ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author wants to look at an issue in the methodology of ethnographic research that has not been given the attention it deserves: the question of the generalisability of its findings. The author tries to clarify the bases on which claims to general relevance can be made, and to assess their potential as justifications for ethnographic research. The author examines the two forms that claims about the general relevance of ethnographic work can take: empirical generalisation and theoretical inference. There are several kinds of theoretical inference to which appeal may be made, but all of these involve problems. The strongest, analytic induction, is premised on the existence of universal, deterministic, sociological laws. The quite different way that ethnographers may seek to give their work general relevance is by drawing conclusions about one or more social scientific theories from the features of the local events they observe and describe.
