The DOI matches its Crossref record; 19 of the 23 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Ethnography
Open accessAbstract
Ethnographic fieldwork, carried out according to the method of long-term participant-observation, is what defines social anthropology. The method is inductive and open-ended. As such, the method directs the anthropologist to study that which is of significance to the community studied rather than test a number of hypotheses formulated in advance of the fieldwork. Anthropology is a comparative discipline, seeking to unravel the complexity and variety of human understanding and human social and cultural life. For this reason, anthropologists have sought out societies that seemed to be very different from their own and, during the first half of the twentieth century, most went to undertake their fieldwork in small - often minority - communities in Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas. While this is still the case to a large extent, today many anthropologists have directed their ethnographic gaze toward communities closer to home. Thus the method of participant-observation is found to be useful by those who, for example, study life in a large bank, or the gay community in an American urban setting, as much as in a settlement in the Malaysian rain forest. The method is based on the paradoxical activity of participating fully in peoples’ lives, while simultaneously observing it from a distance. To base one’s study on the ‘native’s point of view’, and to disentangle what really goes on rather than what people say goes on, is one central advantage of the method. This forces the researcher to allow herself to be open to the unexpected event or utterance. The ethnographer always engages with contemporary anthropological theory in her interpretations. Ethnographic fieldwork is thus performed in active relationship with anthropological theory.
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“Ethnography as a research approach, stemming from early anthropologic approaches, was centred around understanding outsiderliness and socio-cultural difference (Howell, 2018).”
From Moving beyond ‘shopping list’ positionality: Using kitchen table reflexivity and in/visible tools to develop reflexive qualitative research (2023) · cites this paper as Howell, 2018
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“Utilising my in/visible tools may have also helped to ameliorate ethical dilemmas ethnographic work often faces around researching the unfamiliar, exotic ' other ' (Candea, 2018; Howell, 2018; Pennsylvania University, 2021).”
From Moving beyond ‘shopping list’ positionality: Using kitchen table reflexivity and in/visible tools to develop reflexive qualitative research (2023) · cites this paper as Howell, 2018
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Cites
Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography
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That’s enough about ethnography!
Ingold, T. (2014) · Hau Journal of Ethnographic Theory · doi:10.14318/hau4.1.021 · Cited by 688
The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
Rice, W., Little, W. C., & Onions, C. T. (1937) · The English Journal · doi:10.2307/804556 · Cited by 594
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Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family
Morgan, L. H. (1870) · Routledge eBooks · doi:10.4324/9781003003595-10 · Cited by 311
The Kinning of Foreigners: Transnational Adoption in a Global Perspective
Howell, S. L. (2006) · Cited by 218
Self-citation
Research works printed but not linked: 12
- Boas, F. 1966. Kwakiutl ethnography (ed. & abridged H. Codere). Chicago: University Press.
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- Her D.Phil was obtained at the University of Oxford and was based on 18 months of fieldwork with the Chewong -a hunter-gatherer community in the Malaysian rainforest. She has subsequently undertaken fieldwork in eastern Indonesia and she has performed a major study on values and practices of transnational adoption in Norway. She has published widely based on her three fieldworks.
Cited by
Folkes, L. (2023) · Qualitative Research · doi:10.1177/14687941221098922 · Cited by 159
Innovations in Ethnographic Methods
Seligmann, L. J., & Estes, B. P. (2019) · American Behavioral Scientist · doi:10.1177/0002764219859640 · Cited by 36
Dolah, E. R. V., Hesed, C. D. M., & Paolisso, M. (2020) · Wetlands · doi:10.1007/s13157-020-01388-0 · Cited by 33
A roadmap to doing culturally grounded developmental science
Broesch, T., Lew‐Levy, S., Kärtner, J., Kanngießer, P., & Kline, M. A. (2022) · Review of Philosophy and Psychology · doi:10.1007/s13164-022-00636-y · Cited by 32
Cultural evolution: A review of theoretical challenges
Nichols, R., Charbonneau, M., Chellappoo, A., Davis, T., Haidle, M. N., Kimbrough, E. O., Moll, H., Moore, R., Scott‐Phillips, T., Purzycki, B. G., et al. (2024) · Evolutionary Human Sciences · doi:10.1017/ehs.2024.2 · Cited by 15
Metadata
- Authors
- Howell, S.
- Affiliations
- University of Oslo (NO)
- Corresponding author
- Howell, Signe
- Venue
- Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology
- Published
- 2018-02-18
- ISSN
- 2398-516X (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W4241960996
- Cited by
- 28
- References
- 23
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 1
- Type
- reference entry
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by-nc
- Locations
- Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Anthropology › Anthropological Studies and Insights
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics
- Social Sciences › Anthropology › Cross-Cultural and Social Analysis
- Keywords
- ethnographic fieldwork, participant observation, long-term fieldwork, inductive method, comparative analysis, anthropological theory, emic perspective, minority groups
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