This past week in class we reviewed and clarified the topic of Ethnography. Breaking down the word ethnography it describes writings about people. When an individual is utilizing ethnography there are do’s and don’t. You can not use ethnography on one person it is a tool to be used during sociological observation of an entire community. Two key components are investigating peoples lives and reporting lives to others. Ethnography is away to see from a different standpoint. Most times starting from a certain standpoint would imitate a sort of bias to sociological perspective however seeing from a standpoint is not bias because there is no way to not hold a Bias because it is in our nature whether we are aware of it as humans or not. Having multiple perspectives allows the sociologist to produce more of an understanding and comprehension of the world around the object being observed. Reflexive Ethnography has four skills sets to be utilized, listening and understanding, willing to be vulnerable, stand up to ones own personal presumptions, recognition of ones personal cultural baggage.
Lastly, there are six stages of ethnography, Investigating primitive peoples, cultural relativism, modernization theory, interpretive ethnography, colonial complicity, focus on representation. Interpretation of ethnography and focusing on representing the results of the ethnography are two key components of the six stages