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T H E E T H N O G J aR m eA s P P . H S p rI a C d l e y M a c a le s te r C o lle g e Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers Fort Worth Philadelphia San Diego New York Orlando Austin San Antonio Toronto Montreal London Sydney Tokyo Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Spradley, James P. The ethnographic interview. Bibliography: p. 229. Includes index. 1. Interviewing in ethnology. I. Title. GN346.3.S66 301.2'07'2 78-26426 ISBN 0-03-044496-9 Copyright © 1979 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, in cluding photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be mailed to: Permissions Department, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. 8th Floor, Orlando, Florida 32887. Printed in the United States of America ISBN 0-03-044496-9 2 3 4 090 20 19 18 17 16 A quiet revolution has spread through the social sciences and many P applied disciplines. Ethnography, the study of culture, has come of age. A new appreciation for this unique approach to understanding humankind has emerged among educators, urban planners, r sociologists, nurses, psychologists, public interest lawyers, politi cal scientists, and many more. There has come a profound realiza e tion: the people we study or seek to help have a way of life, a culture of their own. Like a stream that rises slowly, then spills f over its banks sending rivulets of water in many directions, the ethnographic revolution has overflowed the banks of anthropol a ogy. This stream had its beginning in field work expeditions to places like the Kalahari desert, remote Micronesian atolls, coastal villages of New Guinea, and communities of Arctic Eskimo. No c longer relegated to exotic cultures in far-off places, ethnography has come home. It has become a fundamental tool for understand e ing ourselves and the multicultural societies of the modem world. Not far from where I live, in St. Paul, Minnesota, stands a large brick building surrounded by black asphalt. During the school year it is crowded with young adolescents. One researcher set out to understand this ordinary junior high school using the tools of ethnography. She watched the students going to and from classes; she observed them smoking in the bathrooms, talking in the hall ways, and eating in the lunchroom. She listened to lectures and interviewed teachers. Over a period of months she learned the special language and culture of this school, then described it from the participants' point of view (Gregory 1976). She was doing ethnography. Across the Mississippi River, in the city of Minneapolis, lives a man whose arms and legs were paralyzed when he broke his neck in a trampoline accident. Physicians call him a quadriplegic. He spends much of his time in a wheelchair; although he works full time as a professional, he must depend on others for many of the things that most of us take for granted. A premed student in one of my classes became interested in the culture of “quads” and spent many hours interviewing this man. He also visited other quads who lived in nursing homes and slowly came to understand life from their point of view. He did field work in another culture that had direct applicability to his chosen field of medicine (Deveney 1974). He was doing ethnography. Several years ago I became interested in alcoholism and the difficulties in treating the skid row alcoholic. Using the ethno graphic approach, I set out to study men who had lived long years on skid row. I listened, watched, and allowed these men to become my teachers. I discovered a complex culture that gave shape and meaning to the lives of men whom most people wrote off as “derelicts“ (Spradley 1970). Similar examples of contemporary ethnography could be drawn from all parts of the country. With the new surge of interest in the ethnographic approach have come two pressing needs. First, there is an urgent need to clarify the nature of ethnography. As scholars and students from many disciplines begin using the tools of ethnography, they often bring their own disciplinary assumptions to this approach. In many cases, ethnography has become confused with qualitative and descriptive studies of another kind. Because interview ing and participant observation can be used for other forms of investigation, it has become necessary to make clear what is meant by ethnographic interviewing and participant observation that leads to an ethnographic description. In Part One, “Ethnographic Research,” I define ethnography, identify some of its underlying assumptions, and distinguish it from other investigative approaches. I also discuss the ethics of doing ethnography and some criteria for selecting strategic ethnographic research projects. The growing excitement about ethnography in many disciplines has given rise to a second need: specific guidelines for doing ethnography for professionals and students without long years of training in anthropology. Most ethnographers have learned the skills of their trade through the apprenticeship system or by themselves in a kind of on-the-job training while doing their first field research. This book is a response to the need for a systematic handbook for doing ethnography. With its companion volume, Participant Observation (Spradley 1980), I have tried to make explicit the basic concepts and skills needed for doing ethnography. I call the approach in both of these books the Developmental Research Sequence (D.R.S.) Method. My interest in this approach began from a rather simple observation: some tasks are best accomplished before other tasks when doing ethnography. Ethnographers cannot do everything at once, even though field work sometimes appears to demand it. Both ethnographic interviewing and participant observation, whether done separately or in combination, involve a series of tasks best carried out in some kind of sequence. The ethnog rapher, for example, must locate an informant before asking questions; some ques tions are best asked before others; interviews must precede analysis of interview data. As I began to work with this idea of sequenced tasks, I found it was not only valuable for my own research, but it had special importance to students and profes sionals trying to learn the skills for doing ethnography. What emerged over a period of the last twelve years was a procedure for learning as well as doing ethnography. In a real sense this book is thus designed both for beginners who want to learn to do ethnography and for professional ethnographers who will necessarily want to adapt the procedures to their own style of investigation. Part Two, “The Developmental Research Sequence,” sets forth a series of twelve major tasks designed to guide the investigator from the starting point of “Locating an Informant,” to the goal of “Writing the Ethnography.” Each of these larger tasks is broken down into many smaller ones that simplify the work of asking ethnographic questions and making ethnographic analyses. Those interested in a more extensive discussion of the D.R.S. Method as well as how the use of that method has placed certain limits on this book should consult Appendix C, “The Developmental Re search Sequence Method.” Ethnography is an exciting enterprise, the one systematic approach in the social sciences that leads us into those separate realities that others have learned and use to make sense out of their worlds. In our complex society the need for understanding how other people see their experience has nëver been greater. Ethnography is a tool with great promise. It offers the educator a way of seeing schools through the eyes of students; it offers health professionals the opportunity of seeing health and disease through the eyes of patients from a myriad of different backgrounds ; it offers those in the criminal justice system a chance to view the world through the eyes of those who are helped and victimized by that system. Ethnography offers all of us the chance to step outside our narrow cultural backgrounds, to set aside our socially inherited ethnocentrism, if only for a brief period, and to apprehend the world from the viewpoint of other human beings who live by different meaning systems. Ethnog raphy, as I understand it, is more than a tool for anthropologists to study exotic cultures. It is a pathway into understanding the cultural differences that make us what we are as human beings. Perhaps the most important force behind the quiet ethnographic revolution is the widespread realization that cultural diversity is one of the great gifts bestowed on the human species. It is my hope that this book will enable those who use it to more fully apprehend the nature of that cultural diversity. J. P. S. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many people have contributed to the ideas developed in this book. I am indebted to the hundreds of students, both graduate and undergraduate, who have taken my courses in ethnographic field work during the past dozen years. They have taught me much about doing ethnography, and their experiences have been the basis for much that appears in this book. In particular I am grateful to Macalester College and the Department of Anthropology for the freedom to experiment with different styles of teaching and learning. Many of the ideas developed in this book have been enriched by my close collaboration with Professor David McCurdy of Macalester College, who partici pated in my ethnographic research course on more than one occasion, offering many valuable suggestions. In 1972 we co-authored The Cultural Experience: Ethnog raphy in Complex Society, which offered guidance to undergraduate students doing ethnographic field work. This book includes brief ethnographic descriptions written by undergraduate students which have been useful models in our teaching. The present volume focuses more specifically on the ethnographic interview and is organized around the sequence of tasks as they occur in doing ethnography. It also goes beyond The Cultural Experience in discussing the nature and theory of ethnog raphy. Professor McCurdy and I alternately teach a research course at Macalester College, which was selected in 1977 by Change Magazine's project on notable improvements in American undergraduate teaching (“The New Ethnography: Lan guage as the Key to Culture,” by Evan Jenkins in Report on Teaching, No. 5, pp. 16*#)). Professor McCurdy has been a partner in testing many of the ideas in this book with undergraduate students. I am also grateful to Professor Thomas Correli of Bethel College, St. Paul, Minnesota, for many suggestions and long hours of discussing many of the ideas in this book. In 1978 he participated in a class I taught at Bethel College on ethno graphic interviewing. His expertise in linguistics has been a valuable resource given freely on many occasions. Professor Oswald Werner of Northwestern University has been of great assistance in many ways. He invited me to participate as a consultant to an ethnographic research project on Navaho schools, an experience that greatly enriched my under standing of ethnography. His comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript as well as his writings on ethnographic theory have been of enormous value. Many others have made comments on this manuscript or have contributed by comments and suggestions, including George Spindler, Calvin Peters, Richard Fur- low, David Boynton, and Don Larson. In 1976-77, through a Chautauqua-type short course sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, I presented many of these ideas to professionals from the fields of anthropology, sociology, history, psychology, education, and political science who were interested in ethnographic research. Many of them made use of this approach in their own research and teaching and their ideas have helped refine and clarify what is presented here. The most important contribution was made by Barbara Spradley. As my wife and colleague she listened to the development of all these ideas, offered many sug gestions, and provided constant encouragement. Without her assistance this book would not have been possible. PART ONE ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH 1 C Chapter One Ethnography and Culture 3 Chapter Two Language and Field Work 17 o Chapter Three Informants 25 n PART TWO THE DEVELOPMENTAL RESEARCH SEQUENCE 41 t Step One Locating an Informant 45 e Step Two Interviewing an Informant 55 n Step Three Making an Ethnographic Record 69 Step Four Asking Descriptive Questions 78 Step Five Analyzing Ethnographic t Interviews 92 s Step Six Making a Domain Analysis 107 Step Seven Asking Structural Questions 120 Step Eight Making a Taxonomic Analysis 132 Step Nine Asking Contrast Questions 155 Step Ten Making a Componential Analysis 173 Step Eleven Discovering Cultural Themes 185 Step Twelve Writing an Ethnography 204 Notes 217 Appendix A. A Taxonomy of Ethnographic Questions 223 Appendix B. Developmental Research Sequence Writing Tasks 224 Appendix C. The Development Research Sequence Method 227 Bibliography 236 Index 244 E C T h Field work is the hallmark of cultural anthropology. H a Whether in a New Guinea village or on the streets of New p York, the anthropologist goes to where people live and N “does field work.“1 This means asking questions, eating t O e strange foods, learning a new language, watching cere monies, taking field notes, washing clothes, writing letters r G liome, tracing out genealogies, observing play, interviewing O informants, and hundreds of other things. This vast range of R activities often obscures the most fundamental task of all n field work—doing ethnography. This book concerns this A e central task of anthropological field work. In Part One, I P - want to explore the meaning of ethnography in some detail. - Part Two examines, in step by step fashion, how to conduct H - - ethnographic interviews. - Ethnography is the work of describing a culture.2 The Y - essential core of this activity aims to understand another - - way of life from the native point of view. The goal of A - ethnography, as Malinowski put it, is “to grasp the native’s - point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of his N - - world” (1922:25). Field work, then, involves the disciplined D - study of what the world is like to people who have learned to - - see, hear, speak, think, and act in ways that are different. - Rather than studying people, ethnography means learning C - from people. Consider the following illustration. - U - Elizabeth Marshall, a young American, had traveled for - miles across the Kalahari Desert with her family and several L - research scientists. Finally the party came upon two shallow - T - depressions “scooped in the sand and lined with grass, like - the shallow, scooped nests of shore birds on a beach—the U - - homes of the families, where the people could lie curled up R - just below the surface of the plain to let the cold night wind - which blows across the veld pass over them” (Thomas E - - 1958:41). And then a young woman who appeared to be in her early twenties came out of the house. “Presently she smiled, pressed her hand to her chest, and said: ‘Tsetchwe.’ It was her name. “ ‘Elizabeth,’ I said, pointing to myself. “ ‘Nisabe,’ she answered, pronouncing after me and in clining her head graciously. She looked me over carefully without really staring, which to Bushmen is rude. Then, having surely suspected that I was a woman, she put her hand on my breast gravely, and, finding that I was, she gravely touched her own breast. Many Bushmen do this; to them all Europeans look alike. 3