Millie Creighton“efficient” (Schensul, Schensul, and LeCompte 1999 , 71 ). Under spe-
cific guidelines for interacting with or interviewing informants, eth-
nographers are told to keep in mind how the topic relates to the estab-
lished goal and “determine whether the person being interviewed is
staying on topic, and if not, how to reintroduce the topic” (Schensul,
Schensul, and LeCompte 1999 , 122 ). Finally, an overall statement of
the goal of ethnography is found under the subheading, “What Can
Ethnography Tell Us? Just the Facts” (deMunck and Sobo 1998 , 16 ).
Here the goal of ethnographic research is defined as follows: “The
purpose of ethnographic research is to pin down the facts about peo-
ple” (deMunck and Sobo 1998 , 16 ).
As I read through these texts, I could not help but think that an-
thropology seemed to have truly fallen on Hard Times, in the Dick-
ensian sense. The rhythms of an old Geertzian blues tune nonetheless
kept running through my mind. In Interpretation of Cultures, Clifford
Geertz, drawing on Thoreau, provided anthropologists with a con-
trary conceptualization, reflected in the statement, “it’s not worth it
... to go all the way ’round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar”
( 1973 , 16 ). He might have added, “even if it gives us a fact!”
The methods texts mentioned above also tell us what ethnography
is not. “Ethnographic research is never autobiographical” (Schensul,
Schensul, and LeCompte 1946 , 72 ). The implication is that we can
all go home, or stay home, because stories from the field are intrin-
sically autobiographical. Such stories inevitably derive from the life
of the ethnographer enmeshed in the lives of other people who be-
come hosts in their society and culture. Of course, it is valid to cau-
tion against some extreme forms of postmodernist or reflexive writ-
ings that seem to descend into “me studies,” leaving the ethnographic
subject completely out of focus. As Robert Smith notes, “The subjects
of ethnographies, it should never be forgotten, are always more inter-
esting than their authors” ( 1990 , 369 ). Often, the designation of “an-
ecdotal” has been used to devalue knowledge gained from personal
experience that might provide profound insights into the motives and
understandings of individual social actors. However, it is also increas-
ingly acknowledged that ethnography stems from the ethnographer’s
particular experiences of and interactions with the culture being stud-
ied. Hence, some anthropologists embrace, rather than downplay,