Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject Sociology - Methodology and Methods, grade: A-77, University of Canterbury (Department of Mass Communication and Journalism), course: COMS 402 New Media And Contemporary Theory, language: English, abstract: Ethnography is the central method of anthropology. Nevertheless, it has often beenborrowed and adapted by other disciplines. While there is a central body of
methodological texts within anthropology, this is not the case in relation to the use of
ethnography outside the discipline and in relation to online fandom in particular.
This "absence of a central corpus of methodological texts" (Ruddock 1998, p.297)
results in a broad range of diversity in so-called ethnographic writing. Harry F.
Wolcott's struggle (in Van Maanen 1995:92) to decide whether to call his study The
Man in the Principal's Office (1973) ethnographic or not, characterises very clearly
the fuzziness and complexity of the method. Even when contemporary ethnographies,
such as virtual ethnography, are intended to feature a much narrower focus, some of
these difficulties remain.
The first ethnographers in the middle of the 19th century were the so-called
"armchair-ethnologists." Often their only sources of information were travelogues of
missionaries. They accumulated their information without coming to direct contact
with the human beings that were their objects of investigation. The research scientist
only evaluated the data. This impersonal, anonymous basic approach resulted in
distorted, superficial and extremely notional representations of societies. Around
1918, the "Malinowskian revolution" in ethnography demonstrated an approach of
participant observation. The previous segregation between fieldworker and scientist
ceased, which resulted in a single person acting as reporter, researcher and analytical
scientist. Malinowski suggested that it is important not only to record the actions of
the subject of exploration but also to understand the underlying motivations.
"Ethnography has changed a lot since its origins as the method anthropologists used
to develop an understanding of cultures in distant places" (Hine 2000, p.41). One of
the last relics may be the original core approach of travelling to a foreign place and
integrating into a community or society with the aim of understanding the actions and
underlying motivations of its members. "It (ethnography) refers to a style of research
that seeks to describe and interpret a cultural or social group or system, and involves
the participation of the ethnographer(s)" (staff.bath.ac.uk/psssr/courses/mres
ethnography.html). [...]