Ethnographic Biography

In this paper I present a new methodology that I call “ethnographic biography”. I have used this methodology to examine changes and developments in ethno-class identity among young adults from different social classes who are graduates of an integrated school and who are now finding their way in adult society in Israel.

Ethnographic biography involves repeated in-depth interviews with all of the subjects over time, and from different perspectives, alongside the ongoing ethnographic study of events in their lives through various communications media, such as telephone conversations, email correspondence, and the subjects’ activities in social network sites (e.g. Facebook). It also entails attending life events in the subjects’ lives (going to a football match together, visiting a subject in mourning, joining a family meal, visiting subjects at their place of work, attending weddings, and so on).

The method of ethnographic biography has a number of important advantages. First, it offers a framework that is tightly linked to the subjects’ everyday lives while at the same time reinforcing both their interpretive and reflexive capabilities and the ethnographic dimension. Second, it enables us to follow various biographical events in the subjects’ lives in real time, and not retrospectively. Finally, ethnographic biography allows us to study the development and dynamics of ethno-class identity at varying, complex and nuanced resolutions, and thus to draw out its various pathways and instantiations.