Addressing the Issue of Generalizability of Ethnographic Fieldwork

This essay offers a concise review of ethnographers ’longstanding concern with the geographically and temporally bounded character of classical participant-observation fieldwork. It begins by outlining the archetypal construction of fieldwork before examining two contrasting positions on the generalizability of ethnographic data, positions that illustrate the wide spectrum of attitudes held within the discipline. Building on a Geertzian perspective, the essay reconceptualizes generalizability as a mode of theory production aimed at rendering intelligible the conceptual structures that organize social action. I argue that this form of theoretical generalizability is best advanced by engaging three influential critiques of ethnographic practice focusing on the deconstruction of fieldwork’s taken-for-granted premises, the challenge to single-site generalization, and the move beyond reductive inductive–deductive dichotomies.