Defining focused ethnography: Disciplinary boundary-work and the imagined divisions between ‘focused’ and ‘traditional’ ethnography in health research – A critical review

Catherine Trundle and Tarryn Phillips

Social Science & Medicine, 2023, vol. 332, issue C

Abstract: This article offers the first critical review of focused ethnography, an increasingly popular research method across health disciplines. Focused ethnographers, we argue, exemplify the practice of methodological boundary work, defining their method in contrast to the ‘traditional’ ethnographic approach of anthropology and sociology. To examine this boundary work, we collected two samples of health research articles published over the last decade and compared how focused ethnographers and medical anthropologists described, justified, and practised ethnography.

Keywords: Focused ethnography; Qualitative health methods; Anthropological ethnography; Boundary work (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.116108

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