"Ethnographic services are offered": a cartography of ethnography as a practical construction of knowledge and value in market research companies
César Augusto González Vélez- David García González
Published 2019-12-12
Keywords
- Etnografía, Marketing, Consumo, Mercado, Colombia
- Ethnography, Marketing, Consumption, Market, Colombia
How to Cite
Abstract
Ethnography has been subject to multiple approaches in which it has been reflected on its possibilities as a method, text and approach. Authors from different disciplines have pondered ethnography and have tried to demarcate its limits in theoretical and political terms. In this paper we will make a critique of the instrumentalization that market research companies have made about ethnography, by offering it as a service that generates strategic knowledge for the industry. The presentation offers an overview of how time is used, how relationships are established with "informants", how research results are constructed and how market ethnography is marketed. In addition, we reflect on the epistemological implications of ethnography as a service offered to companies. Finally, a general overview of the field of institutions providing the market ethnography service is presented. There we present some data and our own analysis, the result of a documentary review of the web pages of said companies. At this point of the argument, a critical interpretation is made about the way in which companies define themselves and, in particular, about the way in which they define the ethnographic services they provide.
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