sic terms, ethnography is the task of describing a particular culture. In most cases, the term is used in the context of the subject of "ethnographic field work," and indicates a perspective of the particular culture gleaned from on site study. Cultural anthropology, of course, is a rather broad term, however, ethnographic research is often delineated by the subjects involved, as well as the type of study undertaken. Its major goals are to describe, classify, compare, and explain the similarities in human behavior that arise across the societal and cultural continuum (Spradley and McCurdy, 1972).
One of the seminal issues involved in ethnographic research is the semantics of the field and the way they impact on the objectivity issue. Although it is not possible, according to most research, to be completely objective, it is the goal of ethnography to use ethnographic semantics to bridge the gap between observable behavior and interpretation. For instance, the popular view of the field believes that the cultural description reported by the researcher is identical to the observed events. This view holds that agreement may take place on the facts, but not on the interpretation (Havemeyer, 1929). However, a more modern view terms this as naive, and instead holds that the most significant distortions in scientific study occur during the process of data collection. The problems arise between the events that the researcher actually observes (what people are actually doing) and the resulting descriptive account (what the researcher actually writes). The variable in this example is, of course, the researcher (Chilcott, 1987). In the words of two authors:
Complete objectivity may be a characteristic of some omniscient observer, but not of a human being. In any research, selective observation and selective interpretation always work to transform the 'actual events' into the 'facts' that are used in a descriptive account (Spradley a...