Ethnography is both a method and a written account of a way of life. This lesson introduces classic ethnographies and how to read anthropological material critically.
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An ethnography is both a research method (long-term firsthand fieldwork) and its written product (a monograph describing a way of life). In the IB course, ethnographic material is explored through areas of inquiry such as belonging, exchange, ritual, the body, and conflict.
Watch the ethnographic present: older ethnographies often describe a culture in a timeless present tense, as if it never changes. Critical readers remember that all societies have history and change.
BronisΕaw Malinowski's Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922) is based on fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands of Melanesia. He described the kula ring: a ceremonial exchange in which shell valuables circulate between islands. Red shell necklaces (soulava) travel one way and white shell armbands (mwali) the other.
The kula is not about material profit; it builds status, alliance and social relationships. Malinowski used it to show that exchange is a total social act, not just an economic one.
E. E. Evans-Pritchard wrote two landmark ethnographies. In Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande (1937) he showed that Azande witchcraft is a coherent way of explaining misfortune: it answers not how something happened but why it happened to this person now. The Azande consult the poison oracle (benge) to decide questions.
In The Nuer (1940, in what is now South Sudan) he analysed a cattle-herding people organised by segmentary lineage, where groups unite or divide depending on context.
Clifford Geertz founded interpretive (symbolic) anthropology. In The Interpretation of Cultures (1973) he argued that the anthropologist's task is thick description: not just recording behaviour but interpreting the meanings behind it.
In Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight he read the cockfight as a text that Balinese men tell themselves about status, rivalry and masculinity. Culture, for Geertz, is a set of webs of significance to be interpreted.
Tap a study or idea, then tap the anthropologist it belongs to. (Two each.)
Margaret Mead, a student of Franz Boas, wrote Coming of Age in Samoa (1928). She argued that adolescence and gender roles are shaped by culture, not fixed by biology alone. Her work supported the Boasian view that human behaviour is largely learned.
A live debate: decades later Derek Freeman challenged Mead's Samoan findings. Anthropologists still discuss this dispute. Recognising such debates is part of engaging critically with ethnographic material.
Whatever material you study, engage with it critically:
Tap an ethnography on the left, then the people it studied.
Each classic study illustrates an area of inquiry: the Trobriand kula is about production, exchange and consumption; Azande witchcraft is about belief and knowledge and health, illness and healing; the Balinese cockfight is about symbolism. Learning to name the area and concept in a study is a core exam skill.
A classic ethnographic monograph is a book-length account built on long-term fieldwork, weaving description, local voices and analysis. Malinowski insisted such work rest on months or years of immersion and knowledge of the language, not brief visits.
Anthropologists also use ethnographic film and, increasingly, digital and online fieldwork. The IB stresses that film and visual media must be read as critically as written text: they too are edited, framed and authored by someone with a viewpoint.
Ethnography: firsthand fieldwork and the monograph it produces
Malinowski: the Trobriand kula ring (Argonauts, 1922)
Evans-Pritchard: Azande witchcraft and oracles; the Nuer and cattle
Geertz: thick description; the Balinese cockfight
Mead: Coming of Age in Samoa; culture shapes gender (debated by Freeman)
Read critically: viewpoint, methods, context, representation
You can now name key ethnographies and question them critically. Press Finish to see your score.
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