Qualitative Research: An Introduction to Methods and Designs

Doing Critical Ethnography

Critical ethnography shares many methods and goals with more traditional approaches to ethnography. Both attempt to explain social phenomena from the participants' point of view; both privilege local knowledge and experience; and both use participant observation, interviews, focus groups, and general immersion into a local context to generate these insights. The process of doing critical ethnography bears much resemblance to doing ethnography that is interpretive in nature (Schensul, Schensul, & LeCompte, 1999). Immersion is a key part of both ethnographic and critical ethnographic research:

The ethnographer seeks a deeper immersion in others' worlds in order to grasp what they experience as meaningful and important. ...