11 Ethnographic methods Cai Wilkinson Chapter summary This chapter explores the process of generating the ‘thick description’ that is the product of interpretive ethnographic research. The chapter begins with an overview of the history of ethnographic methods and their current place within International Relations and Security Studies, before going on to outline the key characteristics of a critical interpretive ethno- graphic methodology. In the following section, a three-stage model of the research process is presented and illustrated with examples taken from the author’s fieldwork in Kyrgyzstan in 2005–2006 on understandings of security. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the limitations of ethnographic methods. Learning outcomes On completion, readers should be able to: • outline the key characteristics of an interpretive ethnographic methodology; • describe the stages of conducting ethnographic research and identify the different methods that can be used; and • identify potential limitations of ethnographic methods. Introduction Ethnographic methods are arguably more accurately described as a style of research rather than a formal method. The term is used to describe a range of qualitative data generation techniques that are naturalistic, meaning that they involve studying people or phenomena in their ‘natural’ setting or context, and produce accounts of research that are experience-near, meaning that they are based on people’s experiences of events, actions and phenomena in the setting or context. A central characteristic, therefore, of ethnographic methods is that they involve ‘fieldwork’ of some sort in order to try and ‘uncover emic (insider) perspectives on political and social life and/or ground-level processes involved therein’ (Bayard de Volo and Schatz 2004: 267). Traditionally this involved the researcher travelling to a particular place and spending an extended period of time, often years, living there as part of the community being researched. Increasingly, however, fieldwork is better understood as the process by which the researcher immerses herself and participates in the research context or field; while this may involve travelling to a different country or city, it could equally describe working in an organisation or institution or being part of a community such as an online forum. © Shepherd, Laura J., Jan 03, 2013, Critical Approaches to Security : An Introduction to Theories and Methods Taylor and Francis, Hoboken, ISBN: 9781135128005