Ethnography

This chapter concerns ethnography, a form of qualitative research combining several methods, including interviewing and observation. I examine the emergence of ethnography before discussing the practicalities of conducting ethnographic research, including the maintenance of relations in the field, fieldwork roles, and methods for recording field data. Considerable attention is paid to matters of analysis, since the eclecticism of ethnographic methods means that ethnographers often confront problems in converting reams of data into a coherent analysis. The intimacy of field relations prompts a discussion of fieldwork ethics