Anthropological research based on direct or participant observation of a select group of people’s way of life. Traditionally the observed group would be outside of the observer’s own ethnic group and more often than not of a ‘primitive’ or ‘indigenous’ origin. The aim of the research would be to discover the ways in which its behaviours, habits, and practices differed from that of the observer’s. The basic premise of the research was that the ‘primitive’ others were on a historical trajectory that in time would see them ‘advance’ to the same degree of ‘civilization’ as that of the western observer, therefore their society could be treated as ‘pre-historical’, as that which came before civilization as it is known in the West. This view of the other has since been overturned by Postcolonial Studies, which has shown that ethnography of this older unreconstructed variety never really engaged with the actual other because its own prejudices and preconceptions got in the way. Unable to overcome its seemingly inherent ethnocentrism, all it saw was a phantasm of its own creation. This critique has created significant problems for ethnographers operating today and it has forced them to engage in interesting and creative ways with critical theory (particularly the concept of alterity) to address these problems. This has resulted in some fascinating work by people like Geertz, Clifford, James Clifford, George Marcus, and Taussig, Michael. More recently, and perhaps in part because of the epistemological difficulties created by the critique of traditional ethnography, ethnographers have turned their attention towards their own culture, which they then (somewhat paradoxically) proceed to treat as strange as though it were not really their culture at all (see, for example, the work of French anthropologist Augé, Marc, who started his career working in Africa, but later focused his research on Paris). Along these lines, there has been fascinating work done on how office bureaucracies and scientific laboratories function---see respectively Tess Lea Bureaucrats and Bleeding Hearts (2008) and Bruno Latour Science in Action (1987). Further Reading: J. Clifford The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature and Art (1988).