Emerging Trends in The Social and Behavioral Sciences

Ethnography: Telling Practice Stories

Media

Part of Ethnography: Telling Practice Stories

Title

Ethnography: Telling Practice Stories

extracted text

Ethnography: Telling Practice Stories
KAREN O’REILLY

Abstract
In this essay I argue that the central emerging trend in ethnography is the
telling of practice stories, that is narrative (or story-like) accounts that make
sense of social phenomena by understanding how people respond to constraints
and opportunities but in turn create the cultures, constraints, and opportunities within which others act. Drawing either overtly or implicitly on different
versions of what has become known as practice theory, contemporary ethnographers increasingly aspire to unravel the processes involved in the ongoing
constitution of social life. This constitution is made up of free will as well as
structures that restrict action. The key principles of ethnography, established
to challenge preconceptions and to yield complex understandings, remain fundamental to its methodology. This is despite massive social change and the
emergence of “new ethnographies” to understand such things as globalization
and technological change. These key principles are exactly what are required
for the analysis of social life as practice. Ethnography pays attention to people’s feeling and emotions, their experiences and their free choices, but also to
the wider constraints and opportunities that frame their agency. And they do
this always in the context of people’s daily lives, cultures, and communities,
using the key methods of watching, taking part, sharing in conversations and
listening.

Fully descriptive accounts of what constitutes ethnography are now abundant (e.g., Gobo, 2008; Madden, 2010; O’Reilly, 2012a). Nevertheless, in considering the emerging trends in ethnography, it is valuable to retrace its roots
as a methodology whose key principles were defined in opposition to existing approaches to understanding “other” societies. Early ethnography was
established to challenge preconceptions and to yield complex understandings, and its key principles, forged in this ongoing “war against positivism”
(Puddephatt, Shaffir, & KleinKnecht, 2009, p. 4), have been adapted and built
on as society has changed. However, they remain fundamental in a literal
sense. Malinowski’s now-famous chapter in Argonauts of the Western Pacific

Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

1

2

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

(1922) remains the finest way to remind ourselves of ethnography’s beginnings because it is so eloquent, thoughtful, and didactic.1
For Malinowski, ethnography meant getting in touch with the natives in
order to understand their lives from within their meaning worlds: “Every
human culture gives its members a definite vision if the world, a definite
zest for life” (1922, p. 517). We now understand this in terms of phenomenological and hermeneutic approaches. He talks of not prejudging our “subjects”
and seeking to “treat the beliefs and values of another man (sic) from his
point of view” (1922, p. 518); goals not easily achieved where survey or interview questions are predesigned on the basis of what we think we know. This
approach has now been elaborated on using the concepts of interpretivism
and inductivism. For Malinowski, ethnography did not involve interviewing someone in a time and place outside of their usual conditions of existence but learning about them by talking with them, living among them, and
even taking part in their lives. He felt it was important to come to know the
local, to “become familiar with his (sic) customs and beliefs” (1922, p. 7), and
to learn how to behave correctly. Ethnographers might now become socialized into a culture, learning its norms and practices, or acquiring the habitus.
For Malinowski ethnography is no “sporadic plunging into the company
of natives” (1922, p. 7); it takes time for both the ethnographer and participant to feel comfortable with each other. Being there when things happen
will enable people to talk more easily because they are excited and engaged,
and they will reveal disagreements and ambivalences, complex negotiations
and solutions (Fetterman, 2010). Doing research in context and obtaining
the participants’ view over lengthy periods of time remain key principles
for ethnography, although we may now recognize the relevance of “immersing our embodied selves within the cultures of interest” (Boellstorff, Nardi,
Pearce, & Taylor, 2012, p. 1); and many see participant observation as the
defining method, the sine qua non of the ethnographer’s toolkit.
Malinowski criticized such survey work for ignoring the “intimate touches
of native (sic) life” (1922, p. 17) but nevertheless considered it essential to
compile systematic survey data to sketch out “the skeleton” of “the tribe.”
We now avoid the meaning-laden language of natives and tribes, but good
ethnographers continue to recognize the importance of collecting information about macro processes and wider structures, about institutions, patterns,
and norms as well as about people’s feelings, thoughts, and experiences.
Nevertheless, as Malinowski again pointed out, not every rule is written

1. This is not to forget the many other authors whose work I could have drawn from, nor to deny
that Malinowski’s work has been criticized for being ethnocentric, positivist, detached, and unreflective.
However, word limits restrict more extensive and subtle treatment.

Ethnography: Telling Practice Stories

3

down nor even entirely understood; hence the need for observation and interpretation as well as asking direct questions. Contemporary ethnography usually involves conversations rather than interviews, and these take place as
things occur and in the context of daily life as ethnographers learn when
to get people talking, to keep people talking, and when to listen (Madden,
2010, p. 65). Interviews remain important but are interpreted with the understanding that people reconstruct events through memory, crystallizing ways
of being by weaving stories and telling folk tales (Fetterman, 2010).
For Malinowski, theory was to act as inspiration, to foreshadow problems
and not constrain with preconceived ideas. Now we avoid naive forms
of inductivism but use theory to sensitize, discarding concepts that turn
out to be meaningless, adapting those that offer some explanation, and
developing new ones as research progresses. Contemporary ethnography
often also seeks theoretical rather than empirical generalizations (O’Reilly,
2009). Malinowski’s approach was holistic, not concentrating on the exotic or
astonishing but on the trivial, daily, and banal. There was acknowledgment
of the interconnectedness of elements of a community life into an imagined
coherent whole. This is now perceived as a somewhat limited functionalist
approach, but ethnographers continue to seek interconnections and linkages
within and beyond the single case, in an inclusive rather than exclusive
manner, and to examine over time the minutiae of daily life. Contemporary
ethnography does not seek some faddish news story, but is, rather, long,
arduous, committed, and engaged (Puddephatt, Shaffir, & KleinKnecht,
2009; Scheper-Hughes, 2004).
Finally, Malinowski believed it essential to clearly separate out observations and interpretations in the pursuit of facts. We now acknowledge
this is not so easy, and use the concept of reflexivity to think through the
relationship of the researcher and researched. The reflexive turn has led to
a more self-conscious use of the language of participants, who participate
in their own cultures as well as in our studies, rather than subjects or
informants. Nevertheless, early ethnographers who used this language
usually had a respect for the complexity and depth of the cultures they
studied (Boellstorff et al., 2012, p. 17), and this is an enduring feature of
ethnography (Scheper-Hughes, 2004).
“NEW” ETHNOGRAPHIES
As implied earlier, there have been many developments in ethnography,
some that are relevant to qualitative research more broadly conceived,
others that are more specific to the methodology of ethnography. Some
developments respond to changes in the wider world, such as globalization and global ethnography (e.g., Burawoy et al., 2000), the increased

4

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

interconnectedness of the world and mobile, or multisited, ethnography
(e.g., Falzon, 2009), the ongoing development of technologies for recording
visual data and visual ethnographies (e.g., Pink, 2007), the spread of digital
technologies leading to new or different forms of social life and types of
community, and digital or virtual ethnographies (e.g., Hine, 2000; Horst
& Miller, 2012). But these do not challenge, in any abrupt way, the core
principles of ethnography as a methodology; that is as a set of principles
guiding practical, methodical choices (O’Reilly, 2012a). Typically, these
authors provide texts through which researchers can think through the
implications of wider developments for their ethnography, in the context
of the founding principles. Indeed, the appeal to traditional ethnography is
quite profound in Horst and Miller (2012). As Boellstorff et al. (2012, p. 4)
argue: “The successful deployment of ethnographic methods in virtual
worlds is, for us, a ringing endorsement of their enduring power to illuminate novel dimensions of human experience.” As methods and approaches
become more innovative, it appears increasingly relevant to remember what
ethnography essentially is.
Burawoy (2000, p. 1) condemns “the fetish of confinement” in traditional
anthropology. Embracing a global and/or historical perspective can challenge notions of communities as pure and bounded, tackle the relationship
between local and global power and knowledge, and examine cultures of
colonialism (Crang & Cook, 2007). But, as Burawoy acknowledges, ethnography was designed for the small scale and so global ethnography examines
the lived experience of globalization, how global forces are felt, experienced,
mobilized, or resisted, by spending extended amounts of time combining
dwelling with travelling (2000, p. 4). The global is brought back in more theoretically and conceptually than empirically. Using Burawoy’s extended case
method, ethnographers can extend their observations and theoretical explanations from micro to macro, over time and space, but the first extension
remains that of “the observer into the world of the participant” (2000, p. 26).
Employing visual images and technologies in fieldwork informed a
challenge to “visual realism,” enabling the development of creative and
participatory approaches (Pink, 2007); but even where the approach is
uber-reflexive or influenced by postmodern philosophy, still the goal is a
“closer understanding of the worlds that other people live in” (Pink, 2007,
p. 24). For Murthy (2008, p. 838), the epistemological remit of digital ethnography remains much the same: ‘Ethnography is about telling social stories,’
it is just the way stories are told that has changed.’ The goal is often still to
employ traditional ethnography in new settings, even where the cultures
are virtual extended fieldwork examines “cultures through participation
that is authentic in that culture’s own terms” (Boellstorff et al., 2012, p. 69).
Being there remains crucial, “even when that embodiment is in the form of

Ethnography: Telling Practice Stories

5

an avatar” (p. 1). George Marcus (2012, p. xiv) warns that as ethnography
becomes more and more popular it runs the risk of dilution; “that is, for
the data derived from subjects to lack a rich, critically developed context
for interpretation.” He is concerned that too heavy a reliance on interviews
as elicitation “lack(s) the fabric and shell of the immersive experience of
trying to live ‘inside’” a culture (2012, p. xiv). He also believes it remains
important to impose objectivity on the experience of fieldwork through
reflexive observations and the writing of field notes (Marcus, 2012, p. xiv).
Hine noted that virtual worlds are places of interaction and cultural activity,
and so the Internet can be studied as both cultural artefact and as culture,
but still ethnography tends to take a holistic rather than selective approach.
Ethnography, she says, is sustained and involved, “a way of seeing through
participants’ eyes” (Hine, 2000, p. 21). Similarly, Boellstorff et al. (2012, p. 67)
believe that “Ethnographic research is fundamentally a holistic project; we
seek to understand shared practices, meanings, and social contexts, and the
interrelations among them.”
Of course, new media and technological advances are so ubiquitous it is
difficult for them not to be part of every ethnography, but they do not have
to be the single focus. They raise special issues such as whether to “be there”
in real time, respecting identities that are virtual, retaining anonymity in photos, transcription of digitally collected interviews and data, and the fact that
people do not write in the same way as they speak face to face. But many
of these are merely extensions or different facets of similar problems faced
by traditional ethnographers. Much of everyday life is mediated, but it is no
more mediated than previously, just differently (Miller & Horst, 2012).
THE PRACTICE TURN
A far more significant emerging trend in ethnography arises as a result of the
culmination of over a hundred years of social science, as what has become
known as the practice turn has been embraced by ethnographers. Diverse
theorists endeavor to make sense of what Cohen (1989, p. 12) understands
as the social processes involved in the ongoing constitution of social life,
while ethnographers increasingly and imaginatively draw on the emerging
perspectives in their empirical work. The impact of practice theory on
ethnography takes different forms depending on the author, discipline, or
even generation (Postill, 2010, p. 6), but ethnography increasingly recounts
practice stories: narrative explanations that take account of the interaction of
structure and agency over time and space.
Broadly speaking, the practice turn in ethnography (as in social science
more widely) recognizes that the tendency to perceive the agency of individual human actors as distinct and separate from social structures is an

6

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

untenable residual feature of the historical development of social theory.
Early sociologists were keen to point out the sui generis existence of social
structures in an attempt to forge a new science of society that could treat
its subject matter as an object, in a manner that would be positive in its
outcomes. In the work of Durkheim, for example, “social facts” such as
laws, religion, education, and other more relational aspects such as norms,
were depicted as having a force of their own on societies, independently of
the individuals and their actions. Similarly, in Marx’s work, socioeconomic
forces were considered to work independently to shape human societies.
However, this approach has been gradually challenged by a variety of
schools of thought we might call “subjectivism,” including symbolic
interactionism, ethnomethodology, phenomenological sociology, social
constructionism, and hermeneutics. These approaches emphasized the
creative, reflexive and dynamic aspects of social life. They were especially
influenced by the set of philosophical ideas known as interpretivism. Interpretivists view human agents as actors who create their social worlds rather
than simply react to their conditions just like objects in the natural world.
But these latter approaches tended to overestimate the extent of agency
just as the earlier theories tended towards determinism. Having reached
something of a consensus, albeit implicit (Stones, 2006), social theorists now
seek ways to understand the ongoing interaction of structure and agency.
These approaches tend to be known as structuration or practice theories,
and draw from a diverse range of theoretical perspectives, some of which I
discuss briefly here. Ethnographers, likewise, are increasingly drawing from
these theoretical perspectives in order to tell practice stories—analyzing
their empirical case studies using practice theory.
Structuration theory is a social theory of practice proposed by Anthony
Giddens (1976, 1979, 1984). For Giddens, social life cannot be simply understood phenomenologically, as the outcome of individual actions based on
how people think and feel, what they intend, or plan to achieve. Neither
is social life solely determined by social structures, in the form of institutions, rules, and resources. Instead, social structures limit what people can
and cannot do, and even what they try or wish to do; but agents continue to
have some free will, and the very social structures that enable or constrain
in some situations are made and remade by individuals in the process of
their acting (or their agency). For Giddens, we therefore cannot even think
of agency and structure as ontologically distinct; they are a duality—always
interdependent and interrelated. Giddens’ structuration theory is more a way
of thinking than a set of tools for empirical analysis, which does bring its own
difficulties for ethnographers. He is not always clear how structures might
be empirically defined as they are so tied up with agency (Stones, 2005) and

Ethnography: Telling Practice Stories

7

his work tends to favor voluntaristic interpretations. Nevertheless, his argument that social life is an ongoing historical process is an important one for
ethnographers to learn.
Bourdieu’s work (e.g., 1977, 1984, 1985, 1990) is also trying to make sense
of social life as something that is made and remade through the everyday,
embodied practice of agents, in the context of structural constraints. Instead
of the concept of structuration, which could be interpreted as the making of
structure, Bourdieu uses a theory of practice. This is a theory of how social life
is shaped, not a theory about daily practices divorced from their wider context. For Bourdieu, although individuals do have the capacity for innovation
and creativity (1990, p. 13, cited in Postill, 2010, p. 7), the choices made, the
desires shared, the tastes expressed, and the actions made, only make sense
when understood within the wider historical and structural context. This is
because people (as individuals and groups) are always in practical relation
to the world and, therefore, practices (what we do), are reasonable (sensible,
plausible) adjustments to the future, taking into account what is possible and
what is not, rather than, as some social scientists understand them, rational
calculations or the product of identifiable plans. Furthermore, to some extent
the constraints and opportunities faced by different groups can become so
taken for granted that they become internalized as tastes and preferences,
embodied as habits and routines, and even what is physically possible. The
concept of habitus is a central one for the theory of practice, referring to these
dispositions, habits, ways of doing things, ways of thinking, and ways of seeing the world that individuals acquire, singly and in groups, as they travel
through life (Bourdieu, 1990). Habitus (single and plural) are therefore internalized structures, made and remade through the practice of daily life, they
constrain what is possible by the fact of their internalization rather than by
their externality, as is the case with structures more traditionally conceived.
Practice thus includes things done habitually, without reflection, but also
innovative, critical actions that lead eventually to social change.
Rob Stones (2005) has developed a stronger version of structuration theory that builds on and develops the work of Giddens, responding to some
of his critics. Stones especially proposes the conceptual separation of structures and agency in order that empirical work can proceed with analysis of
external structures, internalized structures such as habitus and his own conjuncturally specific internal structures, active agency, that takes place within
position–practice relations, and outcomes (which can include any of the other
aspects). Chan et al. (2010) is an excellent example of ethnographic work on
childhood obesity that employs Stones’ strong structuration theory.
My own approach (O’Reilly, 2012b) combines the work of Rob Stones with
further insights from the work of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, where
they describe communities of practice (Wenger, 1998) and situated learning

8

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

(Lave & Wenger, 1991), and the elaboration of the concept of agency as
proposed by Mustafa Emirbayer and Ann Mische (1998). Communities
of practice (or cultural communities) are any social group (family, virtual
community, work mates, social club, a partnership) that comes together
and has to work out how to get on together. They form the social space at
the meso level, in-between laws and rules on the one hand, and free choice
on the other hand. In communities of practice, individuals learn what are
the rules of “the game” and how malleable these may be. It is from people
with whom we have contact that we get ideas about how things might be
different, and who has the power to change what. Lave and Wenger call this
“situated learning.” The work of Emirbayer and Mische is a useful addition
to the suite of theories we can use, because they remind us that people
are not entirely controlled or predetermined by their habitus. Individuals
always have the ability to imagine different ways of living, and different
ways of doing things, even if these sometimes seem impossible. It is this
distinctive aspect of human agency that gives us the power to (sometimes)
change things.
Practice theory is being used by ethnographers in diverse ways. At the theoretical level, we have (among others) Ortner’s (1984) review of theory in
anthropology, and her argument that social practices and structures are both
historically shaped. At the empirical level, see, for example, the way Peterson
(2010) uses Bourdieu’s theory of practice and the concept of habitus, as well
as the notion of metaculture, to understand media habits, or what marketing
theories call “consumer loyalty,” in New Delhi. As Peterson says, ethnography gives ethnographers the opportunity not only to witness practices but
also the practitioners the opportunity to reflect on them. He shows that brand
loyalty is not so much about rational actors making choices based on quality
and reliability as negotiating, sometimes critically sometimes habitually, the
demands of various normative pressures and the urge to enjoy repetition and
familiarity.
In media studies the focus on practice has been employed to deal with the
tendency to focus either on audiences and consumption and the creation of
meaning or on the structures of media production (Couldry, 2010). Couldry
notes that an advantage of practice theory is that it views culture as sets of
processes, and discourses as systems of meaning that frame and shape what
can be said. Couldry (2010, p. 50) believes we can use Bourdieu, alongside
perspectives from actor network and discourse, theory, and even Foucault’s
work to “explain the underlying determinants of the practices that are available to different agents” (Couldry, 2010, p. 50).
There are thus many approaches being used by ethnographers that are at
least implicitly trying to make sense of the interrelationship of structure and
agency. Vergunst (2010) uses Lefebvre’s (1991) notion of gestures as learned

Ethnography: Telling Practice Stories

9

and patterned movement to explore ways of walking. Here, we see how the
daily rhythms of the street and the practices of those engaged in walking
through it “are intertwined with the histories of planning and architecture,
but they may have also resisted expectations as much as conforming to them,
responding to traditions and repertoires of bodily practice as much as to the
structures [of] the city” (2010, p. 377). Here we get the sense of how practices
unfold over time, in context, as structures are internalized, embodied, and
recreated; as is very much alive in Wacquant’s (2004) ethnography of boxing.
As Malinowski himself said (1922, p. 11), “the whole structure of society, [is]
embodied in the most elusive of all materials; the human being.”
THE METHODOLOGY: TELLING PRACTICE STORIES
Here, I am not talking (only) about social practices, defined by Postill (2010,
p. 1) as: “the embodied sets of activities that humans perform with varying
degrees of regularity, competence and flair.” Practices, or the activities of
social life, are of course central, but practice stories are more than that,
because practice always takes place in material and social contexts, in
space and time, in cultural communities and social groups. The emphasis
by some social anthropologists on practices tends toward the microscopic
analysis of daily life, without remedying the problems this has of ignoring
or underestimating the role of wider structures, achieved through a more
macroscopic lens.
The contemporary goal of much ethnography, then, is to tell practice stories. Practice stories are narrative (story-like) accounts that describe how cultures, behaviors, attitudes, institutions, and other sociological phenomena
develop over time as norms, rules, organizational arrangements, and other
social structures are acted on and adapted by people as part of their daily
lives, in the context of their communities, groups, networks, and families.
Practice stories therefore understand the making of the social world as ongoing processes, both shaped by and shaping general patterns, arrangements,
rules, norms, and other structures. Ethnography that pays attention to both
wider structures and to the thoughts and feelings of agents, within the context of action, is thus an ideal methodology.
“One cannot grasp the most profound logic of the social world unless one
becomes immersed in the speficity of an empirical reality, historically situated
and dated, but only in order to construct it as an instance … in a finite universe
of possible configurations” (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 274, in Peterson, M. 2010, p. 143).

Methodologically, practice stories involve both conceptualizing and learning about the wider structures that frame the practices of a given community

10

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

or group. Here it is essential to employ both macro-level theorizing and broad
sweep understanding as well as learning practically about the smaller, locally
relevant context. However, abstract-level arguments should always be linked
overtly to the analysis of daily life as lived in communities and cultures: “No
‘culture’ can legitimately be ring-fenced from large-scale, political and economic processes because the global is not ‘out there’, intruding annoyingly
on the study, but is always ‘in here’, only existing through various localities”
(Crang & Cook, 2007, p. 12).
Practice theory views individuals as at least to some extent knowledgable
(Giddens, 1979); people think about and act on what they understand as
given constraints. Empirical research thus respects individuals’ thoughts,
ideas, and perspectives through listening, sharing in conversations, and
taking part in the discourses of daily life. The practice of daily life also
involves some practical consciousness (Giddens, 1979), or acting unreflexively (or even unconsciously) in the context of constraints and opportunities,
as Malinowski also recognized. It is essential, therefore, to find ways of
studying the practice of daily life and understanding it without relying
solely on the views of agents. Ethnography does that by being there, by
having participant observation as a core method, by becoming immersed in
a context and then generating descriptions mediated by social scientific discourse (Giddens, 1976, p. 161). As Fetterman (2010, p. 38) has said, it is only
through living and working with people that you begin to notice the “small
and large patterns of behaviour that repeat themselves almost endlessly.”
The distinction between the emic understandings of the participants and the
etic interpretations of the researcher thus remains a useful one, although it is
also important to recognize they overlap and inform each other (Boellstorff
et al., 2012).
Much ethnography has been about understanding cultures: “Cultures,
as shared systems of meaning and practice, shape our hopes and beliefs;
our ideas about family, identity and society; our deepest assumptions
about being a person in this world” (Boellstorff et al., 2012, p. 1). Cultures
are one way of thinking about internalized social structures (such as
habitus) as well as cultural communities within which internal structures
take shape. Practice stories should reveal the complexity of daily lives
(as ethnography does), should try to understand cultural differences, and
challenge stereotypes and typifications (as ethnography has always tried to
do). Life history and narrative research that examine individuals’ personal
stories also offer promising and fruitful approaches for the study of practice.
But structures are both internal and external, so agents’ perceptions can
never be divorced from structural contexts (as ethnography has long recognized). Even in sensory ethnography (Pink, 2009, p. 15), there is a desire
to understand the processes through which “collective or shared culturally

Ethnography: Telling Practice Stories

11

specific knowledge” (as structures) give meaning to sensory experiences
yet remain contingent (as actions). Finally, an empirical study informed by
a theory of practice will always be temporal. Ethnographers rarely present
snapshots of society and gain material through which to understand how
social reproduction and continuity, as well as social change, take place over
time (and space).
Practice stories pay attention not only to people’s feelings and emotions,
their experiences and their free choices but also to the wider constraints and
opportunities within which they act. More than that, practice stories take
account of how these different features of social life interact, and thereby
how structures (e.g., social classes) get produced or reproduced. Practice
means studying the interaction of structure and agency, so how policies are
interpreted, how colonial attitudes are adopted and resisted, what structures
are in place as a result of colonialism that make it hard to resist, and so on
(for example). Ethnographic methodology has the fundamental principles
and flexibility of approach to enable researchers to pursue, theoretically and
empirically, this holy grail of social science.
A PRACTICE STORY OF BRITISH MIGRATION
In my book, International Migration and Social Theory (O’Reilly, 2012b), I
narrated a practice story about British migration to Spain’s coastal areas by
drawing on ethnographic work I had been undertaking for several years.
Here, macro-level theoretical perspectives described the ways in which
broad social changes, such as globalization, tourism development, European
integration, the network society, and mobility, have increased the likelihood
of, and the opportunities for, this kind of leisured and tourism-related
migration. I also drew attention to the ways in which these broad changes
were enacted in practice, embodied in the new norm of mobility, and have
wrought their own cultural changes and impacted on the habitus and the
nature of settlement of British in Spain. I examined the role of more proximate structural layers such as policies, tourism practices, retirement, and
unemployment, that were revealed through the life stories and practices of
the agents, helping us to understand what motivated their move, what they
expect from the destination, and how they set about achieving their goals. I
noted how, in interviews, the migrants often described their own migration
in terms of push and pull factors. It is only when we examine their in-depth
stories, as they unravel over time as part of the ethnographic encounter, that
migration is revealed as an ongoing process of negotiation. We then see how
the structural conditions outlined earlier shape the decision to move: British
migrants embrace, internalize and make a practice of the ideas of freedom
and mobility, which have been enabled through the development of new

12

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

technologies, and provide opportunities for them to deal with the personal
difficulties that arise as a result of aging, retirement, and unemployment.
By examining practices in context, as they are enacted by agents, we also
see how these are mediated by conjuncturally specific internal structures.
For example, the migrants adapt their expectations of learning the language
when they realize many local Spanish speak to them in English (because they
see them as tourists). Applying practice theory to the ethnographic work,
I then went on to interpret the nature of their settlement in Spain, and to
attempt to explain their low levels of integration in Spanish society. I recalled
that their migration was enabled by relative wealth and informed by notions
of freedom, travel, and escape, and realized (from a critical perspective) that
to integrate would damage what they achieve by constantly balancing home
and away, here and there, richer and poorer society.
REFERENCES
Boellstorff, T., Nardi, B., Pearce, C., & Taylor, T. L. (2012). Ethnography and virtual
worlds. A handbook of method. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1993). Concluding remarks: For a sociogenetic understanding of intellectual works. In C. Calhoun, E. LiPuma & M. Postone (Eds.), Bourdieu: Critical
perspectives (pp. 263–275). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge, England: Cambridge
University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. London,
England: Routledge &Kegan Paul.
Bourdieu, P. (1985). The social space and the genesis of groups. Theory and Society,
14(6), 723–744.
Bourdieu, P. (1990). The logic of practice. Cambridge, England: Polity.
Burawoy, M. (2000). Introduction: Reaching for the global, In Burawoy, M., Blum,
J.A., George, S., Gille, Z., Gowan, T., Haney, L., … , Thayer, M. (Eds.), Global
ethnography: Forces, connections, and imaginations in a postmodern world (pp. 1–40).
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Burawoy, M., Blum, J.A., George, S., Gille, Z., Gowan, T., Haney, L., … , Thayer,
M. (2000). Global ethnography: Forces, connections, and imaginations in a postmodern
world. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Cohen, I. J. (1989). Structuration theory: Anthony Giddens and the constitution of social
life. Basingstoke, England: Macmillan.
Couldry, N. (2010). Theorising media as practice. In B. Brauchler & J. Postill (Eds.),
Theorising media and practice (pp. 35–54). Oxford, England: Berghahn Books.
Crang, M., & Cook, I. (2007). Doing ethnographies (New ed.). London, England: SAGE.
Chan, C., Deave, T., & Greenhalgh, T. (2010). Childhood obesity in transition
zones: An analysis using structuration theory. Sociology of Health and Illness, 32(5),
711–729.
Emirbayer, M., & Mische, A. (1998). What is agency? American Journal of Sociology,
103(4), 962–1023.

Ethnography: Telling Practice Stories

13

Falzon, M. (Ed.) (2009). Multi-sited ethnography: Theory, praxis and locality in contemporary research. Farnham, England: Ashgate.
Fetterman, D. (2010). Ethnography: Step-by-step (3 ed.). London, England: Sage.
Giddens, A. (1976). New rules of sociological method: A positive critique of interpretative
sociologies. London, England: Hutchinson.
Giddens, A. (1979). Central problems in social theory: Action, structure and contradiction
in social analysis. London, England: Macmillan.
Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration.
Cambridge, England: Polity.
Gobo, G. (2008). Doing ethnography. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
Hine, C. (2000). Virtual ethnography. London, England: Sage.
Horst, H., & Miller, D. (Eds.) (2012). Digital anthropology. London, England: Berg.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation.
Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space (D. Nicholson-Smith, Trans.). Oxford, England: Blackwell.
Madden, R. (2010). Being ethnographic: A guide to the theory and practice of ethnography.
London, England: Sage.
Malinowski, B. (1922). Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An account of native enterprise
and adventure in the archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. New York, NY: Dutton.
Marcus, G. (2012). Foreword. In T. Boellstorff, B. Nardi, C. Pearce & T. L. Taylor (Eds.),
Ethnography and virtual worlds. A handbook of method (pp. xiii–xvii). Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Miller, D., & Horst, H. (2012). The digital and the human: A prospectus for digital anthropology. In H. Horst & D. Miller (Eds.), Digital anthropology (pp. 3–38).
London, England: Berg.
Murthy, D. (2008). Digital ethnography: An examination of the use of new technologies for social research. Sociology, 42(5), 837–855.
O’Reilly, K. (2012a). Ethnographic methods (2nd ed.). London, England: Routledge.
O’Reilly, K. (2012b). International migration and social theory. London, England:
Routledge.
O’Reilly, K. (2009). Key concepts in ethnography. London, England: SAGE.
Ortner, S. B. (1984). Theory in anthropology since the sixties. Comparative Studies in
Society and History, 26(1), 126–166.
Peterson, M. (2010). Reading Indian newspapers. In B. Brauchler & J. Postill (Eds.),
Theorising media and practice (pp. 127–146). Oxford, England: Berghahn Books.
Pink, S. (2007). Doing visual ethnography: Images, media and representation in research
(2nd ed.). London, England: SAGE.
Pink, S. (2009). Doing sensory ethnography. London, England: SAGE.
Postill, J. (2010). Introduction: Theorising media and practice. In B. Brauchler & J.
Postill (Eds.), Theorising media and practice (pp. 1–34). Oxford, England: Berghahn
Books.
Puddephatt, A. J., Shaffir, W., & KleinKnecht, S. W. (2009). Introduction: Exercises
in reflexivity: Situating theory in practice. In A. J. Puddephatt, W. Shaffir & S. W.
KleinKnecht (Eds.), Ethnographies revisited. Constructing theory in the field (pp. 1–34).
London, England: Routledge.

14

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Scheper-Hughes, N. (2004). Parts unknown: Undercover ethnography of the
organs-trafficking underworld. Ethnography, 5(1), 29–73.
Stones, R. (2006). Action and agency. In J. Scott (Ed.), Sociology: The key concepts. London, England: Routledge.
Stones, R. (2005). Structuration theory. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan.
Vergunst, J. (2010). Rhythms of walking: History and presence in a city street. Space
and Culture, 13(4), 376–388.
Wacquant, L. J. D. (2004). Body & soul: Notebooks of an apprentice boxer. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge,
England: Cambridge University Press.

KAREN O’REILLY SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Karen O’Reilly, Professor of Sociology, Loughborough University has a
background in sociology and social anthropology and is a leading expert in
ethnographic methods. She is author of The British on the Costa del Sol and
Ethnographic Methods (both with Routledge), Key Concepts in Ethnography
(Sage) and numerous journal articles in the fields of tourism and migration.
Her research in Spain has spanned nearly 15 years and included long-term
ethnographic fieldwork, qualitative interviews with groups and individuals,
as well as survey methods. She is co-editor of the book Lifestyle Migration
(Ashgate) and is currently undertaking multimethod research with lifestyle
migrants in East Asia. Her research interests are in contemporary migrations
(and mobilities) and their implications for sociological “problems” of
nation, ethnicity, class, gender, age, community, home, and belonging. More
recently she has pioneered the use of practice stories for empirical studies of
migration, in her book International Migration and Social Theory (Palgrave).
RELATED ESSAYS
To Flop Is Human: Inventing Better Scientific Approaches to Anticipating
Failure (Methods), Robert Boruch and Alan Ruby
Micro-Cultures (Sociology), Gary Alan Fine
The Use of Geophysical Survey in Archaeology (Methods), Timothy J.
Horsley
Ethnography in the Digital Age (Methods), Alan Howard and Alexander
Mawyer
Participant Observation (Methods), Danny Jorgensen
Virtual Worlds as Laboratories (Methods), Travis L. Ross et al.
Person-Centered Analysis (Methods), Alexander von Eye and Wolfgang
Wiedermann
Translational Sociology (Sociology), Elaine Wethington



Ethnography: Telling Practice Stories
KAREN O’REILLY

Abstract
In this essay I argue that the central emerging trend in ethnography is the
telling of practice stories, that is narrative (or story-like) accounts that make
sense of social phenomena by understanding how people respond to constraints
and opportunities but in turn create the cultures, constraints, and opportunities within which others act. Drawing either overtly or implicitly on different
versions of what has become known as practice theory, contemporary ethnographers increasingly aspire to unravel the processes involved in the ongoing
constitution of social life. This constitution is made up of free will as well as
structures that restrict action. The key principles of ethnography, established
to challenge preconceptions and to yield complex understandings, remain fundamental to its methodology. This is despite massive social change and the
emergence of “new ethnographies” to understand such things as globalization
and technological change. These key principles are exactly what are required
for the analysis of social life as practice. Ethnography pays attention to people’s feeling and emotions, their experiences and their free choices, but also to
the wider constraints and opportunities that frame their agency. And they do
this always in the context of people’s daily lives, cultures, and communities,
using the key methods of watching, taking part, sharing in conversations and
listening.

Fully descriptive accounts of what constitutes ethnography are now abundant (e.g., Gobo, 2008; Madden, 2010; O’Reilly, 2012a). Nevertheless, in considering the emerging trends in ethnography, it is valuable to retrace its roots
as a methodology whose key principles were defined in opposition to existing approaches to understanding “other” societies. Early ethnography was
established to challenge preconceptions and to yield complex understandings, and its key principles, forged in this ongoing “war against positivism”
(Puddephatt, Shaffir, & KleinKnecht, 2009, p. 4), have been adapted and built
on as society has changed. However, they remain fundamental in a literal
sense. Malinowski’s now-famous chapter in Argonauts of the Western Pacific

Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

1

2

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

(1922) remains the finest way to remind ourselves of ethnography’s beginnings because it is so eloquent, thoughtful, and didactic.1
For Malinowski, ethnography meant getting in touch with the natives in
order to understand their lives from within their meaning worlds: “Every
human culture gives its members a definite vision if the world, a definite
zest for life” (1922, p. 517). We now understand this in terms of phenomenological and hermeneutic approaches. He talks of not prejudging our “subjects”
and seeking to “treat the beliefs and values of another man (sic) from his
point of view” (1922, p. 518); goals not easily achieved where survey or interview questions are predesigned on the basis of what we think we know. This
approach has now been elaborated on using the concepts of interpretivism
and inductivism. For Malinowski, ethnography did not involve interviewing someone in a time and place outside of their usual conditions of existence but learning about them by talking with them, living among them, and
even taking part in their lives. He felt it was important to come to know the
local, to “become familiar with his (sic) customs and beliefs” (1922, p. 7), and
to learn how to behave correctly. Ethnographers might now become socialized into a culture, learning its norms and practices, or acquiring the habitus.
For Malinowski ethnography is no “sporadic plunging into the company
of natives” (1922, p. 7); it takes time for both the ethnographer and participant to feel comfortable with each other. Being there when things happen
will enable people to talk more easily because they are excited and engaged,
and they will reveal disagreements and ambivalences, complex negotiations
and solutions (Fetterman, 2010). Doing research in context and obtaining
the participants’ view over lengthy periods of time remain key principles
for ethnography, although we may now recognize the relevance of “immersing our embodied selves within the cultures of interest” (Boellstorff, Nardi,
Pearce, & Taylor, 2012, p. 1); and many see participant observation as the
defining method, the sine qua non of the ethnographer’s toolkit.
Malinowski criticized such survey work for ignoring the “intimate touches
of native (sic) life” (1922, p. 17) but nevertheless considered it essential to
compile systematic survey data to sketch out “the skeleton” of “the tribe.”
We now avoid the meaning-laden language of natives and tribes, but good
ethnographers continue to recognize the importance of collecting information about macro processes and wider structures, about institutions, patterns,
and norms as well as about people’s feelings, thoughts, and experiences.
Nevertheless, as Malinowski again pointed out, not every rule is written

1. This is not to forget the many other authors whose work I could have drawn from, nor to deny
that Malinowski’s work has been criticized for being ethnocentric, positivist, detached, and unreflective.
However, word limits restrict more extensive and subtle treatment.

Ethnography: Telling Practice Stories

3

down nor even entirely understood; hence the need for observation and interpretation as well as asking direct questions. Contemporary ethnography usually involves conversations rather than interviews, and these take place as
things occur and in the context of daily life as ethnographers learn when
to get people talking, to keep people talking, and when to listen (Madden,
2010, p. 65). Interviews remain important but are interpreted with the understanding that people reconstruct events through memory, crystallizing ways
of being by weaving stories and telling folk tales (Fetterman, 2010).
For Malinowski, theory was to act as inspiration, to foreshadow problems
and not constrain with preconceived ideas. Now we avoid naive forms
of inductivism but use theory to sensitize, discarding concepts that turn
out to be meaningless, adapting those that offer some explanation, and
developing new ones as research progresses. Contemporary ethnography
often also seeks theoretical rather than empirical generalizations (O’Reilly,
2009). Malinowski’s approach was holistic, not concentrating on the exotic or
astonishing but on the trivial, daily, and banal. There was acknowledgment
of the interconnectedness of elements of a community life into an imagined
coherent whole. This is now perceived as a somewhat limited functionalist
approach, but ethnographers continue to seek interconnections and linkages
within and beyond the single case, in an inclusive rather than exclusive
manner, and to examine over time the minutiae of daily life. Contemporary
ethnography does not seek some faddish news story, but is, rather, long,
arduous, committed, and engaged (Puddephatt, Shaffir, & KleinKnecht,
2009; Scheper-Hughes, 2004).
Finally, Malinowski believed it essential to clearly separate out observations and interpretations in the pursuit of facts. We now acknowledge
this is not so easy, and use the concept of reflexivity to think through the
relationship of the researcher and researched. The reflexive turn has led to
a more self-conscious use of the language of participants, who participate
in their own cultures as well as in our studies, rather than subjects or
informants. Nevertheless, early ethnographers who used this language
usually had a respect for the complexity and depth of the cultures they
studied (Boellstorff et al., 2012, p. 17), and this is an enduring feature of
ethnography (Scheper-Hughes, 2004).
“NEW” ETHNOGRAPHIES
As implied earlier, there have been many developments in ethnography,
some that are relevant to qualitative research more broadly conceived,
others that are more specific to the methodology of ethnography. Some
developments respond to changes in the wider world, such as globalization and global ethnography (e.g., Burawoy et al., 2000), the increased

4

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

interconnectedness of the world and mobile, or multisited, ethnography
(e.g., Falzon, 2009), the ongoing development of technologies for recording
visual data and visual ethnographies (e.g., Pink, 2007), the spread of digital
technologies leading to new or different forms of social life and types of
community, and digital or virtual ethnographies (e.g., Hine, 2000; Horst
& Miller, 2012). But these do not challenge, in any abrupt way, the core
principles of ethnography as a methodology; that is as a set of principles
guiding practical, methodical choices (O’Reilly, 2012a). Typically, these
authors provide texts through which researchers can think through the
implications of wider developments for their ethnography, in the context
of the founding principles. Indeed, the appeal to traditional ethnography is
quite profound in Horst and Miller (2012). As Boellstorff et al. (2012, p. 4)
argue: “The successful deployment of ethnographic methods in virtual
worlds is, for us, a ringing endorsement of their enduring power to illuminate novel dimensions of human experience.” As methods and approaches
become more innovative, it appears increasingly relevant to remember what
ethnography essentially is.
Burawoy (2000, p. 1) condemns “the fetish of confinement” in traditional
anthropology. Embracing a global and/or historical perspective can challenge notions of communities as pure and bounded, tackle the relationship
between local and global power and knowledge, and examine cultures of
colonialism (Crang & Cook, 2007). But, as Burawoy acknowledges, ethnography was designed for the small scale and so global ethnography examines
the lived experience of globalization, how global forces are felt, experienced,
mobilized, or resisted, by spending extended amounts of time combining
dwelling with travelling (2000, p. 4). The global is brought back in more theoretically and conceptually than empirically. Using Burawoy’s extended case
method, ethnographers can extend their observations and theoretical explanations from micro to macro, over time and space, but the first extension
remains that of “the observer into the world of the participant” (2000, p. 26).
Employing visual images and technologies in fieldwork informed a
challenge to “visual realism,” enabling the development of creative and
participatory approaches (Pink, 2007); but even where the approach is
uber-reflexive or influenced by postmodern philosophy, still the goal is a
“closer understanding of the worlds that other people live in” (Pink, 2007,
p. 24). For Murthy (2008, p. 838), the epistemological remit of digital ethnography remains much the same: ‘Ethnography is about telling social stories,’
it is just the way stories are told that has changed.’ The goal is often still to
employ traditional ethnography in new settings, even where the cultures
are virtual extended fieldwork examines “cultures through participation
that is authentic in that culture’s own terms” (Boellstorff et al., 2012, p. 69).
Being there remains crucial, “even when that embodiment is in the form of

Ethnography: Telling Practice Stories

5

an avatar” (p. 1). George Marcus (2012, p. xiv) warns that as ethnography
becomes more and more popular it runs the risk of dilution; “that is, for
the data derived from subjects to lack a rich, critically developed context
for interpretation.” He is concerned that too heavy a reliance on interviews
as elicitation “lack(s) the fabric and shell of the immersive experience of
trying to live ‘inside’” a culture (2012, p. xiv). He also believes it remains
important to impose objectivity on the experience of fieldwork through
reflexive observations and the writing of field notes (Marcus, 2012, p. xiv).
Hine noted that virtual worlds are places of interaction and cultural activity,
and so the Internet can be studied as both cultural artefact and as culture,
but still ethnography tends to take a holistic rather than selective approach.
Ethnography, she says, is sustained and involved, “a way of seeing through
participants’ eyes” (Hine, 2000, p. 21). Similarly, Boellstorff et al. (2012, p. 67)
believe that “Ethnographic research is fundamentally a holistic project; we
seek to understand shared practices, meanings, and social contexts, and the
interrelations among them.”
Of course, new media and technological advances are so ubiquitous it is
difficult for them not to be part of every ethnography, but they do not have
to be the single focus. They raise special issues such as whether to “be there”
in real time, respecting identities that are virtual, retaining anonymity in photos, transcription of digitally collected interviews and data, and the fact that
people do not write in the same way as they speak face to face. But many
of these are merely extensions or different facets of similar problems faced
by traditional ethnographers. Much of everyday life is mediated, but it is no
more mediated than previously, just differently (Miller & Horst, 2012).
THE PRACTICE TURN
A far more significant emerging trend in ethnography arises as a result of the
culmination of over a hundred years of social science, as what has become
known as the practice turn has been embraced by ethnographers. Diverse
theorists endeavor to make sense of what Cohen (1989, p. 12) understands
as the social processes involved in the ongoing constitution of social life,
while ethnographers increasingly and imaginatively draw on the emerging
perspectives in their empirical work. The impact of practice theory on
ethnography takes different forms depending on the author, discipline, or
even generation (Postill, 2010, p. 6), but ethnography increasingly recounts
practice stories: narrative explanations that take account of the interaction of
structure and agency over time and space.
Broadly speaking, the practice turn in ethnography (as in social science
more widely) recognizes that the tendency to perceive the agency of individual human actors as distinct and separate from social structures is an

6

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

untenable residual feature of the historical development of social theory.
Early sociologists were keen to point out the sui generis existence of social
structures in an attempt to forge a new science of society that could treat
its subject matter as an object, in a manner that would be positive in its
outcomes. In the work of Durkheim, for example, “social facts” such as
laws, religion, education, and other more relational aspects such as norms,
were depicted as having a force of their own on societies, independently of
the individuals and their actions. Similarly, in Marx’s work, socioeconomic
forces were considered to work independently to shape human societies.
However, this approach has been gradually challenged by a variety of
schools of thought we might call “subjectivism,” including symbolic
interactionism, ethnomethodology, phenomenological sociology, social
constructionism, and hermeneutics. These approaches emphasized the
creative, reflexive and dynamic aspects of social life. They were especially
influenced by the set of philosophical ideas known as interpretivism. Interpretivists view human agents as actors who create their social worlds rather
than simply react to their conditions just like objects in the natural world.
But these latter approaches tended to overestimate the extent of agency
just as the earlier theories tended towards determinism. Having reached
something of a consensus, albeit implicit (Stones, 2006), social theorists now
seek ways to understand the ongoing interaction of structure and agency.
These approaches tend to be known as structuration or practice theories,
and draw from a diverse range of theoretical perspectives, some of which I
discuss briefly here. Ethnographers, likewise, are increasingly drawing from
these theoretical perspectives in order to tell practice stories—analyzing
their empirical case studies using practice theory.
Structuration theory is a social theory of practice proposed by Anthony
Giddens (1976, 1979, 1984). For Giddens, social life cannot be simply understood phenomenologically, as the outcome of individual actions based on
how people think and feel, what they intend, or plan to achieve. Neither
is social life solely determined by social structures, in the form of institutions, rules, and resources. Instead, social structures limit what people can
and cannot do, and even what they try or wish to do; but agents continue to
have some free will, and the very social structures that enable or constrain
in some situations are made and remade by individuals in the process of
their acting (or their agency). For Giddens, we therefore cannot even think
of agency and structure as ontologically distinct; they are a duality—always
interdependent and interrelated. Giddens’ structuration theory is more a way
of thinking than a set of tools for empirical analysis, which does bring its own
difficulties for ethnographers. He is not always clear how structures might
be empirically defined as they are so tied up with agency (Stones, 2005) and

Ethnography: Telling Practice Stories

7

his work tends to favor voluntaristic interpretations. Nevertheless, his argument that social life is an ongoing historical process is an important one for
ethnographers to learn.
Bourdieu’s work (e.g., 1977, 1984, 1985, 1990) is also trying to make sense
of social life as something that is made and remade through the everyday,
embodied practice of agents, in the context of structural constraints. Instead
of the concept of structuration, which could be interpreted as the making of
structure, Bourdieu uses a theory of practice. This is a theory of how social life
is shaped, not a theory about daily practices divorced from their wider context. For Bourdieu, although individuals do have the capacity for innovation
and creativity (1990, p. 13, cited in Postill, 2010, p. 7), the choices made, the
desires shared, the tastes expressed, and the actions made, only make sense
when understood within the wider historical and structural context. This is
because people (as individuals and groups) are always in practical relation
to the world and, therefore, practices (what we do), are reasonable (sensible,
plausible) adjustments to the future, taking into account what is possible and
what is not, rather than, as some social scientists understand them, rational
calculations or the product of identifiable plans. Furthermore, to some extent
the constraints and opportunities faced by different groups can become so
taken for granted that they become internalized as tastes and preferences,
embodied as habits and routines, and even what is physically possible. The
concept of habitus is a central one for the theory of practice, referring to these
dispositions, habits, ways of doing things, ways of thinking, and ways of seeing the world that individuals acquire, singly and in groups, as they travel
through life (Bourdieu, 1990). Habitus (single and plural) are therefore internalized structures, made and remade through the practice of daily life, they
constrain what is possible by the fact of their internalization rather than by
their externality, as is the case with structures more traditionally conceived.
Practice thus includes things done habitually, without reflection, but also
innovative, critical actions that lead eventually to social change.
Rob Stones (2005) has developed a stronger version of structuration theory that builds on and develops the work of Giddens, responding to some
of his critics. Stones especially proposes the conceptual separation of structures and agency in order that empirical work can proceed with analysis of
external structures, internalized structures such as habitus and his own conjuncturally specific internal structures, active agency, that takes place within
position–practice relations, and outcomes (which can include any of the other
aspects). Chan et al. (2010) is an excellent example of ethnographic work on
childhood obesity that employs Stones’ strong structuration theory.
My own approach (O’Reilly, 2012b) combines the work of Rob Stones with
further insights from the work of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, where
they describe communities of practice (Wenger, 1998) and situated learning

8

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

(Lave & Wenger, 1991), and the elaboration of the concept of agency as
proposed by Mustafa Emirbayer and Ann Mische (1998). Communities
of practice (or cultural communities) are any social group (family, virtual
community, work mates, social club, a partnership) that comes together
and has to work out how to get on together. They form the social space at
the meso level, in-between laws and rules on the one hand, and free choice
on the other hand. In communities of practice, individuals learn what are
the rules of “the game” and how malleable these may be. It is from people
with whom we have contact that we get ideas about how things might be
different, and who has the power to change what. Lave and Wenger call this
“situated learning.” The work of Emirbayer and Mische is a useful addition
to the suite of theories we can use, because they remind us that people
are not entirely controlled or predetermined by their habitus. Individuals
always have the ability to imagine different ways of living, and different
ways of doing things, even if these sometimes seem impossible. It is this
distinctive aspect of human agency that gives us the power to (sometimes)
change things.
Practice theory is being used by ethnographers in diverse ways. At the theoretical level, we have (among others) Ortner’s (1984) review of theory in
anthropology, and her argument that social practices and structures are both
historically shaped. At the empirical level, see, for example, the way Peterson
(2010) uses Bourdieu’s theory of practice and the concept of habitus, as well
as the notion of metaculture, to understand media habits, or what marketing
theories call “consumer loyalty,” in New Delhi. As Peterson says, ethnography gives ethnographers the opportunity not only to witness practices but
also the practitioners the opportunity to reflect on them. He shows that brand
loyalty is not so much about rational actors making choices based on quality
and reliability as negotiating, sometimes critically sometimes habitually, the
demands of various normative pressures and the urge to enjoy repetition and
familiarity.
In media studies the focus on practice has been employed to deal with the
tendency to focus either on audiences and consumption and the creation of
meaning or on the structures of media production (Couldry, 2010). Couldry
notes that an advantage of practice theory is that it views culture as sets of
processes, and discourses as systems of meaning that frame and shape what
can be said. Couldry (2010, p. 50) believes we can use Bourdieu, alongside
perspectives from actor network and discourse, theory, and even Foucault’s
work to “explain the underlying determinants of the practices that are available to different agents” (Couldry, 2010, p. 50).
There are thus many approaches being used by ethnographers that are at
least implicitly trying to make sense of the interrelationship of structure and
agency. Vergunst (2010) uses Lefebvre’s (1991) notion of gestures as learned

Ethnography: Telling Practice Stories

9

and patterned movement to explore ways of walking. Here, we see how the
daily rhythms of the street and the practices of those engaged in walking
through it “are intertwined with the histories of planning and architecture,
but they may have also resisted expectations as much as conforming to them,
responding to traditions and repertoires of bodily practice as much as to the
structures [of] the city” (2010, p. 377). Here we get the sense of how practices
unfold over time, in context, as structures are internalized, embodied, and
recreated; as is very much alive in Wacquant’s (2004) ethnography of boxing.
As Malinowski himself said (1922, p. 11), “the whole structure of society, [is]
embodied in the most elusive of all materials; the human being.”
THE METHODOLOGY: TELLING PRACTICE STORIES
Here, I am not talking (only) about social practices, defined by Postill (2010,
p. 1) as: “the embodied sets of activities that humans perform with varying
degrees of regularity, competence and flair.” Practices, or the activities of
social life, are of course central, but practice stories are more than that,
because practice always takes place in material and social contexts, in
space and time, in cultural communities and social groups. The emphasis
by some social anthropologists on practices tends toward the microscopic
analysis of daily life, without remedying the problems this has of ignoring
or underestimating the role of wider structures, achieved through a more
macroscopic lens.
The contemporary goal of much ethnography, then, is to tell practice stories. Practice stories are narrative (story-like) accounts that describe how cultures, behaviors, attitudes, institutions, and other sociological phenomena
develop over time as norms, rules, organizational arrangements, and other
social structures are acted on and adapted by people as part of their daily
lives, in the context of their communities, groups, networks, and families.
Practice stories therefore understand the making of the social world as ongoing processes, both shaped by and shaping general patterns, arrangements,
rules, norms, and other structures. Ethnography that pays attention to both
wider structures and to the thoughts and feelings of agents, within the context of action, is thus an ideal methodology.
“One cannot grasp the most profound logic of the social world unless one
becomes immersed in the speficity of an empirical reality, historically situated
and dated, but only in order to construct it as an instance … in a finite universe
of possible configurations” (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 274, in Peterson, M. 2010, p. 143).

Methodologically, practice stories involve both conceptualizing and learning about the wider structures that frame the practices of a given community

10

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

or group. Here it is essential to employ both macro-level theorizing and broad
sweep understanding as well as learning practically about the smaller, locally
relevant context. However, abstract-level arguments should always be linked
overtly to the analysis of daily life as lived in communities and cultures: “No
‘culture’ can legitimately be ring-fenced from large-scale, political and economic processes because the global is not ‘out there’, intruding annoyingly
on the study, but is always ‘in here’, only existing through various localities”
(Crang & Cook, 2007, p. 12).
Practice theory views individuals as at least to some extent knowledgable
(Giddens, 1979); people think about and act on what they understand as
given constraints. Empirical research thus respects individuals’ thoughts,
ideas, and perspectives through listening, sharing in conversations, and
taking part in the discourses of daily life. The practice of daily life also
involves some practical consciousness (Giddens, 1979), or acting unreflexively (or even unconsciously) in the context of constraints and opportunities,
as Malinowski also recognized. It is essential, therefore, to find ways of
studying the practice of daily life and understanding it without relying
solely on the views of agents. Ethnography does that by being there, by
having participant observation as a core method, by becoming immersed in
a context and then generating descriptions mediated by social scientific discourse (Giddens, 1976, p. 161). As Fetterman (2010, p. 38) has said, it is only
through living and working with people that you begin to notice the “small
and large patterns of behaviour that repeat themselves almost endlessly.”
The distinction between the emic understandings of the participants and the
etic interpretations of the researcher thus remains a useful one, although it is
also important to recognize they overlap and inform each other (Boellstorff
et al., 2012).
Much ethnography has been about understanding cultures: “Cultures,
as shared systems of meaning and practice, shape our hopes and beliefs;
our ideas about family, identity and society; our deepest assumptions
about being a person in this world” (Boellstorff et al., 2012, p. 1). Cultures
are one way of thinking about internalized social structures (such as
habitus) as well as cultural communities within which internal structures
take shape. Practice stories should reveal the complexity of daily lives
(as ethnography does), should try to understand cultural differences, and
challenge stereotypes and typifications (as ethnography has always tried to
do). Life history and narrative research that examine individuals’ personal
stories also offer promising and fruitful approaches for the study of practice.
But structures are both internal and external, so agents’ perceptions can
never be divorced from structural contexts (as ethnography has long recognized). Even in sensory ethnography (Pink, 2009, p. 15), there is a desire
to understand the processes through which “collective or shared culturally

Ethnography: Telling Practice Stories

11

specific knowledge” (as structures) give meaning to sensory experiences
yet remain contingent (as actions). Finally, an empirical study informed by
a theory of practice will always be temporal. Ethnographers rarely present
snapshots of society and gain material through which to understand how
social reproduction and continuity, as well as social change, take place over
time (and space).
Practice stories pay attention not only to people’s feelings and emotions,
their experiences and their free choices but also to the wider constraints and
opportunities within which they act. More than that, practice stories take
account of how these different features of social life interact, and thereby
how structures (e.g., social classes) get produced or reproduced. Practice
means studying the interaction of structure and agency, so how policies are
interpreted, how colonial attitudes are adopted and resisted, what structures
are in place as a result of colonialism that make it hard to resist, and so on
(for example). Ethnographic methodology has the fundamental principles
and flexibility of approach to enable researchers to pursue, theoretically and
empirically, this holy grail of social science.
A PRACTICE STORY OF BRITISH MIGRATION
In my book, International Migration and Social Theory (O’Reilly, 2012b), I
narrated a practice story about British migration to Spain’s coastal areas by
drawing on ethnographic work I had been undertaking for several years.
Here, macro-level theoretical perspectives described the ways in which
broad social changes, such as globalization, tourism development, European
integration, the network society, and mobility, have increased the likelihood
of, and the opportunities for, this kind of leisured and tourism-related
migration. I also drew attention to the ways in which these broad changes
were enacted in practice, embodied in the new norm of mobility, and have
wrought their own cultural changes and impacted on the habitus and the
nature of settlement of British in Spain. I examined the role of more proximate structural layers such as policies, tourism practices, retirement, and
unemployment, that were revealed through the life stories and practices of
the agents, helping us to understand what motivated their move, what they
expect from the destination, and how they set about achieving their goals. I
noted how, in interviews, the migrants often described their own migration
in terms of push and pull factors. It is only when we examine their in-depth
stories, as they unravel over time as part of the ethnographic encounter, that
migration is revealed as an ongoing process of negotiation. We then see how
the structural conditions outlined earlier shape the decision to move: British
migrants embrace, internalize and make a practice of the ideas of freedom
and mobility, which have been enabled through the development of new

12

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

technologies, and provide opportunities for them to deal with the personal
difficulties that arise as a result of aging, retirement, and unemployment.
By examining practices in context, as they are enacted by agents, we also
see how these are mediated by conjuncturally specific internal structures.
For example, the migrants adapt their expectations of learning the language
when they realize many local Spanish speak to them in English (because they
see them as tourists). Applying practice theory to the ethnographic work,
I then went on to interpret the nature of their settlement in Spain, and to
attempt to explain their low levels of integration in Spanish society. I recalled
that their migration was enabled by relative wealth and informed by notions
of freedom, travel, and escape, and realized (from a critical perspective) that
to integrate would damage what they achieve by constantly balancing home
and away, here and there, richer and poorer society.
REFERENCES
Boellstorff, T., Nardi, B., Pearce, C., & Taylor, T. L. (2012). Ethnography and virtual
worlds. A handbook of method. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1993). Concluding remarks: For a sociogenetic understanding of intellectual works. In C. Calhoun, E. LiPuma & M. Postone (Eds.), Bourdieu: Critical
perspectives (pp. 263–275). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge, England: Cambridge
University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. London,
England: Routledge &Kegan Paul.
Bourdieu, P. (1985). The social space and the genesis of groups. Theory and Society,
14(6), 723–744.
Bourdieu, P. (1990). The logic of practice. Cambridge, England: Polity.
Burawoy, M. (2000). Introduction: Reaching for the global, In Burawoy, M., Blum,
J.A., George, S., Gille, Z., Gowan, T., Haney, L., … , Thayer, M. (Eds.), Global
ethnography: Forces, connections, and imaginations in a postmodern world (pp. 1–40).
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Burawoy, M., Blum, J.A., George, S., Gille, Z., Gowan, T., Haney, L., … , Thayer,
M. (2000). Global ethnography: Forces, connections, and imaginations in a postmodern
world. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Cohen, I. J. (1989). Structuration theory: Anthony Giddens and the constitution of social
life. Basingstoke, England: Macmillan.
Couldry, N. (2010). Theorising media as practice. In B. Brauchler & J. Postill (Eds.),
Theorising media and practice (pp. 35–54). Oxford, England: Berghahn Books.
Crang, M., & Cook, I. (2007). Doing ethnographies (New ed.). London, England: SAGE.
Chan, C., Deave, T., & Greenhalgh, T. (2010). Childhood obesity in transition
zones: An analysis using structuration theory. Sociology of Health and Illness, 32(5),
711–729.
Emirbayer, M., & Mische, A. (1998). What is agency? American Journal of Sociology,
103(4), 962–1023.

Ethnography: Telling Practice Stories

13

Falzon, M. (Ed.) (2009). Multi-sited ethnography: Theory, praxis and locality in contemporary research. Farnham, England: Ashgate.
Fetterman, D. (2010). Ethnography: Step-by-step (3 ed.). London, England: Sage.
Giddens, A. (1976). New rules of sociological method: A positive critique of interpretative
sociologies. London, England: Hutchinson.
Giddens, A. (1979). Central problems in social theory: Action, structure and contradiction
in social analysis. London, England: Macmillan.
Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration.
Cambridge, England: Polity.
Gobo, G. (2008). Doing ethnography. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
Hine, C. (2000). Virtual ethnography. London, England: Sage.
Horst, H., & Miller, D. (Eds.) (2012). Digital anthropology. London, England: Berg.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation.
Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Lefebvre, H. (1991). The production of space (D. Nicholson-Smith, Trans.). Oxford, England: Blackwell.
Madden, R. (2010). Being ethnographic: A guide to the theory and practice of ethnography.
London, England: Sage.
Malinowski, B. (1922). Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An account of native enterprise
and adventure in the archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. New York, NY: Dutton.
Marcus, G. (2012). Foreword. In T. Boellstorff, B. Nardi, C. Pearce & T. L. Taylor (Eds.),
Ethnography and virtual worlds. A handbook of method (pp. xiii–xvii). Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Miller, D., & Horst, H. (2012). The digital and the human: A prospectus for digital anthropology. In H. Horst & D. Miller (Eds.), Digital anthropology (pp. 3–38).
London, England: Berg.
Murthy, D. (2008). Digital ethnography: An examination of the use of new technologies for social research. Sociology, 42(5), 837–855.
O’Reilly, K. (2012a). Ethnographic methods (2nd ed.). London, England: Routledge.
O’Reilly, K. (2012b). International migration and social theory. London, England:
Routledge.
O’Reilly, K. (2009). Key concepts in ethnography. London, England: SAGE.
Ortner, S. B. (1984). Theory in anthropology since the sixties. Comparative Studies in
Society and History, 26(1), 126–166.
Peterson, M. (2010). Reading Indian newspapers. In B. Brauchler & J. Postill (Eds.),
Theorising media and practice (pp. 127–146). Oxford, England: Berghahn Books.
Pink, S. (2007). Doing visual ethnography: Images, media and representation in research
(2nd ed.). London, England: SAGE.
Pink, S. (2009). Doing sensory ethnography. London, England: SAGE.
Postill, J. (2010). Introduction: Theorising media and practice. In B. Brauchler & J.
Postill (Eds.), Theorising media and practice (pp. 1–34). Oxford, England: Berghahn
Books.
Puddephatt, A. J., Shaffir, W., & KleinKnecht, S. W. (2009). Introduction: Exercises
in reflexivity: Situating theory in practice. In A. J. Puddephatt, W. Shaffir & S. W.
KleinKnecht (Eds.), Ethnographies revisited. Constructing theory in the field (pp. 1–34).
London, England: Routledge.

14

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Scheper-Hughes, N. (2004). Parts unknown: Undercover ethnography of the
organs-trafficking underworld. Ethnography, 5(1), 29–73.
Stones, R. (2006). Action and agency. In J. Scott (Ed.), Sociology: The key concepts. London, England: Routledge.
Stones, R. (2005). Structuration theory. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan.
Vergunst, J. (2010). Rhythms of walking: History and presence in a city street. Space
and Culture, 13(4), 376–388.
Wacquant, L. J. D. (2004). Body & soul: Notebooks of an apprentice boxer. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge,
England: Cambridge University Press.

KAREN O’REILLY SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Karen O’Reilly, Professor of Sociology, Loughborough University has a
background in sociology and social anthropology and is a leading expert in
ethnographic methods. She is author of The British on the Costa del Sol and
Ethnographic Methods (both with Routledge), Key Concepts in Ethnography
(Sage) and numerous journal articles in the fields of tourism and migration.
Her research in Spain has spanned nearly 15 years and included long-term
ethnographic fieldwork, qualitative interviews with groups and individuals,
as well as survey methods. She is co-editor of the book Lifestyle Migration
(Ashgate) and is currently undertaking multimethod research with lifestyle
migrants in East Asia. Her research interests are in contemporary migrations
(and mobilities) and their implications for sociological “problems” of
nation, ethnicity, class, gender, age, community, home, and belonging. More
recently she has pioneered the use of practice stories for empirical studies of
migration, in her book International Migration and Social Theory (Palgrave).
RELATED ESSAYS
To Flop Is Human: Inventing Better Scientific Approaches to Anticipating
Failure (Methods), Robert Boruch and Alan Ruby
Micro-Cultures (Sociology), Gary Alan Fine
The Use of Geophysical Survey in Archaeology (Methods), Timothy J.
Horsley
Ethnography in the Digital Age (Methods), Alan Howard and Alexander
Mawyer
Participant Observation (Methods), Danny Jorgensen
Virtual Worlds as Laboratories (Methods), Travis L. Ross et al.
Person-Centered Analysis (Methods), Alexander von Eye and Wolfgang
Wiedermann
Translational Sociology (Sociology), Elaine Wethington