Ethnography is concerned with people and their everyday lives. It is important for anyone wishing to engage in this type of research that everyday lives also include multiple realities. Insiders as well as outsiders have multiple views of the context, ‘every view is a way of seeing, not the way’, there can be ‘no monolithic insider view’ (Wolcott, 1999, 137).
One of the fundamental tasks of this method is to accumulate as many perspectives as possible within the setting. This dose not mean you should focus on a few key informants and tell the story from the viewpoint of these individuals, but you should provide a holistic picture of the setting; that means looking at the picture from as many angles as are available to you in the context. Who will make up those multiple perspectives depends very much on the focus of the study; the important point is to acknowledge that there are multiple realities running alongside each other within every setting, including those of the researcher. The task is to represent those views when it comes time to draw the whole picture, and in order to do this we must ensure that have engaged with the community in a way that allows for diversity and convergence to be exposed and presented.