Person-centered ethnography is an approach within

psychological anthropology Psychological anthropology is an interdisciplinary subfield of anthropology that studies the interaction of cultural and mental processes. This subfield tends to focus on ways in which humans' development and enculturation within a particular ...

that draws on techniques and theories from

psychiatry Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of mental disorders. These include various maladaptations related to mood, behaviour, cognition, and perceptions. See glossary of psychiatry. Initial psych ...

and

psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...

to understand how individuals relate to and interact with their sociocultural context. The term was first used by

Robert I. Levy Robert I. Levy (1924 – 29 August 2003, Asolo, Veneto, Italy) was an American psychiatrist and anthropologist known for his fieldwork in Tahiti and Nepal and on the cross-cultural study of emotions. Though he did not receive a formal degree in a ...

, a psychoanalytically trained psychiatrist, to describe his psychodynamically informed approach to interviewing during his anthropological fieldwork in

Tahiti Tahiti (; Tahitian ; ; previously also known as Otaheite) is the largest island of the Windward group of the Society Islands in French Polynesia. It is located in the central part of the Pacific Ocean and the nearest major landmass is Austr ...

and

Nepal Nepal (; ne, नेपाल ), formerly the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal ( ne, सङ्घीय लोकतान्त्रिक गणतन्त्र नेपाल ), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mai ...

. A key distinction in person-centered interviewing is that between interviewees as ''informants'' and as ''respondents''. As Levy and Hollan describe it,

There is a significant difference between asking a Tahitian interviewee something like "Please describe for me exactly how and why supercision (a penis-mutilating rite of passage) is done by Tahitians," and asking him "Can you tell me about ''your'' supercision?"..."Did it change your life in any way?" "How?" "What did you think and feel about it then?" "What do you think and feel about it now?"Levy, Robert I. and Douglas Hollan (1998) "Person-Centered Interviewing and Observation in Anthropology." Pp. 333-364 in ''Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology'', edited by H. R. Bernard. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press.

The first question engages interviewees as typical

ethnographic Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject o ...

informants, asking them to describe features of their culture or social system; the latter questions ask much more directly about their own experiences, feelings, hopes, and desires, as well as changes in these over time. Not surprisingly, asking about these more intimate topics generally requires much longer acquaintance with an interviewee than do questions about more publicly available knowledge. Levy and Hollan note that person-centered interviewing makes use of both modes and tacks back and forth between them; its difference from most methods of ethnographic interviewing lies in its emphasis on the latter and its concern with understanding how individuals relate to, experience, and understand their larger sociocultural context. Within these, major topics of interest typically include: the experience of the self, morality, the body, illness and healing, emotions, and family relationships. Methodologically, person-centered interviewing also depends on a fair degree of experience in self-monitoring for

transference Transference (german: Übertragung) is a phenomenon within psychotherapy in which the "feelings, attitudes, or desires" a person had about one thing are subconsciously projected onto the here-and-now Other. It usually concerns feelings from a ...

and

countertransference Countertransference is defined as redirection of a psychotherapist's feelings toward a client – or, more generally, as a therapist's emotional entanglement with a client. Early formulations The phenomenon of countertransference (german: G ...

phenomena, as well as attention to elisions, avoidances, and gaps in an interviewees' answers and attention to interviewees' emotional reactions during and outside the formal interview setting. Person-centered interviewing comes out of a psychodynamically informed tradition within Culture and Personality studies and American

and shares a number of methodological and thematic concerns with clinical ethnography.

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*Levy, Robert I. (1973) ''Tahitians: mind and experience in the Society Islands''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. *Levy, Robert I. (1990) ''Mesocosm: the organization of a Hindu Newar city in Nepal''. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. *Levy, Robert I. and Douglas Hollan (1998) "Person-Centered Interviewing and Observation in Anthropology." pp. 333–364 in ''Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology'', edited by H. R. Bernard. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press.

References

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See also