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Ethnography is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures . Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining the behavior of the participants in a given social situation and understanding the group members' own interpretation of such behavior.

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109-692: The Florentine Codex is a 16th-century ethnographic research study in Mesoamerica by the Spanish Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún . Sahagún originally titled it La Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España (in English: The General History of the Things of New Spain ). After a translation mistake, it was given the name Historia general de las Cosas de Nueva España . The best-preserved manuscript

218-467: A "natural" setting, ethnology yields insights into the practical applications of a product or service. It is one of the best ways to identify areas of friction and improve overall user experience. Companies make increasing use of ethnographic methods to understand consumers and consumption, or for new product development (such as video ethnography ). The Ethnographic Praxis in Industry (EPIC) conference

327-523: A code of ethics, stating: Anthropologists have "moral obligations as members of other groups, such as the family, religion, and community, as well as the profession". The code of ethics notes that anthropologists are part of a wider scholarly and political network, as well as human and natural environment, which needs to be reported on respectfully. The code of ethics recognizes that sometimes very close and personal relationship can sometimes develop from doing ethnographic work. The Association acknowledges that

436-418: A dozen Aztec doctors who dictated and edited these sections. A questionnaire such as the following may have been used in this section: The text in this section provides very detailed information about location, cultivation, and medical uses of plants and plant parts, as well as information about the uses of animal products as medicine. The drawings in this section provide important visual information to amplify

545-632: A huge increase in popularity. The annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association began to host the Multispecies Salon , a collection of discussions, showcases, and other events for anthropologists. The event provided a space for anthropologists and artists to come together and showcase vast knowledge of different organisms and their intertwined systems. Arthur J.O. Anderson Arthur James Outram Anderson (November 26, 1907 – June 3, 1996)

654-407: A leading social scientist, data collection methods are meant to capture the "social meanings and ordinary activities" of people (informants) in "naturally occurring settings" that are commonly referred to as "the field". The goal is to collect data in such a way that the researcher imposes a minimal amount of personal bias in the data. Multiple methods of data collection may be employed to facilitate

763-521: A mainstay of ancient historiography . Tacitus has ethnographies in the Agricola , Histories , and Germania . Tacitus' Germania "stands as the sole surviving full-scale monograph by a classical author on an alien people." Ethnography formed a relatively coherent subgenre in Byzantine literature. While ethnography ("ethnographic writing") was widely practiced in antiquity, ethnography as

872-573: A new position as "Cosmógrafo y Cronista Mayor de Indias" to collect and organize this information, being appointed Don Juan López de Velasco, so that he could write "La Historia General de las Indias", namely, a compilation about the history of the Indies. King Phillip II of Spain concluded that was not beneficial for the Spanish colonies in America and, hence, it never took place. That is the reason why

981-501: A particular religious group they are interested in studying; or they may even inhabit a familial role in a community they are staying with. Robert M. Emerson, Rachel Fretz, and Linda Shaw summarize this idea in their book Writing Ethnographic Field Notes using a common metaphor: “the fieldworker cannot and should not attempt to be a fly on the wall.” Ybema et al. (2010) examine the ontological and epistemological presuppositions underlying ethnography. Ethnographic research can range from

1090-400: A physician to cure the "patient" suffering from idolatry. He had three overarching goals for his research: Sahagún conducted research for several decades, edited and revised his work over several decades, created several versions of a 2,400-page manuscript, and addressed a cluster of religious, cultural and nature themes. Copies of the work were sent by ship to the royal court of Spain and to

1199-597: A professor of history and geography. Whilst involved in the expedition, he differentiated Völker-Beschreibung as a distinct area of study. This became known as "ethnography", following the introduction of the Greek neologism ethnographia by Johann Friedrich Schöpperlin and the German variant by A. F. Thilo in 1767. August Ludwig von Schlözer and Christoph Wilhelm Jacob Gatterer of the University of Göttingen introduced

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1308-543: A project which took 30 years. The two also published a modern English translation of Book XII of the Florentine Codex, which gives an indigenous account of the conquest of Mexico. Anderson translated and wrote an extensive introduction to fray Bernardino de Sahagún 's Psalmodia Christiana (Christian Psalmody) He also edited and published translations of formal linguistic texts by eighteenth-century Mexican Jesuit Francisco de Clavigero (1731-1787) outlining rules of

1417-475: A range of diverse persons (now known as informants in anthropology), who were recognized as having expert knowledge of Aztec culture. He did so in the native language of Nahuatl, while comparing the answers from different sources of information. According to James Lockhart, Sahagún collected statements from indigenous people of "relatively advanced age and high status, having what was said written down in Nahuatl by

1526-399: A realist perspective, in which behavior is observed, to a constructivist perspective where understanding is socially constructed by the researcher and subjects. Research can range from an objectivist account of fixed, observable behaviors to an interpretive narrative describing "the interplay of individual agency and social structure." Critical theory researchers address "issues of power within

1635-550: A refined output for various purposes. A modern example of this technology in application, is the use of captured audio in smart devices, transcribed to issue targeted adverts (often reconciled vs other metadata, or product development data for designers. Digital ethnography comes with its own set of ethical questions, and the Association of Internet Researchers ' ethical guidelines are frequently used. Gabriele de Seta's paper "Three Lies of Digital Ethnography" explores some of

1744-446: A region, winks remained meaningful in the same way. In this way, cultural boundaries of communication could be explored, as opposed to using linguistic boundaries or notions about the residence. Geertz, while still following something of a traditional ethnographic outline, moved outside that outline to talk about "webs" instead of "outlines" of culture. Within cultural anthropology, there are several subgenres of ethnography. Beginning in

1853-475: A relationship that allows for a more personal and in-depth portrait of the informants and their community. These can include participant observation, field notes, interviews and surveys, as well as various visual methods. Interviews are often taped and later transcribed, allowing the interview to proceed unimpaired of note-taking, but with all information available later for full analysis. Secondary research and document analysis are also used to provide insight into

1962-486: A science ( cf. ethnology ) did not exist in the ancient world. There is no ancient term or concept applicable to ethnography, and those writers probably did not consider the study of other cultures as a distinct mode of inquiry from history. Gerhard Friedrich Müller developed the concept of ethnography as a separate discipline whilst participating in the Second Kamchatka Expedition (1733–43) as

2071-493: A series of questionnaires to structure his interviews and collect data. For instance, the following questions appear to have been used to gather information about the gods for Book One: For Book Ten, "The People", a questionnaire may have been used to gather information about the social organization of labor and workers, with questions such as: This book also described some other indigenous groups in Mesoamerica. Sahagún

2180-415: A vehicle to impart knowledge that worked in tandem with the image itself. The codex is composed of the following twelve books: Sahagún was among the first people to develop an array of strategies for gathering and validating knowledge of indigenous New World cultures. Much later, the discipline of anthropology would later formalize these as ethnography . This is the scientific research strategy to document

2289-400: A way consistent with their worldview. For modern readers, this combination of ways of presenting materials is sometimes contradictory and confusing. Other sections include data on minerals, mining, bridges, roads, types of terrain, and food crops. The Florentine Codex is one of the most remarkable social science research projects ever conducted. It is not unique as a chronicle of encountering

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2398-492: Is Jaber F. Gubrium's pioneering ethnography on the experiences of a nursing home, Living and Dying at Murray Manor . Major influences on this development were anthropologist Lloyd Warner , on the Chicago sociology faculty, and to Robert Park 's experience as a journalist. Symbolic interactionism developed from the same tradition and yielded such sociological ethnographies as Shared Fantasy by Gary Alan Fine , which documents

2507-410: Is a holistic study and so includes a brief history, and an analysis of the terrain , the climate , and the habitat . A wide range of groups and organisations have been studied by this method, including traditional communities, youth gangs , religious cults , and organisations of various kinds. While, traditionally, ethnography has relied on the physical presence of the researcher in a setting, there

2616-413: Is a complex document, assembled, edited, and appended over decades. Essentially it is three integral texts: (1) in Nahuatl; (2) a Spanish text; (3) pictorials. The final version of the Florentine Codex was completed in 1569. Sahagún's goals of orienting fellow missionaries to Aztec culture, providing a rich Nahuatl vocabulary, and recording the indigenous cultural heritage are at times in competition within

2725-422: Is a document written about a particular people, almost always based at least in part on emic views of where the culture begins and ends. Using language or community boundaries to bound the ethnography is common. Ethnographies are also sometimes called "case studies". Ethnographers study and interpret culture, its universalities, and its variations through the ethnographic study based on fieldwork . An ethnography

2834-423: Is a fundamental methodology in cultural ecology, development studies, and feminist geography. In addition, it has gained importance in social, political, cultural, and nature-society geography. Ethnography is an effective methodology in qualitative geographic research that focuses on people's perceptions and experiences and their traditionally place-based immersion within a social group. According to John Brewer ,

2943-528: Is a specific kind of written observational science which provides an account of a particular culture, society, or community. The fieldwork usually involves spending a year or more in another society, living with the local people and learning about their ways of life. Ruth Fulton Benedict uses examples of Enthrotyhy in her serious of field work that began in 1922 of Serrano, of the Zuni in 1924, the Cochiti in 1925 and

3052-508: Is another field which prominently features ethnographies. Urban sociology , Atlanta University (now Clark-Atlanta University), and the Chicago School , in particular, are associated with ethnographic research, with some well-known early examples being The Philadelphia Negro (1899) by W. E. B. Du Bois, Street Corner Society by William Foote Whyte and Black Metropolis by St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton, Jr. Well-known

3161-528: Is both a process and an outcome of the research. Studies such as Gerry Philipsen 's analysis of cultural communication strategies in a blue-collar , working-class neighborhood on the south side of Chicago, Speaking 'Like a Man' in Teamsterville , paved the way for the expansion of ethnographic research in the study of communication. Scholars of communication studies use ethnographic research methods to analyze communicative behaviors and phenomena. This

3270-743: Is commonly referred to as the Florentine Codex , as the codex is held in the Laurentian Library of Florence , Italy. In partnership with Nahua elders and authors who were formerly his students at the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco , Sahagún conducted research, organized evidence, wrote and edited his findings. He worked on this project from 1545 up until his death in 1590. The work consists of 2,500 pages organized into twelve books; more than 2,000 illustrations drawn by native artists provide vivid images of this era. It documents

3379-461: Is evidence of this. Ethnographers' systematic and holistic approach to real-life experience is valued by product developers, who use the method to understand unstated desires or cultural practices that surround products. Where focus groups fail to inform marketers about what people really do, ethnography links what people say to what they do—avoiding the pitfalls that come from relying only on self-reported, focus-group data. The ethnographic methodology

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3488-446: Is how an individual views a novel after completing it. The physical entity that is the novel contains a specific image in the perspective of the interpreting individual and can only be expressed by the individual in the terms of "I can tell you what an image is by telling you what it feels like." The idea of an image relies on the imagination and has been seen to be utilized by children in a very spontaneous and natural manner. Effectively,

3597-772: Is not necessarily casting blame at ethnographic researchers but tries to show that researchers often make idealized ethical claims and standards which are inherently based on partial truths and self-deceptions. Fine also acknowledges that many of these partial truths and self-deceptions are unavoidable. He maintains that "illusions" are essential to maintain an occupational reputation and avoid potentially more caustic consequences. He claims, "Ethnographers cannot help but lie, but in lying, we reveal truths that escape those who are not so bold". Based on these assertions, Fine establishes three conceptual clusters in which ethnographic ethical dilemmas can be situated: "Classic Virtues", "Technical Skills", and "Ethnographic Self". Much debate surrounding

3706-416: Is not the sine qua non of the discipline, as it is in cultural anthropology. Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, ethnographic research methods began to be widely used by communication scholars. As the purpose of ethnography is to describe and interpret the shared and learned patterns of values, behaviors, beliefs, and language of a culture-sharing group, Harris, (1968), also Agar (1980) note that ethnography

3815-514: Is not usually evaluated in terms of philosophical standpoint (such as positivism and emotionalism ). Ethnographic studies need to be evaluated in some manner. No consensus has been developed on evaluation standards, but Richardson (2000, p. 254) provides five criteria that ethnographers might find helpful. Jaber F. Gubrium and James A. Holstein's (1997) monograph, The New Language of Qualitative Method, discusses forms of ethnography in terms of their "methods talk". Gary Alan Fine argues that

3924-402: Is often characterized in the writing as attempts to understand taken-for-granted routines by which working definitions are socially produced. Ethnography as a method is a storied, careful, and systematic examination of the reality-generating mechanisms of everyday life (Coulon, 1995). Ethnographic work in communication studies seeks to explain "how" ordinary methods/practices/performances construct

4033-404: Is one of the keys to this process. Ethnography is very useful in social research. An inevitability during ethnographic participation is that the researcher experiences at least some resocialization. In other words, the ethnographer to some extent “becomes” what they are studying. For instance, an ethnographer may become skilled at a work activity that they are studying; they may become members of

4142-597: Is organized in a geriatric hospital. Another approach to ethnography in sociology comes in the form of institutional ethnography , developed by Dorothy E. Smith for studying the social relations which structure people's everyday lives. Other notable ethnographies include Paul Willis 's Learning to Labour, on working class youth; the work of Elijah Anderson , Mitchell Duneier , and Loïc Wacquant on black America, and Lai Olurode's Glimpses of Madrasa From Africa . But even though many sub-fields and theoretical perspectives within sociology use ethnographic methods, ethnography

4251-414: Is remarkable, unmatched by any other sixteenth-century works that attempted to describe the native way of life." Foremost in his own mind, Sahagún was a Franciscan missionary, but he may also rightfully be given the title as Father of American Ethnography. Ethnography As a form of inquiry, ethnography relies heavily on participant observation —on the researcher participating in the setting or with

4360-484: Is research using the label that has relied on interviews or documents, sometimes to investigate events in the past such as the NASA Challenger disaster . There is also a considerable amount of 'virtual' or online ethnography, sometimes labelled netnography or cyber-ethnography . The term ethnography is from Greek ( ἔθνος éthnos "folk, people, nation" and γράφω gráphō "I write") and encompasses

4469-856: The Florentine Codex , in Nahuatl and Spanish, with illustrations, were added to the World Digital Library . In 2015, Sahagún's work was inscribed into the Memory of the World register by UNESCO . In 2023, the Getty Research Institute released the Digital Florentine Codex which gives access to the complete manuscript. In 1575 the Council of the Indies suggested to the Spanish Crown to educate

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4578-451: The Getty Research Institute released the Digital Florentine Codex which gives access to the complete manuscript and multiple translations. The missionary Sahagún had the goal of evangelizing the indigenous Mesoamerican peoples, and his writings were devoted to this end. He described this work as an explanation of the "divine, or rather idolatrous, human, and natural things of New Spain". He compared its body of knowledge to that needed by

4687-570: The Historia General . The English translation of the complete Nahuatl text of all twelve volumes of the Florentine Codex was a decades-long work of Arthur J.O. Anderson and Charles Dibble, an important contribution to the scholarship on Mesoamerican ethno-history. In 1979, the Mexican government published a full-color, three-volume facsimile of the Florentine Codex in a limited edition of 2,000, allowing scholars to have easier access to

4796-606: The New World and its peoples, for there were others in this era. Sahagún's methods for gathering information from the perspective within a foreign culture were highly unusual for this time. He reported the worldview of people of Central Mexico as they understood it, rather than describing the society exclusively from the European perspective. "The scope of the Historia's coverage of contact-period Central Mexico indigenous culture

4905-763: The Vatican in the late-sixteenth century to explain Aztec culture. The copies of the work were essentially lost for about two centuries, until a scholar rediscovered it in the Laurentian Library (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana) an archive library in Florence, Italy. The Spanish also had earlier drafts in their archives. A scholarly community of historians, anthropologists, art historians, and linguists has since been investigating Sahagún's work, its subtleties and mysteries, for more than 200 years. The Florentine Codex

5014-451: The "ethos" of the culture. In his fieldwork, Geertz used elements of a phenomenological approach, tracing not just the doings of people, but the cultural elements themselves. For example, if within a group of people, winking was a communicative gesture, he sought to first determine what kinds of things a wink might mean (it might mean several things). Then, he sought to determine in what contexts winks were used, and whether, as one moved about

5123-518: The 1950s and early 1960s, anthropologists began writing "bio-confessional" ethnographies that intentionally exposed the nature of ethnographic research. Famous examples include Tristes Tropiques (1955) by Lévi-Strauss, The High Valley by Kenneth Read, and The Savage and the Innocent by David Maybury-Lewis , as well as the mildly fictionalized Return to Laughter by Elenore Smith Bowen ( Laura Bohannan ). Later " reflexive " ethnographies refined

5232-571: The Codex is characterized by the Nahua belief that the use of color activates the image and causes it to embody the true nature, or ixiptla , of the object or person depicted. For the Aztecs, the true self or identity of a person or object was shown via the external layer, or skin. Imparting color onto an image would change it so that it was given the identity of what it was portraying. Color was also used as

5341-544: The Elder , Isidore of Seville , and Bartholomeus Anglicus . These shaped the late medieval approach to the organization of knowledge. The twelve books of the Florentine Codex are organized in the following way: Book 12, the account of the conquest of the Aztec Empire from the point of view of the conquered of Tenochtitlan - Tlatelolco is the only strictly historical book of the Historia General . This work follows

5450-551: The Indies ordered to the Viceroyalty of Peru in 1568 that they needed to include ethnographic and geographic information regarding any new discovery within their limits. A similar disposition was given to the Vice-Royalty of New Spain in 1569, specifying that 37 chapters were to be reported; in 1570, the extent of the report was modified to required information for 200 chapters. That same year, Phillip II of Spain created

5559-511: The Italian government to copy the alphabetic text and the illustrations. The three-volume manuscript of the Florentine Codex has been intensely analyzed and compared to earlier drafts found in Madrid. The Tolosa Manuscript ( Códice Castellano de Madrid ) was known in the 1860s and studied by José Fernando Ramírez. The Tolosa Manuscript has been the source for all published editions in Spanish of

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5668-456: The Mexican ( Nahuatl ) language. Two publications on which he collaborated were Beyond the Codices , and The Tlaxcalan Actas . With Susan Schroeder, he translated and edited writings of seventeenth-century Nahua historian Chimalpahin. In 1994, a festschrift entitled Chipping away on earth: studies in prehispanic and colonial Mexico in honor of Arthur J.O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble

5777-651: The Pina in 1926. All being people she wished to study for her anthropological data. Benedict's experiences with the Southwest Zuni pueblo is to be considered the basis of her formative fieldwork. The experience set the idea for her to produce her theory of "culture is personality writ large" (modell, 1988). By studying the culture between the different Pueblo and Plain Indians, She discovered the culture isomorphism that would be considered her personalized unique approach to

5886-668: The Western Pacific (1922) by Bronisław Malinowski , Ethnologische Excursion in Johore (1875) by Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay , Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) by Margaret Mead , The Nuer (1940) by E. E. Evans-Pritchard , Naven (1936, 1958) by Gregory Bateson , or " The Lele of the Kasai " (1963) by Mary Douglas . Cultural and social anthropologists today place a high value on doing ethnographic research. The typical ethnography

5995-484: The aids he had trained." Some passages appear to be the transcription of spontaneous narration of religious beliefs, society or nature. Other parts clearly reflect a consistent set of questions presented to different people designed to elicit specific information. Some sections of text report Sahagún's own narration of events or commentary. He developed a methodology with the following elements: These methodological innovations substantiate historians' claim that Sahagún

6104-557: The alphabetic text. The information is useful for a wider understanding of the history of botany and the history of zoology . Scholars have speculated that Sahagún was involved in the creation of the Badianus Manuscript , an herbal created in 1552 that has pictorials of medicinal plants and their uses. Although this was originally written in Nahuatl, only the Latin translation has survived. Book Eleven, "Earthly Things", has

6213-428: The beliefs, behavior, social roles and relationships, and worldview of another culture, and to explain these within the logic of that culture. Ethnography requires scholars to practice empathy with persons very different from them, and to try to suspend their own cultural beliefs in order to enter into, understand, and explain the worldview of those living in another culture. Sahagún systematically gathered knowledge from

6322-404: The book of British ethnographer W. H. R. Rivers titled "Kinship and Social Organisation" in 1911. Genealogy or kinship commonly plays a crucial role in the structure of non-industrial societies, determining both social relations and group relationship to the past. Marriage, for example, is frequently pivotal in determining military alliances between villages , clans or ethnic groups . In

6431-517: The cleric Luis Sánchez to report about the situation of the native Americans. The concerning findings of this report triggered a visit of Juan de Ovando to the Council of the Indies because it demonstrated a total ignorance of the Spanish authorities about the native cultures and, in Ovando's opinion, was not possible to make correct decisions without reliable information. As a consequence, the Council of

6540-499: The code is limited in scope; ethnographic work can sometimes be multidisciplinary, and anthropologists need to be familiar with ethics and perspectives of other disciplines as well. The eight-page code of ethics outlines ethical considerations for those conducting Research, Teaching, Application and Dissemination of Results, which are briefly outlined below. The following are commonly misconceived conceptions of ethnographers: According to Norman K. Denzin, ethnographers should consider

6649-496: The culture, religious cosmology (worldview) and ritual practices, society, economics, and natural history of the Aztec people. It has been described as "one of the most remarkable accounts of a non-Western culture ever composed." Charles E. Dibble and Arthur J. O. Anderson were the first to translate the Codex from Nahuatl to English, in a project that took 30 years to complete. In 2012, high-resolution scans of all volumes of

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6758-424: The development of experimental forms such as 'dialogic anthropology,' 'narrative ethnography,' and 'literary ethnography', Writing Culture helped to encourage the development of 'collaborative ethnography.' This exploration of the relationship between writer, audience, and subject has become a central tenet of contemporary anthropological and ethnographic practice. In certain instances, active collaboration between

6867-633: The discipline, under the general influence of literary theory and post-colonial / post-structuralist thought. "Experimental" ethnographies that reveal the ferment of the discipline include Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man by Michael Taussig , Debating Muslims by Michael F. J. Fischer and Mehdi Abedi, A Space on the Side of the Road by Kathleen Stewart, and Advocacy after Bhopal by Kim Fortun. This critical turn in sociocultural anthropology during

6976-467: The earliest well-known studies was Lewis Henry Morgan 's The American Beaver and His Works (1868). His study closely observed a group of beavers in Northern Michigan. Morgan's main objective was to highlight that the daily individual tasks that the beavers performed were complex communicative acts that had been passed down for generations. In the early 2000s multi-species ethnography took on

7085-581: The early history of fantasy role-playing games . Other important ethnographies in sociology include Pierre Bourdieu 's work in Algeria and France. Jaber F. Gubrium's series of organizational ethnographies focused on the everyday practices of illness, care, and recovery are notable. They include Living and Dying at Murray Manor, which describes the social worlds of a nursing home; Describing Care: Image and Practice in Rehabilitation, which documents

7194-498: The entire process of conducting ethnographies, including the design, implementation, and reporting of an ethnographic study. Essentially, Fine maintains that researchers are typically not as ethical as they claim or assume to be — and that "each job includes ways of doing things that would be inappropriate for others to know". Also see Jaber F. Gubrium concept of "site-specificity" discussed his book co-edited with Amir Marvasti titled CRAFTING ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELDWORK. Routledge, 2023. Fine

7303-528: The ethnographer cannot escape the personal viewpoint in creating an ethnographic account, thus making any claims of objective neutrality highly problematic, if not altogether impossible. In regards to this last point, Writing Culture became a focal point for looking at how ethnographers could describe different cultures and societies without denying the subjectivity of those individuals and groups being studied while simultaneously doing so without laying claim to absolute knowledge and objective authority. Along with

7412-488: The ethnographer focuses attention on a community, selecting knowledgeable informants who know the activities of the community well. These informants are typically asked to identify other informants who represent the community, often using snowball or chain sampling. This process is often effective in revealing common cultural denominators connected to the topic being studied. Ethnography relies greatly on up-close, personal experience. Participation, rather than just observation,

7521-458: The eyes, profile, and proportions of the body. It is not clear what artistic sources the scribes drew from, but the library of the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco had European books with illustrations and books of engravings. European elements appear in the imagery, as well as pre-Conquest images done in the "native style". A number of the images have Christian elements, which Peterson has described as "Christian editorializing". The entirety of

7630-882: The field of epistemology the term is used to characterize the philosophical method employed by such writers as Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault . Digital ethnography is also seen as virtual ethnography. This type of ethnography is not so typical as ethnography recorded by pen and pencil. Digital ethnography allows for a lot more opportunities to look at different cultures and societies. Traditional ethnography may use videos or images, but digital ethnography goes more in-depth. For example, digital ethnographers would use social media platforms such as Twitter or blogs so that people's interactions and behaviors can be studied. Modern developments in computing power and AI have enabled higher efficiencies in ethnographic data collection via multimedia and computational analysis using machine learning to corroborate many data sources together to produce

7739-471: The following seven principles when observing, recording, and sampling data: Autoethnography is a form of ethnographic research in which a researcher connects personal experiences to wider cultural, political, and social meanings and understandings. According to Adams et al., autoethnography Bochner and Ellis have also defined autoethnography as "an autobiographical genre of writing and research that displays multiple layers of consciousness, connecting

7848-966: The formal sciences. Material culture, technology, and means of subsistence are usually treated next, as they are typically bound up in physical geography and include descriptions of infrastructure. Kinship and social structure (including age grading, peer groups, gender, voluntary associations, clans, moieties, and so forth, if they exist) are typically included. Languages spoken, dialects, and the history of language change are another group of standard topics. Practices of child rearing, acculturation, and emic views on personality and values usually follow after sections on social structure. Rites, rituals, and other evidence of religion have long been an interest and are sometimes central to ethnographies, especially when conducted in public where visiting anthropologists can see them. As ethnography developed, anthropologists grew more interested in less tangible aspects of culture, such as values, worldview and what Clifford Geertz termed

7957-461: The hereditary profession of tlacuilo or native scribe-painter". The images were inserted in places in the text left open for them, and in some cases the blank space has not been filled. This strongly suggests that when the manuscripts were sent to Spain, they were as yet unfinished. The images are of two types, what can be called "primary figures" that amplify the meaning of the alphabetic texts, and "ornamentals" that were decorative. The majority of

8066-1097: The idea of the image is a primary tool for ethnographers to collect data. The image presents the perspective, experiences, and influences of an individual as a single entity and in consequence, the individual will always contain this image in the group under study. The ethnographic method is used across a range of different disciplines, primarily by anthropologists/ethnologists but also occasionally by sociologists. Cultural studies , occupational therapy , economics , social work , education , design , psychology , computer science , human factors and ergonomics , ethnomusicology , folkloristics , religious studies , geography , history , linguistics , communication studies , performance studies , advertising , accounting research , nursing , urban planning , usability , political science , social movement , and criminology are other fields which have made use of ethnography. Cultural anthropology and social anthropology were developed around ethnographic research and their canonical texts, which are mostly ethnographies: e.g. Argonauts of

8175-475: The illustrations of the Florentine Codex could be analyzed in detail. Previously, the images were known mainly through the black-and-white drawings found in various earlier publications, which were separated from the alphabetic text. The images in the Florentine Codex were created as an integral element of the larger work. Although many of the images show evidence of European influence, a careful analysis by one scholar posits that they were created by "members of

8284-610: The issue of ethics arose following revelations about how the ethnographer Napoleon Chagnon conducted his ethnographic fieldwork with the Yanomani people of South America. While there is no international standard on Ethnographic Ethics, many western anthropologists look to the American Anthropological Association for guidance when conducting ethnographic work. In 2009, the Association adopted

8393-519: The manuscript. The Archivo General de la Nación (Dra. Alejandra Moreno Toscano, director) supervised the project that was published by the Secretariat of the Interior ( Enrique Olivares Santana , Secretary). The 2012 World Digital Library high-resolution digital version of the manuscript makes it fully accessible online to all those interested in this source for Mexican and Aztec history. In 2023,

8502-602: The methodological questions more central to a specifically ethnographical approach to internet studies, drawing upon Fine's classic text. Multispecies ethnography in particular focuses on both nonhuman and human participants within a group or culture, as opposed to just human participants in traditional ethnography. A multispecies ethnography, in comparison to other forms of ethnography, studies species that are connected to people and our social lives. Species affect and are affected by culture, economics, and politics. The study's roots go back to general anthropology of animals. One of

8611-412: The mid-1980s can be traced to the influence of the now classic (and often contested) text, Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography , (1986) edited by James Clifford and George Marcus . Writing Culture helped bring changes to both anthropology and ethnography often described in terms of being 'postmodern,' 'reflexive,' 'literary,' 'deconstructive,' or 'poststructural' in nature, in that

8720-591: The missionaries, including Fray Bernardino de Sahagún continued their missionary work and Fray Bernardino de Sahagun was able to make two more copies of his Historia general . The three bound volumes of the Florentine Codex are found in the Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana , Palat. 218-220 in Florence , Italy, with the title Florentine Codex chosen by its English translators, Americans Arthur J.O. Anderson and Charles Dibble , following in

8829-479: The most text and approximately half of the drawings in the codex. The text describes it as a "forest, garden, orchard of the Mexican language". It describes the Aztec cultural understanding of the animals, birds, insects, fish and trees in Mesoamerica. Sahagún appeared to have asked questions about animals such as the following: Plants and animals are described in association with their behavior and natural conditions or habitat. The Nahua presented their information in

8938-619: The native Americans in Spanish instead of using the indigenous languages; for this reason, the Spanish authorities required Fray Sahagún to hand over all of his documents about the Aztec culture and the results of his research in order to get further details about this matter. In the meantime, the Bishop of Sigüenza, Diego de Espinosa , who was also the Inquisitor General and President of the Royal Council of Castile instructed

9047-443: The nature of ethnographic inquiry demands that researchers deviate from formal and idealistic rules or ethics that have come to be widely accepted in qualitative and quantitative approaches in research. Many of these ethical assumptions are rooted in positivist and post-positivist epistemologies that have adapted over time but are apparent and must be accounted for in all research paradigms. These ethical dilemmas are evident throughout

9156-413: The nearly 2,500 images are "primary figures" (approximately 2000), with the remainder ornamental. The figures were drawn in black outline first, with color added later. Scholars have concluded that several artists, of varying skill, created the images. It was deduced that twenty-two artists worked on the images in the Codex. This was done by analyzing the different ways that forms of body were drawn, such as

9265-665: The nineteenth century, with a description published by P. Fr. Marcellino da Civezza in 1879. The Spanish Royal Academy of History learned of this work and, at the fifth meeting of the International Congress of Americanists , the find was announced to the larger scholarly community. In 1888 German scholar Eduard Seler presented a description of the illustrations at the 7th meeting of the International Congress of Americanists. Mexican scholar Francisco del Paso y Troncoso received permission in 1893 from

9374-519: The ordinary actions used by ordinary people in the accomplishments of their identities. This often gives the perception of trying to answer the "why" and "how come" questions of human communication. Often this type of research results in a case study or field study such as an analysis of speech patterns at a protest rally, or the way firemen communicate during "down time" at a fire station. Like anthropology scholars, communication scholars often immerse themselves, and participate in and/or directly observe

9483-482: The organizational logic found in medieval encyclopedias, in particular the 19-volume De proprietatibus rerum of Sahagún's fellow Franciscan Friar Bartholomew the Englishman . One scholar has argued that Bartholomew's work served as a conceptual model for Sahagún, although evidence is circumstantial. Both men present descriptions of the cosmos, society and nature of the late medieval paradigm. Additionally, in one of

9592-443: The particular social group being studied. The American anthropologist George Spindler was a pioneer in applying the ethnographic methodology to the classroom. Anthropologists such as Daniel Miller and Mary Douglas have used ethnographic data to answer academic questions about consumers and consumption. In this sense, Tony Salvador, Genevieve Bell , and Ken Anderson describe design ethnography as being "a way of understanding

9701-648: The particulars of daily life in such a way as to increase the success probability of a new product or service or, more appropriately, to reduce the probability of failure specifically due to a lack of understanding of the basic behaviors and frameworks of consumers." Sociologist Sam Ladner argues in her book, that understanding consumers and their desires requires a shift in "standpoint", one that only ethnography provides. The results are products and services that respond to consumers' unmet needs. Businesses, too, have found ethnographers helpful for understanding how people use products and services. By assessing user experience in

9810-522: The people being studied, at least in some marginal role, and seeking to document, in detail, patterns of social interaction and the perspectives of participants, and to understand these in their local contexts. It had its origin in social and cultural anthropology in the early twentieth century, but spread to other social science disciplines, notably sociology, during the course of that century. Ethnographers mainly use qualitative methods, though they may also employ quantitative data. The typical ethnography

9919-442: The personal to the cultural." They further indicate that autoethnography is typically written in first-person and can "appear in a variety of forms," such as "short stories, poetry, fiction, novels, photographic essays, personal essays, journals, fragmented and layered writing, and social science prose." The genealogical method investigates links of kinship determined by marriage and descent . The method owes its origin from

10028-443: The prologues, Sahagún assumes full responsibility for dividing the Nahuatl text into books and chapters, quite late into the evolution of the Codex (approximately 1566–1568). "Very likely," historian James Lockhart notes, "Sahagún himself devised the chapter titles, in Spanish, and the Nahuatl chapter titles may well be a translation of them, reversing the usual process." After the facsimile edition became available generally in 1979,

10137-578: The relationship of some to the adjoining text is not always self-evident. They can be considered a "third column of language" in the manuscript. Several different artists' hands have been identified, and many questions about their accuracy have been raised. The drawings convey a blend of Indigenous and European artistic elements and cultural influences. Many passages of the texts in the Florentine Codex present descriptions of like items (e.g., gods, classes of people, animals) according to consistent patterns. Because of this, scholars have concluded that Sahagún used

10246-444: The research topic. In the past, kinship charts were commonly used to "discover logical patterns and social structure in non-Western societies". In the 21st century, anthropology focuses more on the study of people in urban settings and the use of kinship charts is seldom employed. In order to make the data collection and interpretation transparent, researchers creating ethnographies often attempt to be "reflexive". Reflexivity refers to

10355-432: The researcher's aim "to explore the ways in which [the] researcher's involvement with a particular study influences, acts upon and informs such research". [Marvasti, Amir & Gubrium, Jaber. 2023. Crafting Ethnographic Fieldwork: Sites, Selves & Social Worlds. Routledge. Despite these attempts of reflexivity, no researcher can be totally unbiased. This factor has provided a basis to criticize ethnography. Traditionally,

10464-455: The researcher(s) and subject(s) has helped blend the practice of collaboration in ethnographic fieldwork with the process of creating the ethnographic product resulting from the research. 1800s: Martineau · Tocqueville  ·  Marx ·  Spencer · Le Bon · Ward · Pareto ·  Tönnies · Veblen ·  Simmel · Durkheim ·  Addams ·  Mead · Weber ·  Du Bois ·  Mannheim · Elias Sociology

10573-402: The researcher-researched relationships and the links between knowledge and power." Another form of data collection is that of the "image". The image is the projection that an individual puts on an object or abstract idea. An image can be contained within the physical world through a particular individual's perspective, primarily based on that individual's past experiences. One example of an image

10682-409: The resultant data to test and explain the empirical assumptions. In ethnography, the researcher gathers what is available, what is normal, what it is that people do, what they say, and how they work. Ethnography can also be used in other methodological frameworks, for instance, an action research program of study where one of the goals is to change and improve the situation. Ethnographic research

10791-465: The social organization of patient subjectivity in a physical rehabilitation hospital; Caretakers: Treating Emotionally Disturbed Children, which features the social construction of behavioral disorders in children; and Oldtimers and Alzheimer's: The Descriptive Organization of Senility, which describes how the Alzheimer's disease movement constructed a new subjectivity of senile dementia and how that

10900-480: The study of anthropology using ethnographic techniques. A typical ethnography attempts to be holistic and typically follows an outline to include a brief history of the culture in question, an analysis of the physical geography or terrain inhabited by the people under study, including climate , and often including what biological anthropologists call habitat . Folk notions of botany and zoology are presented as ethnobotany and ethnozoology alongside references from

11009-459: The technique to translate cultural differences by representing their effects on the ethnographer. Famous examples include Deep Play: Notes on a Balinese Cockfight by Clifford Geertz , Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco by Paul Rabinow , The Headman and I by Jean-Paul Dumont, and Tuhami by Vincent Crapanzano. In the 1980s, the rhetoric of ethnography was subjected to intense scrutiny within

11118-430: The term into the academic discourse in an attempt to reform the contemporary understanding of world history. According to Dewan (2018), the researcher is not looking for generalizing the findings; rather, they are considering it in reference to the context of the situation. In this regard, the best way to integrate ethnography in a quantitative research would be to use it to discover and uncover relationships and then use

11227-428: The text helped to highlight the various epistemic and political predicaments that many practitioners saw as plaguing ethnographic representations and practices. Where Geertz's and Turner's interpretive anthropology recognized subjects as creative actors who constructed their sociocultural worlds out of symbols, postmodernists attempted to draw attention to the privileged status of the ethnographers themselves. That is,

11336-470: The tradition of nineteenth-century Mexican scholars Francisco del Paso y Troncoso and Joaquín García Icazbalceta . The manuscript became part of the collection of the library in Florence at some point after its creation in the late sixteenth century. It was not until the late eighteenth century that scholars become aware of it, when the bibliographer Angelo Maria Bandini published a description of it in Latin in 1793. The work became more generally known in

11445-452: The ways in which ancient authors described and analyzed foreign cultures. Anthony Kaldellis loosely suggests the Odyssey as a starting point for ancient ethnography, while noting that Herodotus ' Histories is the usual starting point; while Edith Hall has argued that Homeric poetry lacks "the coherence and vigour of ethnological science". From Herodotus forward, ethnography was

11554-417: The work. The manuscript pages are generally arranged in two columns, with Nahuatl, written first, on the right and a Spanish gloss or translation on the left. Diverse voices, views, and opinions are expressed in these 2,400 pages, and the result is a document that is sometimes contradictory. Scholars have proposed several classical and medieval worldbook authors who inspired Sahagún, such as Aristotle , Pliny

11663-546: Was an American anthropologist specializing in Aztec culture and translator of the Nahuatl language . He was born on November 26, 1907. In the 1970s he began working with James Lockhart and Frances Berdan on colonial-era local level Nahuatl texts, which are the core of the New Philology . He was renowned for his and Charles E. Dibble 's translation of the Florentine Codex by fray Bernardino de Sahagún ,

11772-429: Was particularly interested in Nahua medicine. The information he collected is a major contribution to the history of medicine generally. His interest was likely related to the high death rate at the time from plagues and diseases. Many thousands of people died, including friars and students at the school. Sections of Books Ten and Eleven describe human anatomy, disease, and medicinal plant remedies. Sahagún named more than

11881-571: Was the first anthropologist. Most of the Florentine Codex is alphabetic text in Nahuatl and Spanish, but its 2,000 pictures provide vivid images of sixteenth-century New Spain. Some of these images directly support the alphabetic text; others are thematically related; others are for seemingly decorative purposes. Some are colorful and large, taking up most of a page; others are black and white sketches. The pictorial images offer remarkable detail about life in New Spain, but they do not bear titles, and

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