Ethnography refers to the study of humans and their behavior in their natural setting. In involve the description and the analysis of cultural systems, focusing mainly on behavior, values, customs beliefs and rituals of individual groups of people. The researchers mainly base their research focus on the factors within population and community that dictates the behavior and the customs of the society. Such factors include: the religion, socio economic, geographic and political environments.
According to the American anthropological association the researchers in the ethnographic field should at least provide a foundation for human population ethical research conduct. This provides a room for consideration of the risk of harm in relation to the benefits of ethnographic research. There are multiple research methodologies that are used in ethnographic research. Some of them include: participant observation, analysis of te
...xt, direct observation, structured and unstructured interviewing, audio visual records and focused discussions with community members and individuals.
The researchers need to build high degree of trust among their interviewees so as to cultivate an ethnographic ethical climate. The ethnographic research project is reviewed by institutional review board to ensure the security and protection of the subjects despite the fact that it occur in the natural setting of the human populations. The ethnographic research review considers the probability or the likelihood of harm, the duration of harm and the severity of harm. The project should always be commensurate with the potential benefit of the project versus the degree of the risk of harm.
The ethnographic research is always in progress, at times being sporadic, and occurring in a natural dynamic setting. The participants may fail to participate at any point at any stag
of the research process. The magnitude of the harm is in most cases low although the probability of them occurring is very high. The harms like boredom, mild embarrassments and uncertainties are frequent but their magnitude is mild. At times when the research in contacted in conflictive areas there is possibility of harm magnitude being high (Goff man, A.
2014). At any given situation, the institutional board review should consider research projects cultural and social environments, political, psychological and physical status of the research participants and the relationship between the researcher and the participants. There are many significant risks of harm associated with ethnographic research including the: loss of rights and claims, criminal and civil prosecution as a resulting from disclosure of private information, disruption of family and personal issues. The researchers should inform their participants about the risks and the benefits of giving out identifiable information.
The participant’s whishes in case they want to be identified should also be respected by the ethnographer. There are several benefits accrued from the ethnographic research. Ethnographic research provides a primary source of information that facilitate the information policy cycle on human population dynamics. Ethnographic research gives a well detailed picture of a given situation rather than giving abstracting one or two isolated aspects. The research provides detailed information covering different aspect a population, community or individuals.
The ethnographer ta wide range of perspectives when contacting the research work. The information obtained covers all the dimensions of human dynamics including the cultural norms, customs, behavior, political aspects. It also extends its hand to study the history of a population. The ethnographic research therefore provides complete information to the information policy cycle
that can be used in future. The other benefit is that the information is derived directly from the natural setting of a population.
This means that it gives first-hand information concerning the social, political and socio economic environments of a given population. The information obtained from the research therefore can be use analyses the social behavior political and economic livelihood of given population. The ethnographic research information can be used as source of linguistic studies. It gives detailed information of embedded on the social system.
It can be used to determine the dynamic nature of human social systems with populations or communities. The other key benefit of ethnography in the information cycle is that it studies a population for quite a long time and therefore it can be used to introduce new system which forms part of the dynamic nature of a population(Goff man, A. 2014). Generally ethnographical research contributes greatly to the information policy cycle. It gives explicit information about a population or a community.it is a very crucial asset in the sociological, cultural and socio economic nature of community or population over a long period of time.
In qualitative research the researcher takes him/herself as an instrument. This brings the implication of the social research being performed like a field research. The researcher in ethnographic research plays a very critical role in order to ensure the success of the project. In the field the research has to plan the methodology to be used in collecting the data. Gathering and distribution of the required resources and budgeting of the whole research project is the work of the researcher. In the filed the researcher has to multitask in
order to realize success in his work.
The researcher has to get a way of confronting the participants in an interactive manner to convince them to disclose the information to him or her. The person contacting the research still has a very big role in in gathering, combining, compiling and analyzing the information gathered during the course of the research work in order to come up with a conclusive report. Sometimes he/she has to him/ her as an object of purpose but with cognitive ability to recollect the information in mind. Eventually the research has to compile the report, present the results and publish the findings for storage of information and future reference. Dr. Alice Goff man in her approach she uses the power of interaction and communication.
Interacting with her subjects, interconnectedness is the thing that created the good link between the researcher and the subjects (Goff man, A. 2014).The research provides detailed information covering different aspect a population, community or individuals’ .She uses herself as an object with ability to change according to the situation to fit and interrogate the subjects. She understands the nature of human population as dynamic and never stagnant.it take her long period to study and gather the information about the people of the color. The harms like boredom, mild embarrassments and uncertainties are frequent but their magnitude is mild The issue behind is that the people of color are capable of changing their systems , norms culture and social behaviors from time to time depending on the situation. She understands how complex the ideas are but still has interrogated some more in order to get more diversified results.
References
Understanding blackness through performance: Contemporary arts and the representation of identity.
of New York Press.
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