For ethnography

Abstract

Ethnography is an underused methodology in geography. This neglect is especially injurious to the discipline because ethnography provides unreplicable insight into the processes and meanings that sustain and motivate social groups. These processes and meanings vary across space, and are central to the construction and transformation of landscapes; they are both place-bound and place-making. Ethnography's potential contribution to geography is thus profound. The aversion to ethnography may derive from three major criticisms frequently directed toward it: that it is unscientific; that it is too limited to enable generalization; and that it fails to consider its inherent representational practices. Considered responses to these critiques, however, restore ethnography's significance for geographic study.