According to the article written by James P. Spradley, ethnography is the way of discovering and describing a particular culture. By culture we mean the common or shared behaviors and beliefs that are characteristics of a particular social, ethnic, or age group. Ethnographic approach differs from the approach that are taken from other types of work that are focused on different social science areas. Since all of the social fields are specifically focused on different areas of society such as political is focused on the politics while economics is focused on the financial aspects and psychological is focused on the psychology of the mind.
When anthropologist venture to do fieldwork which means they go to the specific area they want to study and observe their targets. Usually they go to their targeted location and start their work by participating in different activities, learning the language, observing the ceremonies, and most importantly asking questions (Spradley). Their goal is to understand another way of life from a native point of view (Spradley). To fully observe and understand anthropologist must put their naïve realism away which is the belief that all people define the real world the same way (Spradley). By doing this they will have to have participant observation by being in a community and record the actions of the people in that certain community.
Anthropologist are interested in almost every aspect of the overall culture of a group of people and is a field under the social science while the other fields of social sciences are specifically interested in another subject or try to