Within the field of

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, society, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behav ...

and other

social science Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among members within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the ...

ethnography Ethnography is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. It 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 ...

is a form of research that relies on a range of sources of data, but usually tends to rely mainly on

participant observation Participant observation is one type of data collection method by practitioner-scholars typically used in qualitative research and ethnography. This type of methodology is employed in many disciplines, particularly anthropology (including cultur ...

. However, the term also refers to the product of this type of research, which of course normally takes a textual form. As a result, ethnography is also sometimes seen as a ''genre of writing, one'' used to describe patterns of human social interaction in particular contexts. Within the context of ethnography, the term 'realism' is often used to refer to the assumptions that some kinds of ethnographic work make about the phenomena to be investigated, and how these are to be understood. However, 'ethnographic realism' has also been used to refer to a style of writing that narrates the author's experiences and observations as if the reader were witnessing or experiencing events first hand. A work written using ethnographic realism may be referred to as a realist ethnography, and classified as a subgenre of ethnography.

Styles of ethnographic realism

George Marcus and Dick Cushman described and categorized realist ethnographies under certain characteristics. *Totalizing description *Omniscient narration *Native interpretation *Generalizations *Jargon

References

Anthropology Ethnography Realism (art movement) {{ethnography-stub