Peer Review of “Unit 1.3 Definitions: Ethnography”

TO: Zachary Goldman
FROM: Matthew De Rose
DATE: June 10, 2020
Subject: Peer Review of Unit 1.3 Definitions: Ethnography

I reviewed the first draft of your definitions assignment and I think it’s a great start. I felt that for the majority of the definitions I understood the different contexts that the term Ethnography could be defined in. I believe your parenthetical definition was very clear and easy to understand within the context of the sentence it was used in. Your organization of the strategies used for the expanded definition was really clearly outlined and also had a clear logical flow from one strategy to the next. I have provided some minor suggestions below for your consideration:

Purpose: I felt in your purpose statement (paragraph 1, sentence 3) that the portion of the sentence after “…to clearly…” was a bit vague and could be replaced with a short description about the reason why we are defining the term in various ways. Non-anthropologist readers will encounter this term in varying contexts and by defining the term in different levels of detail this will allow the reader will have sufficient understanding to navigate the different situations this term may arise in.

Audience: Of the three definitions, the sentence definition was the most confusing for me as a person that has never heard of this term before. I understood that the second sentence elaborates on ethnography as a methodology and peer-reviewed text (which you had referenced in the first sentence) but I felt that the ideas were disjoint and I needed a bit more explanation of how these two forms of ethnography were connected. In the latter half of the second sentence (after “…while ethnography as product”) I felt that ethnography could be any peer-reviewed text that an anthropologist produces which I wasn’t sure was intentional. I also felt that “ethnography as product” mentioned in the second sentence was jargon that should be replaced with less technical language for a non-anthologist to understand. Overall, I would focus on consolidating both sentences in this definition into one and really focus on central tenets of the ethnography which manifests in two different forms (methodology and peer-reviewed texts).

Organization: In the expanded definition I was able to determine that you used the etymological, historical, analysis of parts, visual and negation strategies to explore different aspects of the Ethnography definition. Your flow of ideas was very clear and I felt that all expansion strategies elaborated on a different aspect of ethnography in logical succession. I would maybe just improve the progression from historical expansion strategy to the analysis of parts since that transition felt the most abrupt.

With regards to the etymology of Ethnography, I believe you missed the definition of “ethnos” which will help the reader understand how the full decomposition of the word into its components.

The Analysis of Parts expansion strategy was very successful in outlining the key components of the Ethnography methodology however I would maybe state explicitly Participant Observation and Field Notes are common practices used in the Ethnographic methodology (if I understood that correctly). The visual and its corresponding description (figure 1) complemented the Participate Observation” explanation following the Analysis of Parts explanation. You might want to reference Figure 1 in your Participant Observation description just so the user can refer to the diagram as they are reading about this practice.

In the negation expansion method, I did crave a bit more detail regarding the distinction between ethnography as a methodology used in anthropologic research instead of an “account of one’s travels through exotic locations”. I felt that the quote from Claude Levi-Strauss, that you concluded the paragraph on wasn’t sufficient to really conclude the idea presented your thesis for this strategy. Perhaps one or two more sentences to elaborate on the contrast of ethnography from an “account of one’s travels through exotic locations” would really help the reader to clarify what is not included in the Ethnography definition.

Grammar: I noticed you use a present tense throughout most of the assignment however there are some instances of using the past tense. One instance of this is in the first paragraph you state “I have chosen” in the second sentence and it should be changed to “I am choosing”. Sometimes you also use a passive voice when you should be using an active voice. For instance in the first sentence of the first paragraph in the expanded definition you state “Derived from the Greek …, ethnography originally…”. Instead swap it to “The term Ethnography is derived from …”.

Overall, I felt I really learned a lot about Ethnography from your definitions. I feel that the organization of your expansion strategies really helped add extra dimension to my understanding of Ethnography. One of the most pertinent areas of improvement is improving the clarity of the sentence definition to ensure that there is not any confusion for how it is defined. In addition to this, some of the expansion strategies require a bit more detail to help support the users understanding of Ethnography in a more detailed context.

Link to Original Post: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl301-98a-2020sa/2020/06/05/unit-1-3-definitions-ethnography/