Toward an Ethnographic Language

M ic h a e l H. A gar
University of Maryland

In this article a general language fo r the characterization o f ethnographic research is sug­

gested. Drawing on interpretive philosophy, especially the work of Gadamer and Schulz, a
core process o f ethnography is described that emphasizes the resolution of problems in
understanding across tradition boundaries. Concepts from recent work in knowledge
representation are incorporated into the discussion to integrate it with current inter­
disciplinary work, [ethnography, hermeneutics, knowledge representation]

is a t t h e h e a r t o f t h e a n t h r o p o l o g i e s that deal with living peoples. It is

E th n o g ra ph y
a truism that much of what happens in ethnographic research is difficult to talk about. It
is also a truism that this is a difficulty, partly because the usual language for discussing
social research as a general process fits ethnography poorly. In the past, as its worst conse­
quence, this lack of fit caused a sense of embarrassment in confrontations with self-
appointed “real scientists.” At present, as ethnography is used increasingly outside tradi­
tional academic anthropological contexts, there are other consequences. Now we have
self-appointed “ethnographers” producing superficial garbage, or competent ethnog­
raphers many of whom are unable to account for their understandings of others.
This article is an attempt to move toward a general way to talk about ethnography. It
draws heavily on the work of two philosophers usually called “interpretive” or
“hermeneutic” —Alfred Schutz and Hans Georg Gadamer. In some ways, it is inexcusable
to do yet another social science essay based on their work. Garfinkel (1967), after all,
built much of ethnomethodology on Schutz’s work, and Habermas is developing his social
theory in part using Gadamer (McCarthy 1978). Geertz’s The Interpretation of Cultures
(1973) and Goffman’s Frame Analysis (1974) also set forth well-written perspectives on
the study of social life that are thematically consistent with some of the philosophical
writings.
But somehow, none of them quite do the job for ethnography. Perhaps the problem is
in my reading, but I would like to take the same pieces and try a different arrangement.
If the arrangement does differ, I think it is for three reasons —a concern with a global
view of ethnographic research, a close tie to ethnographic practice, and a focus on the
development of a general ethnographic language. While I think the authors mentioned
above, and others, share some of those concerns, I don’t think any share them all. The
viewpoint outlined in this article may not work either, but the mistakes may stimulate
alternatives. We desperately need a language to talk about our work in a general way.

MICHAEL H. AGAR is Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742.

Copyright © 1982 by the American Anthropological Association

0002-7294/82/040779-17$2.20/1

779
780 A M E R IC A N A N TH R O P O L O G IST [84, 1982

SOME ETHNOGRAPHIC “PROBLEMS”

Ethnography has a variety of special characteristics. One of them, often considered an
embarrassment, is that two studies of similar groups may differ from each other. This
necessarily follows from the ambitious goals of ethnographic research, but other more in­
teresting reasons are scattered through the anthropological literature. For example, com­
parative work with the Human Relations Area Files revealed a number of interesting
problems, among them the difficulty of comparing different ethnographic reports that
were supposedly about the “same” thing. Descriptions of child rearing, for example,
might vary depending on the professional training of the ethnographer—Freudians,
learning theorists, and kinship specialists differed in the kinds of things they paid atten­
tion to. As a result, their partial accounts were difficult to compare. The problem
becomes more acute when we consider personal as well as professional issues. Devereaux
(1967), for example, writes of the effects of one’s personal history on social research. The
title of his book—From Anxiety to Method in the Behavioral Sciences—sums up the
argument.
Another example of the influence of ethnographers on their research is found in the
discussions of restudies. Although Lewis and Redfield provided the classic case, there
have been several others showing how two ethnographers came up with descriptions of
similar groups that differed in important ways (see Naroll 1970 for a review). The prob­
lem becomes more interesting when the two ethnographers are of different cultures.
There are a few early cases around, such as the article by Li An Che about the Zuni
(1937). But with the increase in the number of Third World ethnographers, we will see
more and more critiques of Euroamerican ethnography in the future. (See Owusu’s
[1978] discussion of African ethnography for an example.) In fact, recent issues of Cur­
rent Anthropology reflect the growth of what is called “indigenous” anthropology. In
these discussions, we learn that ethnographies can differ because of different cultural
backgrounds of ethnographers, sometimes in ways that bring to light implicit Western as­
sumptions buried within our discipline.
A particularly striking enactment of cultural differences in ethnography occurred at
the International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences in New Delhi.
European and American anthropologists were criticized by Indian members of the au­
dience for sorting behaviors into “sacred” and “secular.” To understand Indian village
life, they argued, one had to realize that “religion” was pervasive in most situations of
daily life. If “our” culture didn’t lead us to emphasize this distinction, they claimed (ad­
ding insult to injury), we would better understand our problems in Iran. (The meeting
was held in December 1978).
There are reasons other than differences among ethnographers that help us under­
stand why two studies might differ. For example, the group described may change. In my
own work, initially conducted in a treatment center for heroin addicts in the late 1960s, I
described some of the knowledge needed to understand heroin addict subculture (1973).
When I began work in New York in the mid-1970s, I was struck by the changes taking
place as heroin availability dramatically declined while methadone increased (1977).
Heroin addict activities had altered in response to changes in what might be called the
chemical ecology of the streets. In this case, the description changed partly because the
group had changed in response to an alteration of their social environment. There are
other examples of such differences in cases where an ethnographer revisits a group after
some period of time (Mead 1956; Foster et al. 1978).
Ethnographies may also differ because of the intended audience of an ethnographic
report. In my own work, the presentation of the same chunk of ethnographic material
takes different form depending on whether I write for clinicians, drug-policy makers,
Agar] A N ETH N O G RAPH IC LANGUAGE 781

survey sociologists, or cognitive anthropologists. Anthropology as a field is just beginning

to define this as a discipline-wide problem.
In traditional academic anthropology, ethnographers often write for a limited au­
dience consisting of scholars much like themselves. With their similar training and
cultural backgrounds, there is an overlap in the tradition of ethnographer and audience.
They collapse into the same cultural/professional group. In contrast, when an
ethnographer is working in a world where the intended audience consists of
nonethnographers, the audience group adds new constraints on the forms that the
research can take.
Interestingly enough, these new audiences are a much discussed issue as traditionally
academic anthropology struggles with its new identity in nonanthropological settings,
both academic and nonacademic. When one’s audience includes, say, psychiatrists in a
medical school, agency bureaucrats, or members of a community, new problems arise.
One need only scan recent issues of Human Organization and Practicing Anthropology to
see the consciousness of this change and the thoughts that it has inspired. “Audience” was
always an influence, but while it consisted of the group to which the ethnographer
belonged, it was not viewed as a problem. Ethnography’s encounter with changing work
settings has forced us to deal explicitly with the constraints set by yet another tradition on
the doing of ethnography.
In short, ethnographies of similar groups, or on similar topics, differ one from
another. On one level, this will occur because of differences in the audiences addressed,
in the background of the ethnographer, or in the groups described. So pervasive and
recurrent is this “problem” that one wonders if it may not be “normal.” In other words,
differences among ethnographies should be expected and accounted for by our
epistemology rather than being defined as a deviation from it.
A second characteristic of ethnographic work is its emergent nature. There is an item
of folklore that anthropologists are (in)famous at granting agencies for proposing study A
and returning with study B. Barrett (1976) describes how he went through four economic
models as his fieldwork progressed, where the fourth differed significantly from the first.
As another example, Glaser and Strauss (1967) explicitly show the importance of the
emergence and revision of categories in ethnographic work. The centrality of emergence
grates against traditional linear models of social research that move from hypothesis
through data collection and end with analysis.
Another characteristic involves an emphasis on understanding situations that have oc­
curred rather than predicting the value of one variable given a knowledge of others. Fur­
ther, the understanding occurs in a variety of ways, though all of them involve showing a
connection between something said or done and some larger pattern. Though more will
be said on the matter below, understanding can involve links to some actors’ intentions,
to conventions of group life, or to both in some combination.
Hermeneutic philosophy brings these issues under a single umbrella. It argues that
people necessarily exist within a tradition, in terms of which they see themselves, their
world, their past, and their future. An individual can never stand entirely apart and ex­
amine this tradition as an object, for without it there is nothing in terms of which
understanding can take place. Understanding, in other words, has a “fore-structure”
(Gadamer 1975) or “tacit dimension” (Polanyi 1966).
Being enmeshed in a tradition does not mean that a portion of it cannot be brought in­
to consciousness and reflectively examined. Conscious reflection occurs when a problem
arises, when something goes wrong. The routine flow of traditionally guided daily life is
disrupted and consciousness is focused on it. A problem in understanding, in short, oc­
curs with disrupted expectations, an inability of the tradition to make sense of an event.
Gadamer goes on to discuss the way that problems in understanding are resolved, ways
782 AM ERICAN AN TH R O P O LO G IST [84, 1982

that reflect the centrality of emergent understandings. The nature of that process will be
presented in more detail shortly. For now, we can begin with the issue of how the notion
of “tradition” relates to the “problem” of differences in ethnographic reports. I argue
that it fits very well, and I begin the argument with two stories.

TRADITION AND ETHNOGRAPHY

The first story comes from an old chestnut that I have used in other writings. Some
years ago, while working in a South Indian village, I was preparing to leave at midday to
visit another village a few miles distant. As the cook prepared a lunch for me, he placed a
small lump of the charcoal on top of the food before closing the cloth wrapping around
it. I was bewildered. I simply could not make sense of his act. Later, I learned that I was
traveling at a time whe spirits were particularly active, and since spirits are further at­
tracted by food, the charcoal was placed on top as a spirit repellent.
Recently, I was lecturing to a class at the University of Puerto Rico, and I used the ex­
ample, as I often do, to illustrate the process of fieldwork. At the end of the lecture, the
professor and two of the students told me that they were surprised that I was so surprised.
As soon as they heard the story, they said, they assumed it had something to do with
spirits. I remembered readings I had done on espiritistas and santerias, the spiritual
healers found in some Puerto Rican (and other) groups. Apparently, their tradition bet­
ter prepared them for a coherent sense of the South Indians’ use of charcoal.
The second story comes from some work I am doing in collaboration with Jerry Hobbs
on the analysis of a life history of a career heroin addict (Agar and Hobbs 1982a, b).
In one interview, “Jack” (as we call him) describes a situation in Penn Station in New
York. He is sitting in the station to keep out of the winter weather when a young “cat”
comes up and asks him to keep his eye on his luggage while he “makes the john.” Jack
describes how he didn’t intend to steal the luggage, but another street type sitting nearby
insisted on going through the bags and sharing what was there. Jack refused, took the
bags, and left the station.
When “straight” listeners hear this story, there is usually no problem in understanding
it. But when I explain that the surprising thing about the story is that Jack hesitated at
all, the expectations that guided their understanding crumble. By street rules, anyone
who is foolish enough to be separated from his property is a “lame,” a “mark.” It is now
automatic that the property is fair game. By commenting on his hesitation and reporting
that he stole the luggage only because he was forced to, Jack is nodding in the direction of
the straight world addressed in the interview, while still reporting an outcome that is nor­
mal in the street world which is the backdrop for the story.
These two examples are presented to show the importance of the different traditions
that make up an ethnographic encounter. An ethnography is first of all a function of the
ethnographer, who brings to his or her work the tradition in which he or she participates,
including the training received in professional socialization. The kinds of events that pre­
sent themselves as problems are partly a function of how sensible and how coherent they
are, given that tradition. The charcoal immediately created problems for my under­
standing of a normal village event; apparently a Puerto Rican ethnographer would have
had less difficulty.
Ethnographies are also, of course, a function of the group among whom the
ethnographer is working. If the village cook had not placed a lump of charcoal in the
packet, I would have just carried it off onto the trail without another thought. If the
heroin addicts among whom I worked had not often talked of “beating” and “burning”
people, I would not have asked the questions and made the observations that suggested
the “nonstraight” interpretation of the small piece of life history discussed above.
Agar] A N E T H N O G R A P H IC L A N G U A G E 783

Ethnographies also depend on the nature of the audience. The ethnographer is trying
to produce a report for somebody else, to show how the life of some group makes sense.
To the extent that the audience participates in the same tradition as the ethnographer,
then the ethnographer only needs to make his or her personal understanding explicit.
However, in the Indian village example, I apparently overexplained the charcoal inci­
dent for the Puerto Rican audience. In contrast, in the story of stealing the luggage,
straight audiences have to be shown that a different understanding is possible. They easi­
ly make sense of the story from within their own tradition; they must learn that the story
has an additional sense, one that they were originally unaware of.
In short, ethnographies are a function of the different traditions of ethnographer,
group, and intended audience. Ethnography is at its core a process of “mediating frames
of meaning” (Giddens 1976). Its nature will depend on the nature of the traditions that
are brought into contact during fieldwork. This argument advises us to quit worrying
about person-independent access to an objective world, not because it is a difficult goal,
but because it is a delusional one that strips away some important aspects of ethnographic
work. On the other hand, the argument gives little comfort to what Hirsch (1976) calls
the “cognitive atheists” either. An ethnographic report is not just a personal account
specific to the moment without anchors in traditions besides the ethnographer’s. There is
a human group out there who lived in a world before the ethnographer appeared and
who will continue to do so after the ethnographer leaves. Ethnography, in short, is a
function of the group studied as well.
Ethnographer, intended audience, and group all represent traditions that limit, but do
not determine, the possible ethnographic reports that can emerge. In the words of the old
opposition, ethnography is neither “subjective” nor “objective.” It is interpretive,
mediating two worlds through a third.

THE PROCESS
In the encounter among the different traditions, ethnography focuses on the dif­
ferences that appear. Expectations are not met; something does not make sense; one’s
“assumption of perfect coherence,” to use Gadamer’s phrase, is violated. For conve­
nience, we will call the differences noticed by an ethnographer breakdowns. The term is
Heidegger’s, though the general idea is well illustrated in a variety of anthropological
discussions. Sperber (1974), for instance, writes that those actions noted for their sym­
bolic interest are precisely those that are marked departures from what the ethnographer
expects.
Rosenblatt documented several instances of this focus on breakdowns: “If one looks at
descriptions by anthropologists of their field experiences, it seems quite common that the
initial reaction included comparison embodied in surprise or attention to the
unexpected” (1981:199). He notes that Naroll and Naroll (1963) also mention the “atten­
tion to the exotic,” though they characterize it negatively as a “bias.” He mentions several
ethnographic accounts that support his point (Nakane 1975; Uchendu 1970; Pandey
1975; Gould 1975; Mohring 1980). He also writes that some anthropologists “advise one
to use surprise, the unexpected, or a sense of differences as cues to what to study”
(1981:200), and cites LeVine (1970), Mead (1970), and Richards (1939) to support his
point.
These examples from the literature, and the anecdotes from my own work, illustrate
the central role of breakdowns in bringing out problems for ethnographic attention. A
breakdown signals a disjunction among the worlds; the problem for ethnography is to
give an account that eliminates it. The specific nature of the breakdown, to repeat the
earlier argument, will be a function of the traditions of ethnographer, group, and au­
784 A M E RIC A N A N T H R O P O LO G IST [84, 1982

dience. Change any of the three and the content of breakdowns may change with them.
The “definitive” ethnography does not exist.
Once a breakdown occurs, something must be done about it. For convenience, we will
call the process of moving from breakdown to understanding a process of resolution. The
process is an emergent one, and like the breakdown that triggers it, it is constrained by
the traditions in which it occurs. To paraphrase Gadamer, one initially formulates a
meaning for the breakdown, but then develops and refines it in interaction with “the
thing itself.” He emphasizes the emergent nature of this process, and the importance of
openness to the phenomenon and sensitivity to its newness.
One interesting way to characterize the process is to borrow Hirsch’s (1976) notion of
the “corrigible schema.” A breakdown is a lack of fit between one’s encounter with a
tradition and the expectations contained in the schemas by which one organizes one’s ex­
perience. One then modifies the schemas or constructs new ones and tries again. Based
on this new try, further modifications are made, and the process continues iteratively un­
til the breakdown is no longer a problem. (Notice the parallels with discussions in Glaser
and Strauss [1967] and with Cicourel’s notion of “abductive reasoning” [see Corsaro 1981
for a summary]).
Gadamer devotes much of his Truth and Method to the resolution process. He notes
that resolution changes the tradition within which it began. A tradition has a boundary,
the limits of its point of view, called its “horizon.” Resolution occurs when the horizons of
the different traditions have been “fused” —when they have been changed and extended
so that the breakdown disappears as a problem. This “always involves the attainment of a
higher universality that overcomes, not only our own particularly, but also that of the
other” (Gadamar 1975:272).
Resolution is informally illustrated in Rabinow’s personal account of fieldwork in
Morocco (1977). He takes us through several encounters that produced breakdowns and
then shows us how the resolution was worked out. He also raises the issue of changes in the
tradition of informants as a result of the breakdowns they encounter working with the
ethnographer. What is the effect on a key informant of many hours of questions that call
to consciousness issues that might never before have been reflectively examined? What is
the effect of observing at close quarters an alien ethnographer and seeing a different style
of acting in the world? In fact, in some of the literature it is argued that the informant
(Blanchard 1977) or community is dramatically different at the time of the
ethnographer’s departure. For the present, though, we will limit the discussion by contin­
uing to look through an ethnographer’s eyes.
Gadamer continues his description of resolution by noting that the fusion of horizons is
a conceptual one expressed in language. This point ties in with his general view of
language and tradition as coconstitutive. Language is the storehouse of tradition, the
pointer toward what it is in the world that is an object, the resource for speculatively
creating new worlds. As such, the fusion of horizons is “the proper achievement of
language” (1975:340).
Furthermore, the resolution process can be seen as a “negative dialectic.” Gadamer
summarizes the “essentially negative” nature of experience as follows: “If we have an ex­
perience of an object, this means that we have not seen the thing correctly and now know
it better” (1975:317). A breakdown, then, is a negative experience in this sense. It shows
us that something is not what we expected. Resolution is dialectic because it is an effort to
figure out what something is and what it is not. From this effort derives a sense of what it
might be. The process then continues until the breakdown is resolved.
Now, when we combine the linguistic nature of the fusion of horizons and the negative
dialectic of resolution, we understand why Gadamer characterizes the process of resolu­
tion as a “logic of question and answer.” With the exception of Collingwood’s work
Agar] A N ETH N O G RAPH IC LANGUAGE 785

(1978), he notes that little has been done on this kind of logic, though he offers the
Socratic dialogues as an example of such logic in process.
Drawing on this example, Gadamer characterizes a good question as one which brings
something out into the open, though it also establishes presuppositions “in terms of which
can be seen what still remains open” (1975:327). A good question is never purely
rhetorical, nor is it in service of egocentric interpersonal games, nor is it respectful of cur­
rent opinion. Further, there is no method to learn to ask good questions in some
mechanical way. Instead, the questions come from the nature of the breakdown within
the the encounter of different worlds, inspiring a sequence of questions and answers that
emerge dialectically until the breakdown is resolved.
An anthropological version of this view can be found in the recently collected works of
Charles Frake (1981). The earlier papers show the development of the ethnographic im­
portance of linked questions and answers. The later papers criticize those who saw in the
earlier arguments a disembodied method and recast the argument into issues of the
global ethnographic context in which the questions and answers occur.
To summarize this discussion of resolution, we begin with a breakdown. It violates our
expectations and calls into consciousness what the phenomenon is not. There follows a
dialectic process of question and answer by which we alter our tradition and bring into
existence an account of what the phenomenon is, given our starting point. For Gadamer,
once resolution is complete, the details of the process “disappear.” By this he means that
once a breakdown is resolved, it leaves our conscious attention. For ethnography we will
have to alter his argument. Rather than abandoning the process once we understand, we
want to document it on some selected basis so that we can make our case.
Interestingly enough, Moerman (1969) identified this issue some time ago. He argued
that as fieldwork progresses, an ethnographer becomes less reflective about early en­
counters, while the informants become less informative because they now assume the
ethnographer knows more. I recently witnessed the same issue brought to life when a
filmmaker presented her work to the Anthropological Society of Washington. She
reported that the ethnographer, who had been in the field for some time, was en­
thusiastic about the film crew’s presence, since their questions and observations brought
back some of the key concerns he had when fieldwork began, concerns forgotten with
time. Translated into our discussion, we see that in both cases ethnographers had suc­
cessfully resolved early breakdowns and than lost consciousness of them. What is in fact
successful understanding from Gadamer’s point of view is a problem for ethnography.
So far, breakdown is the starting point and resolution is the process it initiates. Let us
return to Gadamer to get a sense of the end point of coherence. From Gadamer’s discus­
sion, we learn that a coherent resolution will: (1) show why it is better than other resolu­
tions that can be imagined; (2) tie a particular resolution in with the broader knowledge
that constitutes a tradition; (3) clarify and enlighten, eliciting an “aha” reaction from the
members of different traditions that make up the ethnographic encounter; and (4) ex­
pand horizons such that they are connected. In a later section, we will see some of the
complexity implicit in Gadamer’s suggestions.
One more aspect of a successful resolution is described by Gadamer in his discussion of
“application.” It is not enough that a single breakdown be resolved. The coherence that
results must apply in subsequent situations. Speaking of texts, he says “if it is to be
understood properly, i.e., according to the claim it makes, [it] must be understood at
every moment, in every particular situation, in a new and different way” (1975:275). To
use Winch’s (1958) phrase, understanding must proceed “as a matter of course” in the
sense that the newly won coherence applies to situations previously unencountered. This
is a critical notion that will guide the elaboration of the resolution process to come.
For the moment, then, we have a way to talk about a key process of ethnography.
786 AM ERICAN AN TH R O P O LO G IST [84, 1982

Within the encounter of different traditions, a breakdown occurs. Resolution begins with
an openness to new possibilities, and leads to a dialectic process of question and answer
until the linguistic-conceptual nature of the traditions have been linked. What was
originally a departure from expectations is now seen as coherent. Ethnography is a pro­
cess of moving from breakdown through resolution to coherence.
In actual fieldwork, of course, one does not move in a simple way from breakdown to
breakdown. For the moment, though, we can take each of the notions —breakdown,
resolution, and coherence —and discuss them in more detail. We will begin at the end,
with coherence. We do this because it is best to first have a sense of the goal of the pro­
cess, and because it allows us to introduce the second major figure upon whose work this
discussion rests —Alfred Schutz.

COHERENCE
To begin to flesh out the idea of coherence for ethnography, we turn to a philosopher
in the interpretive tradition who was more directly concerned with social science. Alfred
Schutz’s synthesis of Weber and Husserl will be our starting point. In some areas more
contemporary philosophers like Gadamer would find serious fault with Schutz’s presenta­
tion, most prominently in the positivist roots of his notion of understanding. For the pres­
ent through, I hope to show that his version of coherence in understanding social life will
be helpful.
In brief, Schutz’s version of coherence runs like this: “It suffices, therefore, that I can
reduce the other’s act to its typical motive, including their reference to typical situations,
typical ends, typical means, etc.” (1970:180). Behind this summary, needless to say, lie
some elaborate arguments. We will now turn to some of them to begin to develop an
ethnographic version of coherence.
A person, living in a world endowed with meanings, has at any given moment an “in­
terest at hand.” For our purposes, this interest at hand will be called a goal, of which the
person may or may not be conscious. The goal of the moment is not an isolated entity;
rather it is part of a larger system of goals in the person’s world. Some goals lead to an in­
tention to bring about a projected state of affairs in the world. These are of particular in­
terest for ethnography, since it is the publicly expressed action of informants that is the
source of breakdowns and resolutions.
Before discussing Schutz’s views on coherence, I must first outline his analysis of the
different temporal perspectives on action. “Action” is the “lived experience” of the actor
at the time of its doing. An “act,” on the other hand, is a reflectively contemplated ac­
tion. One can only know one’s actions as acts, since to contemplate them is to step outside
of them. If an action is imagined as it might be done in the future, it is a “projected act.”
We will first consider how this projecting is accomplished. Our actor, goal at hand, con­
structs a sketch of action based on anticipations and expectations in the “stock of
knowledge” available in his or her world. The knowledge is organized around the goal in
terms of the degree of its “relevance.” We will call this goal-directed attention to
knowledge a matter of focus (Grosz 1978). A goal, then, brings different parts of
knowledge into greater or lesser focus. Schutz notes that an intention to bring about the
goal (the “in order to” motive) will readily focus knowledge if the situation is a familiar
one. If it is not, unfamiliar problems may require our actor to pop up a level and solve
them before projecting. Schutz also notes that the knowledge must be clear and consis­
tent “enough” given the goal, but with decreasing focus these requirements relax.
Our actor’s stock of knowledge is primarily organized into “typifications,” though we
will use the term frame instead. Frames develop, according to Schutz, when the ex­
perience of one object is transferred to any other similar object (1970:117). To use the
Agar] A N E TH N O G RAPH IC LANGUAGE 787

modern term, frames are generalized “knowledge structures” that have “empty places”
and “variables” that are “filled in” with the details in particular instances of their use
(ibid.: 130). Many of them are efficiently encoded in language. In fact, Schutz character­
izes language as a “treasure house” of frames that carries the tradition transcending the
biographical situation of each actor. He also notes that they can change with experience;
the actual carrying out of a project will “enlarge and restructure them” (ibid.: 142).
Now we have the notions to talk about understanding from an observer’s point of view.
The observer imagines what the in-order-to motive of the actor might have been given
observation of an act, and then projects his or her own “fancied carrying out of such an
action as a scheme in which to interpret the other’s lived experiences” (ibid.: 177). For an
observer, coherence is achieved when an observed “expression” (performed with or
without communicative intent) is seen as part of a larger “project," or what we will now
begin to call a plan. Coherence, then, is achieved through an account of an act in terms
of its relations to goals, frames in focus, or both as they interrelate in a plan. And that is
simply a summary in our terminology that matches Schutz’s own, quoted at the begin­
ning of this section.
Schutz notes that his analysis of observer’s understanding is different from and simpler
than understanding where one human is “attuned in simultaneity” in a “we-relationship”
with another (ibid.). To account for understanding in this more difficult situation, Schutz
offers some additional concepts. Even here, though, an analysis of the shared “lived ex­
perience” will shift the analyst to a contemplation of an act, and again the analyst will
understand the act in terms of the interacting plans of which the act was an expression.
From Schutz we get a more elaborate sense of coherence in understanding social life. It
involves the reflective examination of action as act, whether distantly observed or shared
as lived experience with informants. The act is seen as coherent if it fits into a plan which
we imagine it might have been a part of, where plan is a cover term for an organization of
goals and frames. Ethnographic coherence, in short, occurs when an initial breakdown is
resolved by changing the knowledge in our tradition so that the breakdown is newly seen
as an expression of some part of a plan.

BREAKDOWN
Now we have a sense of ethnographic coherence, the end point of the resolution pro­
cess. If we return to the beginning, we again encounter the notion of breakdown. An­
ticipating later discussions of the complexities of actual fieldwork, I would like to do some
concept splitting. These splits are not meant to precisely sort breakdown experiences one
from another. Rather, they are introduced to better understand the emergent nature of
ethnographic work.
The first distinction separates occasioned and mandated breakdowns. When I went to
work in South India, I had no idea that one breakdown that was going to occur was mak­
ing sense of a lump of charcoal in my lunch pack. It came up, jolted me with its apparent
lack of sense, and presented itself as something to understand. It was occasioned. On the
other hand, when I heard junkies using the terms “beat” and “burn,” I knew that as a
cognitive anthropologist one of my key tasks was to figure out what they meant. The focus
on terms, the conscious attention I directed toward them and the kinds of sense I began
to make of them, were mandated.
Mandated breakdowns are those that one sets out to create. Occasioned breakdowns
are those that come up in the course of doing ethnography. The difference is primarily
whether or not the breakdown was intended by the ethnographer. As noted above, the
two are not independent in actual ethnographic work. But the distinction is a worthy
one, I think. Among other things, it accounts for the common ethnographic experience
788 A M ERICAN A N T H R O P O LO G IST [84, 1982

of setting out with a mandated breakdown and returning with some occasioned ones that
proved more interesting.
Mandated breakdowns are also worthy of distinction for two other reasons. First, they
include many of the traditional methods of social research; an ethnographic language
should include them while at the same time allowing for other possibilities. Second, man­
dated breakdowns allow for a stance that encourages questioning one’s understanding of
situations as a general principle. Such a stance is particularly important when working in
one’s own culture.
A second distinction can be made between core and derivative breakdowns. Core
breakdowns are those that constitute the focus of an ethnographer’s work and eventual
report. Derivative breakdowns are those that are less important for the ethnographer.
They may be seen as less important simply because of time limits, or because within the
tradition of the ethnographer they are so evaluated, or because they are only resolved in­
cidentally in the resolution of core breakdowns. This distinction captures a sense of level
in breakdowns; some are top-level problems for an ethnographer; others come up but are
dealt with less thoroughly.
To exemplify this distinction, let me return to my two examples. The encounter with
the charcoal was derivative and occasioned. I was doing my work in South India as an
undergraduate who wanted to learn how to do ethnography. The core breakdown that I
focused on was the relationship between social groups and leadership in conflict resolu­
tion. This was, in turn, occasioned rather than mandated, though it was, in retrospect,
obviously arrived at in response to the interests in similar matters on the part of my facul­
ty “audience” who had done work in that area.
In the junkie example, the attempt to learn about “burn” and “beat” was mandated
and core. My training as a cognitive anthropologist emphasized the careful attention to
lexemes as a primary inroad to cognition. The process of working out what those terms
meant was derivative, but both mandated and occasioned. It was mandated because I
used some ways of forcing breakdowns in my understanding suggested by cognitive an­
thropologists; but it was also occasioned as the use of the terms by myself and others, and
observations of situations that were identified by the terms, created further problems in
understanding.
No doubt other distinctions could be made, but these will serve for now. Not all
breakdowns are the same when considered as part of ethnography. At one extreme, an
ethnographer may set out to force a breakdown and spend much time resolving it—it is
mandated and core. At the other extreme, unexpected breakdowns may come up and
receive less attention—they are occasioned and derivative. However, it is one of the
special strengths of ethnography that a breakdown that was originally mandated disap­
pears or becomes derivative, while something that came up serendipitously as an occa­
sioned breakdown moves to the center and becomes core.

RESOLUTION
Now that we have a better sense of the beginning and end points of ethnographic sense­
making, we can begin to fill out the notion of resolution. To do so, we need a general way
to talk about the knowledge in the ethnographer’s tradition in terms of which encounters
with group life are or are not understood. In the earlier discussion of Schutz, we used the
notions of goals, frames, and plans. We will now use the term schema as a general term
for all three. (All of these terms in themselves deserve more careful elaboration. That is
beyond the scope of this article, though some justification for their use will be offered
later.)
Now we need a term for the phenomena encountered by ethnographers in their work.
Agar] A N E T H N O G R A P H IC L A N G U A G E 789

We will use the general term strip, as introduced by Goffman (1974) and used by Frake
(1981). For the moment, we will place no constraints on the nature of the strips con­
fronted. A strip might be a social act, recognized as a unit by the nature of its
characterization in the informants’ language. It might also be an informal interview con­
ducted by an ethnographer, or a more structured interview or experiment done later in
the fieldwork. It might also be document of some sort. A strip, in short, is any bounded
phenomenon against which ethnographers test their understanding of the group.
Resolution, then, consists of the application of schemas to strips. When strips are
understood with available schemas, there is no problem, though an ethnographer may
try to “mandate” one. When some part of a strip does not fit or produces a conflict, a
breakdown occurs and resolution is called for. Leaving “strip” multiply ambiguous for
now, consider the variety of forms the resolution process might take.
The first resolution process is summarized in Figure 1. Some schema, labeled “SMa” in
the figure, is applied to some strip, labeled “SP.” The application produces a breakdown,
labeled “B l,” because some expectation in SMa was not met. This leads our
ethnographer to modify the schema in some way, leading to a new schema, “SMb.” This
schema in turn is applied to the strip, but another breakdown occurs, labeled “B2” in the
figure. Further modifications to the schema are made, leading to “SMc.” The process
iterates through repeated modifications of the schema and applications to the strip until
no breakdown occurs. In the figure, this is indicated by the " —B” which then leads the
ethnographer to accept “SMd” as coherent for the strip SP.
This “single-strip resolution” is at the heart of ethnographic work. However, it is also
important to apply schemas to different strips, as well as working them out in their ap­
plication to a single one. This “multiple-strip resolution” is depicted in Figure 2. Just for
the sake of continuity with Figure 1, we will begin our job in Figure 2 with the SMd
schema that finally worked out in the earlier resolution. Further, we will consider the
resolution in our new figure to begin with a second strip for SMd, so it is labeled “SP2” in
Figure 2.
Now, Figure 2 begins with the straightforward application of SMd to SP2. This ap­
plication produces a breakdown, so just as in Figure 1 the arrow in the diagram moves
back up the schema. Notice here, though, that the arrow is labeled with an “SSR” rather
than with a “B.” “SSR” is just an abbreviation for the resolution already described in
Figure 1 —single strip resolution. I have collapsed Figure 1 into Figure 2. By this I mean
to show that when the breakdown occurs in the application of the schema to a new strip,
the single strip resolution process is used until that breakdown is resolved.

SMa SMb SM c SM d

I I f
SP / / /SP SP SP

/ / /
B B2 B3 -B ------ > SM d

Fig. 1. Single strip resolution.

790 AM E RIC A N A N T H R O P O LO G IST [84, 1982

SMd SMe SMf SMg SMg SMg

f / vl' I 'r
I I 4
SP2 / SP3 / /
SP4 SP5 / SP6 / SPn

'i' / 4'
/ 'l' / / /
SSR SSR SSR -B -B - B ------» SMg

Fig. 2. Multiple strip resolution.

Once that is taken care of, we have a new schema “SMe” in Figure 2. This in turn is ap­
plied to a new strip SP3, and the process continues iteratively just as it did in Figure 1.
However, there is a difference here in how the process terminates. Notice in Figure 2 how
the schema SMg produces no breakdown when applied to SP6. The process does not stop
there. Instead, we apply SMg to several more strips, 6 through n, until we are “sure” that
no further breakdowns will occur. How do we know when we are sure? When is “n” large
enough? The general idea is that we stop when no further breakdowns are forced by en­
counters with additional strips. However, this is inadequate for two reasons. First,
breakdowns can occur later in the fieldwork against schemas thought to be coherent. Sec­
ond, this statement points to serious methodological issues for the sampling of strips in
ethnography.
There is still one more level of resolution that should be introduced here, because it is
central to the ethnographic emphasis on holism (Phillips 1976). The version of holism
used here is simply that interpretations are made up of interconnected schemas rather
than isolated ones. As we modify schemas in single and multiple strip resolutions, it is a
key ethnographic concern to wonder if these modifications pattern in some interesting
way across schemas. A more detailed description of how this interconnecting goes on is
beyond the scope of this article. But for now we can sketch the process as another kind of
resolution.
Sieber (1973) points out that this holistic emphasis carries with it the danger of the
“holistic fallacy.” By this he means a tendency to overemphasize consistency and integra­
tion at the expense of conflict and disharmony. It is for just this reason that a more
careful look at what we will call “schema resolution” is critical. Some constraints must be
placed on our holistic bias to help guard against it.
The process of schema resolution is depicted in Figure 3. The figure begins at the left
with two schemas, SMx and SMy. Our holistic view leads us to wonder if there might be
interconnections between the two. The ways that schemas might be interconnected are
numerous. For now, we’ll assume that we have an intuition that the two schemas are
related because one schema represents an event whose outcome is a prerequisite for the
event represented in the second schema. (This was a relationship I used in my earlier
ethnographic work with heroin addicts. For example, one outcome of “copping” or buy­
ing heroin was obviously heroin, which in turn was a prerequisite for “getting off,” or in­
jecting it.)
In Figure 3 I show that there may be a relationship (like the prerequisite-outcome link)
between SMx and SMy. I represent this relation with the symbol “R ,” so in the figure I get
SMx R SMy. Now, just as in the earlier resolutions, we apply the related schemas to a
strip, and a breakdown occurs. In contrast to the first two processes of resolution,
though, there are a number of possible remedies.
We may of course decide that we have just been caught in a holistic fallacy. Assume we
aren’t willing to accept that yet. However, as shown in Figure 3, there are still several
possible modifications we might try. First, we might suspect the relationship. Perhaps
Agar] A N E TH N O G R A PH IC LANGUAGE 791

1) Modify R
SMx , SMy ---------> SMx R SMy
2) Resolve SMx or SMy
or both

SPI THEN
/ ---------------- *
/ 1) Reapply to SPI

B / 2) Apply to SP2...SPn

Fig. 3. Schema resolution.

outcome-prerequisite was not right, and actually the two schemas are related in some
other way.
Second, we might suspect that the attempt to resolve the schemas has brought out some
new problems in one or both of them that didn’t appear when they were applied in­
dividually to strips. If that were the case, then we could use single or multiple strip resolu­
tions on one or both of them before trying the schema resolution again. After modifica­
tions are made using these strategies, the new form of SMx R SMy could then be reap­
plied to the same strip or applied to new strips, as noted in the figure. The resolution
would proceed iteratively, just as it did in the simpler forms already discussed.
The notion of schema resolution is critical for ethnography. In cultural anthropology,
there has always been an emphasis on the development of higher order schemas that show
the relations among several lower order ones. This push to higher levels represents our
continuing effort to come up with an articulate statement of our sense of group concerns
that are so pervasive, so fundamental, that they appear in numerous situations and across
many social relations. These higher level schemas have been given different labels in an­
thropology, but the one I prefer is Opler’s (1959) notion of “themes."
Notice that nothing in this discussion holds that resolution necessarily determines a
schema uniquely, nor does it argue that schema modifications come only from a single
source, whether theory, informant statements, observations, or intuitions. At the same
time, resolution does require that schemas —whatever their source and eventual
form —be anchored in the strips we abstract out for study from group life. It is this com­
mitment to strips that gives ethnography its “emic” flavor, and it is in the possibility of
applying schemas across a wide range of strips that validation strategies can be devel­
oped.
This discussion of resolution attempts to preserve the important characteristics of the
process outlined by Gadamer while at the same time beginning to tie it into the realities
of ethnographic work. The peculiar blend of a philosophical tradition sometimes con­
sidered “antiscientific” together with the quasi-formal use of some concepts to articulate
it undoubtedly strikes some readers as an epistemological blunder of the worst sort. It
may be. On the other hand, let me elaborate on the blend with a discussion of what it is
among the total experiences that make up ethnography that I am trying to account for.
Along the way, we will see that the discussion also suggests some different ways of think­
ing about what it is we set out to accomplish.

THE PROCESS AND THE FIELD

First of all, the description offered here is too simple. We are left with a sense that
ethnography is constrained by three traditions —audience, group, and ethnog-
792 AM E RIC A N A N T H R O P O LO G IST [84, 1982

rapher —together with a rough outline of the breakdown —resolution —coherence process
that constitutes it. Fieldwork is clearly more complicated than that: among other things,
in the number of strips dealt with, the number of schemas under consideration, and the
many levels at which resolution proceeds. No doubt this is part of the reason why
fieldwork, as an intellectual effort, can be stressful and exhausting. Besides, in addition
to all this simultaneous iteration of the process, it can also be maddeningly recursive. A
breakdown occurs and resolution begins, which in turn produces a derivative breakdown,
so the process is put on hold while resolution of that begins, but a new derivative
breakdown appears, so the previous one is put on hold, and so on. If you will forgive the
pun, it is easy to get lost in the trees.
Furthermore, the process outlined here is not a replacement for the sensitive
understanding of other people that comes through intimate face-to-face involvement
over a long period of time. In fact, it presupposes that involvement. It is a key working
assumption that the better and the longer one gets to know the “folk,” the deeper the
understanding that results. Most ethnographers, including myself, agree with that
assumption. The process, on the other hand, is an intellectual framework that serves as a
way to organize that understanding for purposes of systematic discussion, though the
results should in turn also feed back into the human contact from which it arose. Without
the contact, the general discussion will be superficial; without a general language, the
human contact will remain a local and personal experience.
In ethnographic jargon, we refer to this involvement with the code word “participant
observation.” My sense of the term is that it is neither a method nor a kind of data; in­
stead, it is the situation that makes our work possible at all. The long-term involvement
that comes with participant observation gives us that elusive feel for the life of the group.
This “feel,” along with some creative thought on our part, is one source of ideas for the
modifications of schemas in the process of resolution. Participant observation also
enables us to have the contact with group members that will be a source of what have
been called “strips.” Through participant observation, we gain access to the flow of life
from which strips will be abstracted for reflective study. Finally, it is through the develop­
ment of rapport in participant observation that we increase the chances that expressions
of group life will occur without being modified for the view of a temporary stranger.
In short, without participant observation, we would not have the strips or the good
ideas for the modifications of schemas in resolution. The language developed here is not
supposed to replace participant observation. Rather, it is intended to serve us when we
step back from the moment of breakdown and ask questions about the new knowledge we
need to construct in order to make sense of what is initially a puzzling piece of our infor­
mants’ lives.
Because the process deals with tradition-bridges, some other ethnographic issues also
take on a different form. “Psychological reality,” for example, is not a necessary concern
for an ethnographer by this argument. Though one is committed to making sense of ex­
pressions of group life, there is no claim that the form of the sense making has anything to
do with the internal psychological processes that went on at the time that expression was
performed. Further, there is no need to claim that the sense made was actually ar­
ticulated by an informant, though ethnographies usually draw selectively on informant
accounts of situations. As a final related point, the process commits one neither to a
model of the actor as creative contructor of a social world nor as a passive embodiment of
conventional action. Instead, it allows an ethnographer to make sense of completed acts
by appeal to either intentions, conventions, or a mix of the two.
It is also apparent that we no longer claim to describe “a culture.” Instead, we try to
bridge different traditions. An ethnography becomes a connected collection of bridges
relative to the traditions that go into the encounter. The “culture of people X” is no
Agar] A N E T H N O G R A P H IC L A N G U A G E 793

longer an object to be described in its entirety. Rather, it is one of three traditions whose
encounter produces breakdowns, the resolution of which constitutes the ethnographic
problem. (See Becker 1982 on “pontification.”)
Seen in this light, ethnography shares a concern with many other fields (notably some
of those that are now blended into “cognitive science”) with the problems of “knowledge
representation.” At its most relevant for ethnography, this concern centers on the
development of a language of pattern and purpose that points to more systematic ways to
shape the tradition bridges. In fact, the changes in Gadamer’s and Schutz’s terminology
were made to show the link. But it is worth repeating that this use of the concepts differs
from much of their use in cognitive science (and anthropology), because they are
resources to give form to our understandings of expressions, not models of the mental
processes by which they were produced.
Clearly terminological issues and methodological problems abound. For example, the
discussion here has centered on the breakdowns that arise in ethnographic work. But
ethnography is also a process of making sense of human differences in terms of human
similarities. When schemas are resolved, similarities among the traditions are the context
within which the resolution occurs. As another example, little has been said about
method, though some methodological issues are acknowledged in the discussion. There is
not enough space to develop these and other issues here. However, for the present, I think
the outlines of an “ethnographic language” sets up a framework within which such
development can proceed.
In this article, I wanted to take some core ethnographic concerns —differences in
reports, emergence, and understanding —and suggest a framework for ethnography less
dissonant than traditional models of social research. I have done so by drawing on and
elaborating interpretive philosophy, but in a way that hopefully moves toward a more ex­
plicit formulation that will eventually lead to some methodological clarity. This use of a
philosophical tradition often regarded as “antiscientific” to justify the development of an
“ethnographic language” might seem bizarre to some. But as Gadamer wrote in the
foreword to the second edition of Truth and Method:
If there is any practical consequence of the present investigation, it certainly has nothing to do
with an unscientific “commitment”; instead, it is concerned with the “scientific” integrity of
acknowledging the commitment involved in all understanding. [ 1960: xvi]
And later;
Therefore I did not remotely intend to deny the necessity of methodical work within the human
sciences (Geisteswissenschaften). Nor did I propose to revive the ancient dispute on method be­
tween the natural and the human sciences. It is hardly a question of contrast of methods.
[ibid.:xvii]
Hermeneutics sets out a context for ethnography that “makes sense”; but application,
modification, and more precise specification is our problem. I hope this discussion con­
tributes to that task.

NOTES
Acknowledgments. This article was made possible by Research Career Development Award
DA-00055 and the interest of several Berkeley graduate students who took my seminars there in
1979 and 1980. Professor Angel Pacheco of the University of Puerto Rico provided the discussion of
the charcoal incident reported in the text. Many of the issues discussed here have benefited from
good arguments with Jerry Hobbs of SRI International over numerous pieces of data and pitchers of
beer. Linda Bennett actually read the entire manuscript voluntarily and made several comments
which I stole and used in the revision. The shadowlike, anonymous reviewers for this journal were
also helpful, and I wish I could acknowledge them by name. But you know who you are.
794 AM ERICAN AN TH R O P O LO G IST [84, 1982

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