Towards a Cultural Analysis: The Need for Ethnography in Interpretation Research

Abstract

The author examines a decade of interpretation research and focuses on the limited amount of qualitative research available, especially ethnographic. This highlights a trend in which there is a substantial absence of work derived from qualitative perspectives and even when studies are considered qualitative they are overwhelmingly geared towards individual visitor outcomes and large-scale studies and surveys. Drawing upon anthropological insights ethnography as both method and substance is explored. An argument is presented that ethnography, in its attention to context, making connections, shared social interactions, and holism is keenly suited to the study of interpretation and perhaps the best way of exploring meaning making, a prominent component of the field. Interpretation research is missing an important cultural analysis of the practice of interpretation, and ethnography offers a unique and invaluable lens by which to study interpretation as a cultural and social act.