| Summary: | This thesis was written as an ethnography; it is a detailed description of a particular society, in this case Company Y. Its purpose is to make intelligible the conceptual world in which the people being studied live. Anthopology assumes that society is a highly complex phenomenon and this assumption is reflected in the requirement to stay in the field for one, preferably two years. (1) In the field the anthropologist concentrates on the social relationships which are relatively enduring features of the society as well as the ideas and values associated with them. (S)he pays special attention to the very complex relationship between people's conscious accounts of their behaviour and those more inexplicit ideas which often actually determine it. The anthropologist proceeds by asking what is meant by a particular word or action. By this means (s)he slowly builds an understanding of the context which determines meaning for the people being studied. Ethnographic research, is in other words, an interpretive activity.
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