ABSTRACT
From the earliest ethnographies practiced in Ancient Greece through today, research in this vein, in one way or the other, has always been about cultural description(s). Despite this binding feature, long-held traditions in ethnography regarding how it is practiced, whose voice holds sway, who or what is being studied, the authors’ place in the research, and methods of representation (from the written to the performative) have radically changed in a relatively short period of time. Robin Patrick Clair (2003) has cogently outlined these developments in ethnography by tracing through four phases of (cultural) colonization, the linguistic turn, critical and radical feminism, post-modernism, and post-colonialism over the course of the past century. She concludes, ‘after all, ethnography is not simply the methodological description of anthropological field trips; it is the expression of history, politics, and the essence of being’ (ibid.: 20).
