The DOI matches its Crossref record; 2 of the 2 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
What's Wrong with Ethnography? The Myth of Theoretical Description
Abstract
This paper questions the commitment of ethnography to the goal of producing theoretical descriptions of particular settings, groups or organisations. It is argued that both the concepts of theory and description assumed by this goal are misconceived. Various interpretations of the concept of theory embedded in ethnographic work are examined, revealing some serious difficulties. It is also argued that the concept of ethnographic description, as currently conceived, obscures the role of values and purposes in structuring descriptions. The conclusion reached is that the goals of ethnographic research need rethinking.
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Citations
Cites
The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research
Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (2017) · Aldine (Routledge reprint) · doi:10.4324/9780203793206 · Cited by 25,789
Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists
Strauss, A. L. (1987) · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511557842 · Cited by 12,277
Cited by
Qualitative research methods in health technology assessment: a review of the literature.
Murphy, Dingwall, Greatbatch, Parker, & Watson (1998) · Health Technology Assessment · doi:10.3310/hta2160 · Cited by 1,107
Faltering from ethnography to design
Hughes, J. A., Randall, D., & Shapiro, D. (1992) · Proceedings of the 1992 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work · doi:10.1145/143457.143469 · Cited by 438
Metadata
- Authors
- Hammersley, M.
- Venue
- Sociology
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 1990-11
- Volume
- 24
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 597-615
- ISSN
- 0038-0385 (ISSN-L)
- 1469-8684
- OpenAlex
- W2124535352
- Cited by
- 169
- References
- 2
- FWCI
- 17.51
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: What's Wrong with Ethnography? The Myth of Theoretical Description. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1177/0038038590024004003
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- Hammersley, M. (1990). What's Wrong with Ethnography? The Myth of Theoretical Description. Sociology. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038590024004003
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
