Ethnography’s signature method asks you to do two contradictory things at once: join in and keep track. Pick a field site, then move the dial from watching-only to becoming-a-member. Both ends of the dial produce bad ethnography — watch which thing each end takes away from you.
The field site
What you gain, what you lose
Rapport & access the emic view—
Analytic distance the etic view—
Usable ethnography what you can write—
Two jobs at oncechoose a field site, then move the dial
Choose a field site
Move the dial — watching only → becoming a member
Where the four roles come from. Raymond Gold set them out in 1958: complete participant, participant-as-observer, observer-as-participant, complete observer. They are not four kinds of researcher — a single fieldworker slides between them in a single day, a participant at the feast and an observer at the desk that night.