“Ethnography literally means 'a portrait of people.' An ethnography is a written description of a particular culture - the customs, beliefs, and behaviour - based on information collected through fieldwork.” - Marvin Harris and Orna Johnson (2000)
Introduction
An ethnography is a form of research that brings insight to specific issues that would be hard to understand as an outsider looking into a certain culture. Ethnographies enlighten others and give reasoning to a cultures beliefs, practices and mannerism. Cop in the Hood by Peter Moskos and On the Run by Alice Goffman are ethnographies that look into parallel social cultures in an urban environment. These ethnographies examine what it is like to be a member of a police force in an urban setting and what it is like living in a crime-riddled neighbour that the police frequent. Although police culture and the subcultures that exist in a violent …show more content…
According to Edward Hall, “each cultural world operates according to its own internal dynamic, its own principles, and its own laws—written and unwritten. Even time and space are unique to each culture (p.3).” Although we exist in the same space, there is a multitude of differences but Hall says that there are three things in common with all cultures; words, material things, and behaviours. The context that goes with the words, material thing and behaviours fills out the information to understand a spiffy culture. There is high context culture and low context culture, “A high context communication or message is one in which most of the information is already in the person, while very little is in the coded, explicit, transmitted part of the message. Low context communication is just the opposite; i.e., the mass of the information is vested in the explicit code”. - Edward T. Hall,
Introduction
An ethnography is a form of research that brings insight to specific issues that would be hard to understand as an outsider looking into a certain culture. Ethnographies enlighten others and give reasoning to a cultures beliefs, practices and mannerism. Cop in the Hood by Peter Moskos and On the Run by Alice Goffman are ethnographies that look into parallel social cultures in an urban environment. These ethnographies examine what it is like to be a member of a police force in an urban setting and what it is like living in a crime-riddled neighbour that the police frequent. Although police culture and the subcultures that exist in a violent …show more content…
According to Edward Hall, “each cultural world operates according to its own internal dynamic, its own principles, and its own laws—written and unwritten. Even time and space are unique to each culture (p.3).” Although we exist in the same space, there is a multitude of differences but Hall says that there are three things in common with all cultures; words, material things, and behaviours. The context that goes with the words, material thing and behaviours fills out the information to understand a spiffy culture. There is high context culture and low context culture, “A high context communication or message is one in which most of the information is already in the person, while very little is in the coded, explicit, transmitted part of the message. Low context communication is just the opposite; i.e., the mass of the information is vested in the explicit code”. - Edward T. Hall,