ABSTRACT
In ethnography the analysis of data is not a distinct stage of the research, even though it comes to dominate towards the end. Initially, in the process of analysis, data must be treated as materials to think with, to facilitate the production of new ideas and, equally important, to clarify and develop ideas derived from the research literature and from elsewhere. In particular, analysis needs to pay serious attention to the means and methods whereby social actors perform social life and how they achieve orderly conduct. Socially shared rules are guides to action that social actors interpret in context, according to local circumstances and who is involved; and use to make sense of others’ behaviour. Understanding social action for social scientific purposes, then, means generating a systematic interpretation of the variety of rules, norms or conventions that constitute a given cultural setting.
