Ethnography: An Analysis of its Advantages and Disadvantages

Abstract

Ethnography is a research precisely about individuals, societies and their culture. It aims to study social and cultural aspects of a society and the researcher focusses to collect information for that. It focusses on behaviour of people with respect to the social setup they live in. The outcome of a field study mirrors the learning and the arrangement of implications in the lives of a social gathering. As like any other research methods, Ethnography has its own advantages and disadvantages; however it is important to mention here that ethnography is a completely different approach of data collection wherein the collector of data is himself a participant and not an outsider. By getting the accounts of various ethnographic studies, it can be said that this approach is highly immersive and provides one with a highly transparent and original account of information. This methodology allows the culture to speak for itself which is highly important.

Keywords: ethnography, privacy, anthropology, sidewalk, fieldwork, participatory