ABSTRACT
Ethnography is an orientation to research which emphasises detailed protracted observation of people in naturally occurring settings, a close involvement of the researcher with those researched, and qualitative or interpretative data analysis. Ethnography is in short ‘ethnography’: people-writing. I shall treat ‘participant-observation’ as a cognate phrase which is preferred in some research traditions and which emphasises well the dual standing of the researcher with respect to the ‘field site’: as observer to be sure but also as someone who partakes in the daily life of the field site as well.
