settings alongside nurses, reflecting on her own role as an advocate and arguing that the combination of care and forensics shapes how people come to understand themselves as victims. Thus, Mulla’s exploration of issues at the intersection of these topics is specifically defined by observations made from her perspective as an advocate and volunteer.

Anthropologists must think carefully about how to build rapport and interface with people in the context of specific roles or contexts. Access to information impacts the ability to glean insights and should be framed with awareness about how a particular type of access and vantage point frames the knowledge that is being generated. Researchers who are already embedded in the culture they are studying also have a unique relationship to defining their relationship to the field site. For example, a physician-anthropologist might be practicing medicine in the same clinic they are also conducting research. Numerous Indigenous anthropologists like Beatrice Medicine situate their thinking and practice as simultaneously integrated into who they are apart from the research as well as within specific endeavors associated with their research.

Anthropologists may also choose to “study up” in order to understand institutional power. For example, someone might choose to focus on bureaucrats or policymakers that determine criteria for contaminated soil or water. At first glance, this choice might seem far away from studying communities most effected by environmental injustices but understanding their cultural practices can also uncover beliefs and practices that are embedded into structures that have far-reaching impact. When it comes to the world of finance, Karen Ho focuses her research on understanding the worldviews of people who make up Wall Street. Ho worked as an analyst for Bankers Trust and leveraged anthropological methods, acknowledging that she was already embedded within the culture she would be studying. Whereas studying communities “out there” in the world might bring about a certain degree of reflection, an anthropologist’s orientation to other stakeholders with similar levels of power and privilege in society could also help to access information. As with any type of situated knowledge, there are unique benefits and challenges to every endeavor. When Laura Nader first called attention to “studying up” decades ago, she named challenges such as access, attitudes, ethics, and methods (1972). People at the top of social hierarchies or marginalized groups who do not easily trust outsiders might be difficult to access for anthropologists and thus require deeper thinking about what it takes to build authentic rapport. Access as well as any attitudes associated with subjectivity are not unique to studying up but do play out in particular ways with this type of research.

Combining the notions and practices of participating and observing means understanding how emic and etic perspectives may differ and how subjectivity and objectivity have been discussed in the social sciences. Emic refers to an insider’s perspective while etic refers to an outsider’s perspective. In the context of participant observation, the emic perspective is more closely achieved through participating while the etic perspective is more aligned with observation. However, part of the power of participant observation lies in challenging the belief that the emic and etic perspectives are separable. When in the field, an anthropologist is simultaneously participating and observing, generating different insights than those that would have arisen had those activities been conducted separately.

In her book Death Without Weeping (1992), Nancy Scheper-Hughes captures experiences from her time as a Peace Corps worker in the 1960s and as an anthropologist conducting fieldwork in the 1980s. She focuses on topics such as childbirth, clinical encounters and how mothers and family members cope with high rates of mortality among children and teens in shantytowns. One of her key findings in this book is the disparity in mortality rates between the overall country’s rates and the rates found in poorer communities. In addition to the findings presented in the book, her ethnography led to discussions and heated debates at the intersection of activism and anthropology. One key question that emerged from these debates asked what, if any, role should anthropologists play in intervening or advocating while conducting field research? In her more recent work on organ trafficking (specifically, kidneys), Scheper-Hughes spent time in dialysis units in Africa and South America. Both works underscore her assertion that anthropologists can simultaneously generate research-based insights while also fully participating as an advocate and activist.

Another example of an anthropologist who is engaged in public discourse and advocacy is Philippe Bourgois who focused his research in Central America and in parts of the U.S. (namely, East Harlem, NY) in his book In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio (1995). He has also conducted research in segregated neighborhoods in Philadelphia, examining issues related to incarceration, substance abuse, homelessness, mental illness and HIV-prevention. Immersion in fieldwork has led to reflections on the risks related to how one positions themselves in participant observation. During his time in Philadelphia, Bourgois recounts being swept up and arrested during a drug raid. His work also emphasizes similar themes to Scheper-Hughes’ work in that he emphasizes public anthropology and activism. Both Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois’ ethnographies and approaches to participant observation highlight the positioning of anthropologists and the stories they tell as a result of those choices. They also pose questions about who tells the stories and how power and privilege might play out in research and activism itself. While both Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois spent a great deal of time using fieldwork and anthropological methods, they also embedded themselves into worlds that were far different from their own experiences as white intellectuals and activists who came from elite institutions. Their own narratives and ethnographies simultaneously have a place in anthropology while also posing important considerations about potential exploitation of people’s lived experiences in telling stories and writing about culture.

Examples of ethnographies that reflect deeply on both their own relationship to the research and on the ways in which subject matter as well as groups of people can be understood in nuanced and contextualized terms come from writers such as Ashanté Reese and K. Tsianina Lomawaima. Reese’s book Black Food Geographies: Race, Self-Reliance and Food Access in Washington DC (2019) highlights the structural and systemic ways in which inequities in food access play out for Black neighborhoods of the DC metropolitan area. Her geographical focus might be in a single city with attention to residential segregation by neighborhood, but her analysis also weaves together transnational flows of power as the food industry also impacts how food is made (or not made) available in the US. Reese’s work highlights the agency and self-reliance of Black residents while shedding light on the impact of these inequitable systems. This provides a contrast or counter-narrative from over-determined depictions of suffering and disempowerment often used to describe communities dealing with poverty and marginalization. K. Tsianina Lomawaima’s book They Called it Prairie Light: The Story of Chilocco Indian School (1994) centers on the experiences of American Indian alumni including her own father who were raised in federal off-reservation boarding schools. Interviews with her father as well as 60 other interlocutors inform her analysis of their explorations and by the intimacy of her own family ties, provides another way of thinking about how stories are gathered and told particularly when there are additional dimensions to consider such as personal lived experiences that are embedded within and across professional commitments.

One applied example of the nuances that arise comes from a journalist who was also trained in ethnography. In The Compton Cowboys (2020), Walter Thompson-Hernández reflects on his subject position and relationship to the people he writes about is. In his concluding section, “Author’s Note: The 11th Cowboy”  Thompson-Hernández speaks of his relationship to the Black cowboys of Compton, California—both as a youth growing up in a nearby neighborhood of Los Angeles and as a Black and Mexican man who experiences some of the racial stereotypes held by colleagues, neighbors, and police officers. He writes of his first encounter with the cowboys, having made an appointment in advance to conduct interviews and arriving at the ranch where people knew to expect a reporter from the New York Times:

The Compton Cowboys were expecting a middle-aged white man that day. They were expecting someone who, according to Keenan, had “a more serious vibe.” Never in their wildest dreams (or mine) did they think that a young man of color who grew up minutes away from them would be representing one of the most prestigious newspapers in the world. That nobody believed me was both disheartening and hilarious. I mean, given the perception of the Times, I couldn’t really blame them. I walked and talked just like members of the group. I was black too. It almost automatically gave me access into their world in a way that no white, middle-aged reporter could have achieved (244).

In his concluding note to the book, written as a journalist but very much elucidating the questions that come with participant observation and ethnography, Thompson-Hernández’ reflects both on how he experiences the field with and alongside his informants and the level of access he has as a result of both his emic and etic perspectives. He adds:

Throughout the course of the year that I spent with them, there were so many moments when I completely forgot that I was there to write a book. It felt like I was hanging out with guys I had known my entire life. Part of the challenge, though, was to write about the group in a way that I hadn’t been trained to do. I was taught that I was the expert, but time in the field in different parts of the world had taught me otherwise. The cowboys were the experts in their own story, and that challenged traditional reporting. Reporters and ethnographers often didn’t have to deliberately stand back from the groups that they were documenting because they already weren’t a part of these communities. Most parachuted into a community and left as soon as they go the information or sound bites they needed. I, on the other hand, had a different relationship to this group. I was both a participant and an observer (245).

While he reflects on his closeness and insider status, Thompson-Hernández also acknowledges how his journey has also taken him away from this world to university and later, assignments across the globe as a journalist for a prestigious newspaper. He reflects deeply on his experiences, at times reconciling and at times leaving blurry his emic and etic perspectives, which allows for a more open dialogue about subject positions and relationship to research than setting up a narrative of objectively knowing and summarizing the whole of any culture.

Where is the field?

From the examples shared across applications of participant observation, it is clear that definitions of the field have changed over time. As described in earlier chapters, anthropologists like A.R. Radcliffe Brown and Bronislaw Malinowski went to the Andaman Islands and Trobriand Islands, respectively. It was “over there” that they were able to learn about beliefs and practices and describe cultures of peoples different from their own. To some extent, the distance and act of going out into the field helped them encounter ideas they were less familiar with, asking questions rather than taking things for granted as simply the way things are. It should also be noted that such access and the ability to travel greater distances often fell along the lines of people from elite social classes and institutions who had the financial means to travel and live abroad for longer periods of time.

Another classic example of fieldwork is Margaret Mead’s work in Samoa. In the 1920s, Franz Boas was very much invested in understanding adolescence and how experiences might differ across cultures. Boas chose of his post-graduate students at the time, Margaret Mead, to embark on such a study by departing New York for Samoa. During her time in Samoa, Mead was determined to learn the language and interact directly, shrugging off any dependence on interpreters for communication with informants. At the same time, Mead also grappled with the tensions and nuances of location and perspective. On the one hand, she felt she might be able to gain more access to local ways of life by living with a Samoan family. However, because this choice would have brought other inefficiencies and barriers to her research, Mead chose to live with an American family based on the island. Mead acknowledged that there is no point in pretending to be one of her interlocutors and showed early signs of reflexivity and subject position even as researcher, while also stepping into participating in the field through choices to learn language and interact more directly.

While Mead is known for a variety of publications, perhaps her most well-known ethnography is Coming of Age in Samoa (1928). Mead focused her work on the island of Ta’ū where the way of life was different and unfamiliar to her for a period of six to nine months. She was specifically interested in adolescent perspectives and ways of life, asking “Are the disturbances which vex our adolescents due to the nature of adolescence itself or to the civilization? Under different conditions does adolescence present a different picture?” (Mead 1928, 6-7). When it was first published, Mead’s ethnography presented personality, gender roles, and sexuality in ways that contrasted from ideas more popularly held in the United States where Mead resided at the time. One important point of difference across cultures was the finding that Samoan teens did not seem to experience the same distress or angst as teens in the U.S. As one might imagine in the time of the 1920s, Mead’s book met with controversy when first published largely due to the presentation of sexual norms so different from what was considered both normal and the only acceptable models available in mainstream discourse in the U.S.

One of the lesser-known aspects of Margaret Mead’s legacy is the work she did upon coming back to the U.S. Although her reputation as an anthropologist deeply engaged in public discourse is and was well known by her contemporaries, examples of her ethnographic work in introductory anthropology courses often center on Samoa as her field site versus what happened in the years and decades following her return to the U.S. Mead did not leave the field and home separate. She applied what she learned about relative perspectives on gender and sex to public engagement and advocacy in the U.S. Decades later, she also engaged in boycotts over racism and continued her work as a public intellectual.

Public engagement as well as scholastic contribution has advanced over the years through the contributions of a wide variety of scholars and activists who were not often, if ever, highlighted in the “canonical” archives of the discipline. Associations established in the 1970s and others that came in the 90s and have continued to grow since then include the Association of Black Anthropologists, the Association of Indigenous Anthropologists, the Association of Latino/a and Latinx Anthropologists, and the Association for Queer Anthropology.

The field today

The field as a concept and fieldwork itself are much more broadly understood today. The notion of the field as “out there, away, and different” has been successfully challenged. Diverse concepts of the field have now been embraced. In 1995, George Marcus introduced the term “multi-sited ethnography” and argued that fieldwork even in its classical sense was always multi-sited because of the implied reference points being discussed in describing culture. Nonetheless, Marcus put this idea of multi-sited fieldwork front and center for anthropologists by outlining several ways in which multiple field sites can help elucidate flows in an increasingly globalized world. Some specific phenomena described are as follows: 1) follow the people; 2) follow the thing; 3) follow the plot/story/allegory; 4) follow the life/biography; 5) follow the conflict. Following the people can be especially useful when studying lived experiences where people are moving and migrating. Following the thing can help understand global chains of production and dissemination (e.g., thinking about the component parts being manufactured in different places to produce the computer or mobile phone on which you may be reading this book). An example of following “things” instead of people is Anna Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the World which focuses on the matsutake mushroom as a means of understanding global flows and their interaction with environmental histories. Following things and people and ideas across sites itself has become even more complex and nuanced in the 21st century as online worlds themselves become identified as field sites, bringing research back to a kind of new armchair anthropology. We will discuss some examples of this in a later chapter on visual media but technically and logistically speaking, an anthropologist may be able to log on from their laptop and kitchen table at home to conduct fieldwork. This contrasts with our original definition of armchair anthropology in that the researcher is committing time to immersive experiences and the collection of primary data.

Methods and Tools

In response to a history of harm and death that came as a result of biomedical research, a process of institutional review was introduced. One of the greatest breaches in research ethics (though not acknowledged as such during that time) emerged from the Tuskegee Study which began in 1932 when the Public Health Service and Tuskegee Institute conducted a study with 600 Black men, some of whom had syphilis and others who did not (CDC 2022). The study was intended to record the natural history of syphilis and its trajectory. Throughout the course of the study, patients did not receive informed consent about the nature of the research and their rights as participants were not protected. On top of receiving vague, limited, and misleading information about the nature of the study, men in the study did not receive adequate treatment to treat their illness. Upon review even while the study was still going, a panel deemed the study unjustifiable and stopped the study. From this review and the following class action lawsuit that found in favor of the participants and their descendants, this series of events at the intersection of research and systemic racism led to the establishment of research ethics that explicitly articulated informed consent protocols and principles.

Universities and research organizations in the United States fall under the Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects, sometimes called the Common Rule (US DHHS 1991). The Common Rule is heavily influenced by the Belmont Report, which was first published in 1979. This report outlined foundational principles in ethics involving human subjects research. The Common Rule was published in 1991 and codified regulations regarding IRBs, informed consent, and other assurances of compliance.

Before beginning fieldwork for the purpose of research, one will have to submit their proposal for research to an Institutional Review Board. This requires understanding what an IRB does, how ethics in research undergird this process, and how methods and tools can be chosen and described for inclusion in this application.

Typically, applications and approvals fall into three categories: 1) Full; 2) Expedited; and 3) Exempt. The time and scrutiny in each of these categories depends on the nature of the study. For example, if a researcher is collecting primary (direct) data from minors or vulnerable populations, their study will require a full review by the board. Exempt studies typically are described as minimal to no risk to subjects and expedited review falls somewhere in between minimal risk and the degree of risk and vulnerability involved in studies that require full review. Regardless of what type of application or review process a researcher undergoes, all efforts should be made to minimize or reduce harm in any ethnographic research.

Ethnographic research falls under the Common Rule because it is a systematic study intended to contribute to “generalizable knowledge.” Generalizable knowledge means that observations, reflections, and findings are being presented to say something bigger or greater about cultural phenomena than a singular narrative might (e.g., distinct in generalizability from a travel blog describing one’s own experiences on a journey or a memoir outlining one’s specific life experiences). It should be noted that practitioners in applied settings might regularly work with minors or vulnerable populations and collect data as part of regular program development and quality improvement. If these data are not being analyzed in order to be generalized for research purposes, these protocols may not apply but the foundational ethics can still be addressed through patient or community advisory councils or efforts that emphasize accountability to the individuals and communities who are most impacted by collection of data, analysis, and resulting narratives.

One additional consideration in conducting research that is more pronounced for anthropologists is the complicated and ongoing interaction between anthropologist and “subjects” of research. As discussed above in the process of coming “off the verandah” and living in the same neighborhoods or occupying shared spaces during participant observation for an extended period of time, practices like “informed consent” are far more dynamic and continuous. Informed consent is the process of providing subjects with the purpose and details of the research as well as any potential benefits as well as harm that might come from the research. A participant should understand exactly what they are agreeing to; this process can be clear and explicit when engaging in a recorded interview or focus group but might be more nuanced when agreeing to a series of conversations that might take place under the umbrella of participant observation. Additionally, some participant observation in public spaces and mass gatherings may fall outside of practices like presenting information and gathering written or verbal consent from each person who is occupying a widely acknowledged public space such as music concert or festival.

Quantitative and Qualitative Methods

Methods can be clustered into two broad groups, quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative data are analyzed using statistical methods. Quantitative results of analysis will appear in some numerical form. Qualitative data are captured and reported on in narrative format, though at times qualitative data can also be analyzed using statistical methods. Importantly, quantitative data and analyses can be standardized whereas qualitative data and analysis may occur using standardized formats or using more flexible formats of both collection and reporting on analyses. Both quantitative and qualitative methods can be used to produce descriptions of the phenomenon of study.

When it comes to drawing conclusions about causality, they differ substantially. In quantitative analyses, the laws of statistical inference require that a set of conditions be met in order to make causal claims. By contrast, qualitative methods approach causality as referencing conceptual causality that does not require statistical demonstration but, instead, strength of argument and refutation of counter-explanations. Both of these approaches are meritorious. When tools and modes of analysis from both groups (not all from each group, but at least one from each) this is often referred to as mixed methods. Most cultural anthropologists and ethnographic research will collect data using qualitative methods, but it is important to briefly touch on quantitative options as they may be important complements to weave into the discovery process. Being able to partner methods whether through direct analysis or as part of a team working on different types of data is important to providing a collaborative and complementary picture of what might be happening in a group, whether it is at the neighborhood or country level. Original data collected for the purposes of the study at hand, whether quantitative or qualitative, is described as primary data. When researchers analyze existing datasets, this is known as secondary analysis. Before diving into the types of analysis, let us briefly discuss some common outreach methods for collecting quantitative data.

Some quantitative analyses might be conducted by using publicly available datasets such as data from the Census. Larger datasets about employment that are publicly available might allow for statistical analysis to look at economic trends that complement the lived experiences and thick description that come from qualitative research more classically associated with cultural anthropology such as participant observation and interviews.

One of the most common means of gathering primary quantitative data is through surveys. Surveys can be distributed either by paper or electronically. Even when data are collected by paper or in digital format, the person filling out the form or how and where they fill out the survey will vary. For example, paper surveys can be handed out in person, mailed or made available in semi-public spaces (e.g., left at the front desk of a waiting room). Surveys can also be administered electronically in person (e.g., using tablets that are handed to someone during a clinical encounter or during an appointment) or accessed independently online (e.g., with outreach consisting of emails or sharing the link to the survey through a variety of communication channels). Someone might read the questions aloud as a participant marks their answers, a participant might fill out the form alone, or a participant might fill out the form alone but occasionally ask a person nearby (researcher or otherwise) for clarification and assistance in understanding the questions. Another option is phone administration where someone might call and ask a series of questions, recording responses to the survey either on paper or electronically. These are just a few of the varied methods through which surveys can be administered and completed.

A survey in and of itself is not automatically quantitative or qualitative. In fact, many surveys can have a mixture of questions that allow for quantitative as well as qualitative analysis. Quantitative questions can fall into four categories: 1) nominal or categorical; 2) ordinal; 3) interval; and 4) ratio. A common set of nominal questions are related to demographic data like race and gender. These exist in categories and the number of people that choose those categories can then be counted. However, the categories themselves are not in any ascending or descending order. In contrast, ordinal measures are related to one another even if they appear to be in the same bigger categories like nominal questions. A common example of ordinal questions are scales where a respondent might choose between labels that have an order such as frequency: “I use Open Access textbooks for my classes” and responses ranging from “Very Often” and “Often” to “Rarely” or “Never.” These are not numbers per se, but they are responses that can be counted per category, and the categories have an ordered relationship and progression. Interval measures also have labels that are ordered as well as having equal spacing. For example, “net promoter scores” are often used to see if people would recommend a resource to others. They may choose a number from 1-10 with 1 representing a label like “Very Unlikely” and 10 representing “Very Likely.” A final category is ratio which has all the characteristics of interval along with the ability to analyze through additional statistical means. Some common ratio measures include age, weight, and height. Survey questions can also be open response or open text and allow participants to write free text. Questions like: “How have you incorporated concepts from this class into your own life?” are open to all kinds of responses and, depending on your research objectives, could be coded and analyzed for recurring themes.

Geospatial analysis allows one to visually map measures and interpret any trends that might surface as a result of overlaying data with one another. For example, demographic data combined with the number of grocery stores in a city and mapped out across Census tracts or zip codes could illustrate the relationship between food deserts and neighborhoods with higher numbers of households that live below the Federal Poverty Line. It can also elucidate racial inequities in the built environment. Mapping itself is not quantitative analysis but can leverage quantitative and qualitative data; specifically, quantitative analysis might include statistical interpretation based on the results of mapping activities.

Turning to qualitative methods, we can think about several ways to frame data collection and analysis. Archival research includes historical documents that add additional context to the subject of study. Archives may be available before beginning fieldwork while others might only be available closer to your field sites. These can include reviewing documents, recordings, and reports but might also include community archives that are spaces for sharing and preserving stories and audio files that describe lived experiences.

Interviews typically focus on a single interviewee. It might increase to the interviewer and two people. While interviews are commonly conducted with one or two people at a time, an ethnographic research project might include 40 or more interviews with different individuals. Additionally, one might conduct serial or repeated interviews with the same person over a longer period of time. Interviews differ in dynamic to focus groups that might typically range between five to 12 participants (with the number varying depending on the level of dynamic conversation and perspective, outreach and recruitment criteria, and the ability to ensure that the group is not so large that all participants have limited time and space to share). In both cases, there are three ways to structure question guides in preparation for the interview or focus group: 1) structured; 2) semi-structured; and 3) open. Structured guides will have a list of questions and facilitators will demonstrate little to no deviation from the ultimate goal of addressing each of those questions and in a planned order. Semi-structured guides might appear similar to structured guides in that they include articulated questions with a proposed flow. However, during the interview or focus group, there is flexibility to deviate and ask follow-up questions, follow a new, unexpected topic if it arises in conjunction with a prompt, or address topics out of order should the conversation incorporate elements in one breath. Open interviews may begin with a general objective or direction but have no pre-formulated questions and allow space to go wherever the conversation takes the interviewer and interviewee. Participant observation has been described earlier in this chapter when we discussed fieldwork. Though often a hallmark for anthropology, participant observation is used and applied in a variety of fields. A person might take a notebook with them to record notes while engaged in participant observation; this becomes an act of recording and collecting data. For example, if they were in a public park as someone who is enjoying green space in urban design and understanding the impact of experience and the built environment. It may make sense in settings where others around you are also taking notes during the experience. For example, if you are attending a training or conference, the overall culture among attendees might make it commonplace for people to be scribbling notes on pads of paper. However, it may not be practical to record notes in the moment and perhaps it would even impede the experience. In these cases, it will be surprising to note how much you can fine tune your ability to remember and recall. One helpful strategy is to write notes down whenever possible and soon after that experience in the field. For example, after attending a group event, you may have some time to jot a few notes down in your car before driving away or on the bus or train ride to your next location.

Before the interviews or focus groups begin, information about the purpose is shared, as approved according to IRB standards. Participants can choose to give consent and be included in the recording or, if consent is granted through signed written forms, explanation of the study and consent may first take place before recording begins. Consent is a continuous process so agreement to participate in a recorded interview may then take a different shape during the process in which case, one might pause the recording for a specific portion and begin again when the participant is ready to continue with recording. Consent can also specify choices within recording; for example, a person may consent to audio but not video or consent to video of hand gestures but not of facial expressions. Recordings can then transcribed and analyzed because insights might emerge upon further examination in ways that did not immediately jump out in the moment.

Anthropologists analyze qualitative data using several different approaches to identify themes that might surface important insights about beliefs and practices. Sometimes, they begin identifying these themes even while doing fieldwork and can analyze data through a more structured, deductive approach. Other times, they are still trying to surface themes by immersing themselves in the data by reading transcripts through a more inductive approach in order to see if there are emerging themes. A combination of both approaches can also be used. If needed, between transcription and analysis, there may be an extra step for translation (e.g., interviews are conducted in one language, but analysis and publication will take place in another where translation in the interim may be useful).

Analysis can be done through many means, all of which depend on the skills, interests, and preferences of the person versus on automated options (even with the help of useful software options). A low or no-tech option is to print transcripts and use highlighters, markers, or colored pens to denote margin notes; sticky notes or tabs might allow researchers to flip back and forth across printed out pages to compare how recurring themes appear in different contexts. A digital low or no-cost option leverages commonplace software such as Microsoft Excel and Word to structure qualitative data analysis (Ose 2016). Other options that use the advantages of technology include the importing of transcripts into tools like Atlas.ti or NVivo which can assist in connecting quotes to themes and meta-themes, which can be useful when writing or comparing across transcripts.

Tools may also be thought of more broadly as techniques that help facilitate the conversation as a complement or supplement to interview guides. Two examples include PhotoVoice-inspired visual methods as well as an activity called pile sorting. Participants may receive capacity building in accessing cameras for photography or videography and share images that are most meaningful to them with the researcher or with other members of their action group. These might typically accompany an open-ended prompt such as, “What is an asset in your neighborhood?” In sharing their images and processing together as a group, participants may elucidate themes that are important to them from their own perspective rather than prompting with directives such as “take a photo of the libraries” or “take a photo of water pumps near where you live.” This can lead to dynamic discussions about similarities and differences across participants, illustrating where there are recurring themes and where themes might converge or diverge. An activity that can follow the sharing of photographs but also stand alone is pile sorting. There are many different versions of pile sorting, but two basic examples could include the prompt to ask participants in the scenario above to group photos in piles that make sense to them. In essence, this is an act of clustering data into thematic groups. Participants can discuss why they grouped certain photos together and propose a name for the theme of that group and can also engage with others about why piles might align or differ. A non-photo related version of pile sorting could begin with an open prompt to list things that come to mind (e.g., what are daily duties in your family? List 10). After collecting the responses, you might be able to create cards, each denoting one of the 10 most common responses across participants. At this point, participants might be asked to sort these responses into piles. Piles might be specified into a limited number and by group (eg, gender to understand local perspectives about gender roles and family responsibilities in daily life) or they may be open as described in the photography example where participants can organize into whatever number and types of piles they see fit. These activities can provide additional avenues to foster discussions. They also provide some inspiration for activities that can be used to facilitate data collection without depending on text-based tools.

There are many more nuances to each of the methods described here but this provides a foundation to understand the different options available to anthropologists conducting research. Another framework to be familiar with, and perhaps more common among action-oriented anthropologists is community based participatory research (CBPR). Faridi et al. (2007) have noted that CBPR can also be associated with terms like “community action research, participatory action research, community-based action research, participatory rapid appraisal, and empowerment evaluation.” They refer to Minkler’s definition of CBPR as “a process that involves community members or recipients of interventions in all phases of the research process.” CBPR can be used to inform program design, advocacy efforts or in community organizing and the method and principles do not always have to be deployed in an institutional research context (Wallerstein et al. 2007).

Ethnographic Writing (And Its Alternatives)

Now that a wide range of data have been collected and analyzed, it is time to write. At this point, a researcher has completed the colossal tasks of constructing your research proposal, completing IRB review, and completing fieldwork using a variety of methods. A researcher has also completed many rounds of analysis and now have the task of putting things together in a final written format called an ethnography. So how do we write about all the things you have learned and experienced?

There are two important frameworks to be aware of when we think about writing ethnography today. Though he was not the first to use the term “thick description,” American anthropologist Clifford Geertz popularized the concept in his essay, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture” (1973). Thick description refers to the idea that detailed description of things observed is not enough to understand, generalize, or capture the meaning of culture; instead, the notion of “thick description” is to acknowledge that there are layers of signs and symbols that require interpretation. Writing about culture, then, becomes less an endeavor of recording facts as obvious or objective truths about a group and more of an exploratory and interpretive endeavor. A second critical framework in ethnography, or writing about culture, came about a decade later in the 80s. This movement is often referred to as the “writing culture” shift, associated with the edited volume Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (Eds. Clifford and Marcus 1986) where authors examined the biases inherent in what elements of culture an anthropologist sees or chooses to write about. The truths written about in ethnography are subjective and dependent on rigorous but nonetheless partial perspectives held by the subject position of the anthropologist. By writing culture or constructing ethnography, the anthropologist is accounting for themselves in the practice not as a neutral recorder of absolute truths but as someone implicated in all interactions. An alternative mode to objective recording is a reflexive approach where writers reflect on their own subject position as part of the cultural context.

In Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco, Paul Rabinow writes, “Culture is interpretation. The ‘facts’ of anthropology, the material which the anthropologist has gone to the field to find, are already themselves interpretations. The baseline data is already culturally mediated by the people whose culture we, as anthropologists, have come to explore” (2007, 150). The act of choosing and defining the field, the people that anthropologists interact with in terms of participant observation or interviews, and the very act of summing it up in writing ethnography are all layers and acts of interpretation. Along each step of the way, anthropologists can implicitly or explicitly name how and what they are interpreting, building in the reflexive turn marked in writing ethnography throughout the entire journey.

In this reflexive turn, anthropologists examined the way they write about ethnography. But what about alternative ways of describing analysis other than through written format? One example is the way in which anthropologists might produce films as well as write ethnographies as a means of exploring both the data and analysis, with parallel reflections about the role of the person behind the camera and editing the film to final product as the person writing down pieces of their field observations and constructing an account that becomes realized in the format of an essay, journal article, or book.  Multi-media approaches to illuminating human experiences include the work of Jason de Leon who directs the Undocumented Migration Project. Through this project, de Leon utilizes ethnography, archaeology, visual anthropology, and forensic science to understand the process of migration. He has disseminated learnings in a variety of formats in order to raise public awareness, one of which takes shape in visual versus written form via 94 pop up installations in cities across the US as well as in Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, and Italy. The installations include large maps of the Arizona/Mexico border, marked with 3200 handwritten toe tags recovered from bodies of people who died crossing the border between 2000 and 2020.

Conclusion

 This chapter introduces the many methods that have developed over time and some ways that we have seen them applied. We have dialed back the clock to examine how the “field” itself was conceptualized throughout the history of the discipline and how fieldwork and the notion of field sites evolved over time in the discipline. From there, we examined specific methods and tools to understand how quantitative and qualitative methods might be utilized in the production of ethnographies. And finally, we looked at how those ethnographic products themselves have evolved to be more reflective and reflexive in terms of thinking about how people write about or visualize culture.

As you think about the history and development of these approaches, the ways they have been used by others, and some of the unique strengths and challenges that come with various methods, you might now consider how you would like to apply them to topics that pique your own interests when it comes to studying cultures. As you put into practice some of these approaches and test them out for yourself, you will find that more questions will arise but this constant opening up to ideas is part of the joy of engaging in new knowledge.