On Practitioner Ethnography

The predominant model of ethnography, inherited from social and cultural anthropology and from Chicago sociology, treats it as a form of pure rather than applied research. ¹ From this perspective, it is not tied to any immediate practical purpose but is concerned rather with contributing to our knowledge of human society; whether in terms of identifying the latter's general principles of operation or the description and explanation of diverse forms of social and cultural organisation. Despite this, a minority of ethnographers have long advocated and practised more applied forms of research. In the US there is a well-established and influential tradition of applied anthropology (Eddy and Partridge 1978; van Willigen 1986). And since the late 1960s, on both sides of the Atlantic, ethnography has been used in other applied fields, for instance in educational evaluation (Walker 1978, see also Atkinson and Delarnont 1985; Fetterman 1984; Fetterman and Pitman 1986). Indeed, there have recently been increasing calls for ethnographic research to be more directly related to policy issues, and strong claims made about its potential in this respect (see Chapter 7). ² An influential, if extreme, version of this argument proposes what we can call 'practitioner ethnography'. Here, not only is research to be closely tailored to the needs of practitioners (of one kind or another), but it is argued that this can only be achieved if the practitioners participate in the research process, effectively taking it over themselves. ³