Ethnographic Philosophy

As part of recent attempts to bring philosophical thoughts closer to actual practices and problems, philosophers have adopted empirical methods from psychology, sociology, business studies, anthropology, and a range of other fields. One methodological avenue has been the use of ethnographic studies that target philosophical questions in order to – among other things – add contextual depth and normative thickness to philosophical theory. This edited section highlights publications that explore the use of ethnography as a philosophical method: discussing different versions of ethnography and its use in philosophy, the methodological challenges of this, or addressing the usefulness of ethnography in the context of particular philosophical fields or for different philosophical problems. 

Ethnography here is understood broadly as a methodological stance rather than a specific method. It is defined by four main features: (1) It studies people’s actions and accounts in uncontrolled, everyday contexts – called ‘naturalistic enquiry’ by Nersessian and Macleod, following Lincoln and Guba. (2) It focuses on in-depth analysis of one or few cases/sites, that is, it is ideographic. (3) Participant observation and informal conversations are usually central to data collection, but data can also include documents, recorded interviews and a range of other sources. (4) The approach is open or ‘unstructured’, sometimes referred to as ‘iterative-inductive’. This openness has two aspects: (a) the research design is not fixed at the outset but evolves in response to findings and interests; (b) the analytical focus develops alongside data collection, allowing findings to shape the researcher’s gaze and interests as the study evolves. This, however, does not mean the study cannot have theoretically guided interests; in fact, for philosophical ethnography it will typically be the case that there is some primary theoretical theme or problem at stake. It is this difference in particular, which makes ethnographic philosophy different from traditional anthropological use. Other central challenges in the use of ethnography for philosophical enquiry relate to questions around the normative nature and universalising/generalising aims of philosophy.

The uptake of the ethnographic stance as a meta-philosophical frame for empirical philosophy has happened across philosophical subdisciplines, including philosophy of science (as part of the practice turn), philosophy of education, political philosophy (especially in the context of migration and decolonisation), and ethics (in particular bioethics). And there are meta-philosophical links to various philosophical schools which offer useful tools for developing and qualifying the inclusion of qualitative methods as legitimate philosophical starting grounds, including American Pragmatism and Phenomenology.

For philosophy of science a key publication occurred with Wagenknecht et al 2015 – an edited volume which includes examples of and reflections on the use of qualitative methods in a range of scientific subfields. Later on, more meta-philosophically targeted publications have occurred, including Nersessian & MacLeod 2022 which puts ethnography front and centre.

For political philosophy/theory, ethnography is discussed in terms of a 'sensibility', notably in Zacka et al 2021.

For (bio-)ethics use and explicit address of ethnography remains subtle, but Musschenga 2005 made the case for a need for more context sensitive methods already 20 years ago.

Finally, the use of ethnography has been highlighted as a means to decolonise and rework philosophical methods for non-European contexts by Balogun 2023.