Ethnography? (was Re: pre-capitalist sex)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Kelley Walker wrote:
>
>>DOUG! it isn't supposed to be and he doesn't claim it to be. 
>>please don't criticize people on ethnographical methods if you 
>>don't understand how it works and only know statoid econodrone 
>>methods or something.
>
>So, Wolfe chooses a sample of people who are more affluent, more 
>white, more married than the U.S. pop - and 100% suburban - and then 
>interviews them using questions he doesn't publish and selectively 
>reports answers from transcripts he doesn't publish either, and this 
>is supposed to tell us something about how "America" thinks. It's 
>crap, I say. It tells us more about the author than anything else.
>
>A lot of "ethnography" seems like journalism with pretentions to scholarship.
>
>Doug

Wolfe used polling statements and interviews to elicit responses to 
some topics of his choice (e.g., welfare, immigration, family 
structure, homosexuality).  Does that count as "ethnography"?  If so, 
what's the difference between "ethnography" & "journalism"?  More 
importantly, what's the difference between "ethnography" and modern 
electoral campaign techniques of opinion polls & focus groups? 
Wolfe's method appears to have more in common with electoral campaign 
techniques than what is normally thought of as ethnography which 
involves "observation of culture in situ" for a prolonged period of 
time (on the definition of ethnography, see, for instance, Alexander 
Massey, "'The way we do things around here': the culture of 
ethnography," at <http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/2961/waywedo.htm>).

Yoshie