Critical Ethnography — Method, Ethics, and Emancipatory Practice

Critical ethnography is a qualitative research approach that combines sustained fieldwork immersion with explicit critical theory to examine how power, inequality, and ideology shape the lived experiences of marginalised communities. Unlike conventional ethnography, which aims to describe a culture as it is, critical ethnography commits the researcher to questioning what is taken for granted and to producing knowledge that can serve as a resource for social change. Rooted in Frankfurt School critical theory and expanded through feminist, postcolonial, and race-critical traditions, it treats the research process itself as a political act.