Abstract

JOCILES RUBIO, María Isabel. Participant Observation in the Ethnographic Study of Social Practices. Rev. colomb. antropol. [online]. 2018, vol.54, n.1, pp.121-150. ISSN 0486-6525.  https://doi.org/10.22380/2539472x.386.

In this article participant observation (PO) is presented as the technique that allows anthropologists to gain insight about the practices of social agents and thus reconstruct the sociocultural processes that are at the center of ethnographic research. To this purpose, PO is framed within what has been called “the anthropological gaze” and is compared to other techniques, such as interviews, discussion groups or self-reports. Finally, I propose some guidelines for using the ethnographic material produced through PO to restore complexity to the sociocultural processes studied by anthropology.

Keywords : participant observation; field diary; practices.

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