Thinking through ethnographies: Making sense of societies in transition

Abstract

How can one conceptualize change in societies? What do ethnographies reveal about societies in transition? In elucidating what societal changes entail, this article discusses ethnographies that focus on “societies in transition.” An ethnography that deals with changes in and of society also analyzes people's experiences in a rapidly changing society. In addition to giving analytical perspectives on a region—in this case, gendered ideas and practices in Bangladesh—such ethnographies may guide us to opening new social realities. Hence, ethnographies can reveal the potentialities and temporalities of social systems. Additionally, containing the possibilities of an otherwise within itself, ethnographies reflect critiques of established concepts. Thus, one gets glimpses of the continual becoming of the social rather than seeing it as a bounded system.