ABSTRACT
More than any of the other traditions discussed so far, ethnography tends to be most forcefully equated with methods and methodologies calling for some form of in-depth fieldwork employing participant observation as a primary component of the research project. Ethnography has been developed, polished, and perfected within anthropology from which it has since been exported to many other empirically oriented disciplines. In short, the development of scholarly ethnography was most vividly distinguished by an emic rather than an etic orientation, being committed to a discernment of culture from an endogenic rather than an exogenic standpoint. Ethnography, therefore, is intent on understanding cultural practices such as rituals, ceremonies, legends, myths, and taboos that pervade everyday social action and interaction. For thick description to happen, ethnographers must resist the temptation to provide somewhat simplistic and unitary cultural accounts that focus on shared meanings at the expense of the pluralism and contradictions inherent in any social milieu.
