Ethnography is a branch of anthropology that explores culture, groups, settings, and other contexts from the viewpoints of the people connected to the field, the place a researcher aims to study. The field experience is the most significant factor in determining whether any research will be accepted as anthropological (Gupta & Ferguson, 1997). While fieldwork creates a space based on several interpretations, it also draws boundaries to limit that same space. For example, the hunting experiences of people living in a place may differ in their needs and emotions. However, the same hunting experiences may be understood in terms of the animals hunted and the weapons possessed.

Ethnography involves a researcher documenting people’s lives by spending time with them. It allows the researcher to move beyond typical questionnaires toward chance encounters, casual conversations, and participation in festivals and funerals with people from the field (Aiyadurai, 2021). Being considered a family member may give an ethnographer access to domains reserved for insiders. Ethnographers offer some insightful interpretations of the complex worlds they observe. They are a part of the world they study, and their interpretations may be filtered through their way of observing the world. The possibility of being ethnocentric involves a researcher making sense of the world by considering their own beliefs at the centre (Baylor, 2012). For example, an ethnographer from a coloniser nation may be biased in their observations concerning the colonised. Ethnographers need to realise how such phenomena may impact their interpretations, influencing how the latter may fit into the larger picture (or obscure it!) that often evolves with time.

Autoethnography is an approach in which a researcher systematically and retrospectively analyses their past personal experiences to recognise and critically interpret cultural contexts (Ellis et al., 2011). It generates accessible research grounded in one’s experience that arose due to possessing a certain identity. For example, it may sensitise readers to how a community manifests certain social issues. Autoethnography accommodates subjectivity and the researcher’s influence on research, helping understand how one’s perceptions influence their interpretations about the topic of interest. This approach combines the characteristics of ethnography and autobiography, which involves writing about past experiences that significantly impacted one’s life trajectory.

Positionality within the Field

A paper by three doctoral students at the time highlights that power and privilege are inescapable when a researcher engages with the researched (Mahajan et al. 2020). One of the authors mentioned that her psychological training occasionally influenced her interpretations of familial dynamics regarding class and parenting practices during her research. She shifted between the opposing positions of being a middle-class parent and a researcher who critiqued parental practices of the same group. However, her field experiences encouraged her to look beyond individual experiences: Was she decentralising the children by centralising parent perceptions? Was it also because of teacher perceptions? Was the situation getting complicated due to her position as a researcher belonging to the same social class as the people she observed?

Researchers should be prepared to work around such dilemmas during fieldwork and attempt to represent the voices of all actors involved in the issue being researched. Further, it is vital to view anthropologists in terms of “shifting identifications amid a field of interpenetrating community and power relations” (p. 671) as opposed to the dichotomous perspective of observer/observed (Narayan 1993).

When discussing opposites, it is critical to understand that researchers often do not fit into the “clean” category of being native or non-native. They may be a halfie since their identity is a sophisticated interplay of several factors that may get highlighted in different contexts. Others (e.g., observers) can identify an anthropologist in different ways. For example, Indian anthropologist M.N. Srinivas was not considered native by the people in his ancestral village because he went to study at the University of Oxford in England (Narayan, 1993). His father’s stay in the city for his children’s education and his own stay in a foreign country made him distant from the rules and rituals of the local Brahmins. Upon his return, he was respected as a guest in his village. It highlights the complex layers of a researcher’s identity and positionality in relation to the people they study. Different identities can make their entry into the field easy or difficult, depending on the situation.

The Observer as Observed

During one of my brief research assignments, I noticed that I, an observer, was treated as “the observed” by people in the field. Some food servers from a hotel and shopkeepers speculated that I was a government employee doing surveys. Some others assumed that I was a health official monitoring the public’s compliance with COVID precautions. To build trust among people from the field, I bought some things from shops, sometimes ate food at the hotel, and explained, upon being asked, that I wore a face mask as a preventive measure (and not because I had COVID). Slowly, people started getting comfortable with me being on the field.

The incident above highlights that people from the field often make observations about the researcher, influencing the information they may share in the future. This information is crucial since it helps construct a blueprint of fieldwork: Who to meet? When to meet whom? What to ask? Ethnographers should understand that being the observer and the observed are interchangeable, depending on the context—it goes both ways, like two sides of the same coin. Hence, doing activities like buying and eating snacks at shops where people from the field generally gather and chat can be seen as the first step that helps build trust. 

In a nutshell, ethnography involves multilayered interpretations of the field. Further, the complex boundaries (and dynamics) between the observer and the observed and the native and non-native underline the importance of positionality in this domain. An understanding of these aspects may contribute to reflexivity and insightful research. A grasp of these nuances helps realise ethnography as a dynamic experience rather than a static study.

References

Aiyadurai, A. (2021). Qualitative social science research methods: Lectures, discussions, and an assignment. HS 505, IIT Gandhinagar.

Baylor, E. (2012). Ethnocentrism. Oxford Bibliographies.

Ellis, C., Adams, T. E., & Bochner, A. P. (2011). Autoethnography: An overview. Historical social research, 273–290.

Gupta, A., & Ferguson, J. (1997). Discipline and practice: ‘The field’ as site, method, and location in anthropology. Anthropological locations: Boundaries and grounds of field science, 100, 1–47.

Mahajan, A., Rajangam, K., & Suresh Babu, S. (2020). Doctoral journeys: From field diaries to institutional(ized) authorship. Economic and Political Weekly, 55(22), 53–60.

Narayan, K. (1993). How native is a “native” anthropologist? American anthropologist, 95(3), 671–686.

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Apeksha Srivastava is pursuing her Ph.D. at the intersection of Science Communication and Psychology from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Gandhinagar, India. She was a visiting researcher at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs (USA) from April to July 2024.