Ethnography is a qualitative research method in which researchers study various values، beliefs and cultural meanings in a group of people or society. Critical ethnography puts more emphasis on social groups and individuals'' power، prestige، authority and status (1). In ethnographic studies، researchers employing inductive logic focus on interactions between people to discover the meaning embedded in culture. Critical approach attracts researchers’ attention towards individuals who play a minor role in social interactions (2). Madison quoting Thomas contends that critical ethnography is a classic ethnography with a political aim. The ethnographer not only explains the meanings of interaction in a specific context، but also strives to know how these meanings are described against the broad structure of power (3). Thus، critical ethnography involves all the fields in which interactions are influenced by power relations. Critical ethnography plays an essential role in health research and nursing، in particular. Most of the nurses are female; and power relations are one of many factors that affect the complex doctor-nurse and nurse-patient interactions (4).

Focused ethnography is a distinct type of sociological ethnography which particularly is predominantly used in applied health studies. Considering Due to the application of focused ethnography in clinical research and lack of Persian sources for this research methodology, this study was conducted to provide a comprehensive thorough explanation of focused ethnography based on the available resources.
This paper is a traditional review of 21 articles and 17 books in relation toon focused ethnography which have been published between 1979 and 2015. These documents have beenwere retrieved from databases including ISI Web of Science, Science Direct, and PubMed as well as relevant books using keywords of qualitative research, ethnography, and focused ethnography. and Then, they have beenwere analyzedsed in terms of major themes and common concepts. In this review, English articles, which included certain English search terms in their title or keyword section, were evaluated.
Focused ethnography investigates the relationship between cultural beliefs and health behaviors and instead of exploring large cultural groups and ethnicities focusesd on the shared behaviours and experiences of small groups. In focused ethnographic methodsstudies, data are collected through semi-structured interviews and observation combined with field notes, cultural and /personal interactions, and the use of demographic data sheets. The analysis of the data started was conducted simultaneously with data collection.
Generally, focused ethnography is a methodology to of building background knowledge in order to take the required measures to design therapeutic interventions in line with the culture of a society, and consequently, improveing public health.

Ethnography is one of research qualitative methods in humanities. In this method the researcher by active involvement in the research field tries to participate in development of scientific insight in groups or cultures. In this approach by using different tools the individuals are studied to extract social meanings from natural conditions. Research group observation in natural conditions and finally analysis and appraisal of research bed findings and field lead to comprehensive insight in ethnography research with relatively high credit. In this research it is attempted to study the different dimensions of ethnography research. Therefore the dominant methodology and paradigm in this research and research stages with regard to ethnography approach introduced. Finally a new approach by the title of "critical ethnography" suggested.

In general, research is divided into quantitative and qualitative categories. Qualitative research has several types, most notably ethnography, grounded theory, phenomenology, discourse analysis, hermeneutics, and semiotics. Critical ethnography is a kind of ethnography rooted in the Chicago School and developed by the Birmingham Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies in England. The main purpose of critical ethnography is to critique and interpret culture and change it in favor of equality of power in social relations and the empowerment of subjects under study. Therefore, critical ethnography is always related to the problem of power, and change, value-orientation and the relationship between agency and structure are among the characteristics of this method. One of the methods in critical ethnography is the method of  Carspecken that emphasizes the communication experience and has been influenced by pragmatism, neo-marxism, and phenomenology. By placing the concept of validity within the theory of meaning, Carspecken emphasizes the inner relationship between meaning and validity. He has a five-step approach to critical ethnography. These are: collecting original documents; analyzing collected observational data; generating conversational data (emic approach); the discovery of relationships between what is discovered and the fields broader and, finally, linking the findings from the earlier stages to macro-sociological theories and constructions, to illustrate the processes of production and social reproduction.

This ethnography is a dialogic ethnography between field and two researchers. Dialogic ethnography or dialogic anthropology was a result of textual revolution in discipline. Textual or interpretive anthropology has been definition of culture as text founded in 1970s and 1980s. Geertzian textual revolution considered and interpreted events and actions as texts. Marcus, Clifford, Rabinow, Crapanzano, and Fischer, as Geertz followers hold that ethnographic moment is the moment of writing culture. Affected by polyphonic ethnography in this essay, we tried organized our experience from the field of Agha Shah-Bolbol. Our focus is on the narratives that produced about Agha Shah-Bolbol cave in the region of Delijan, Markazi Province. By two period of doing fieldwork in the around of Agha Shah-Bolbol cave, we tried to hear the voices of culture and added our voices to these that enabled us conveyed the symphony of this culture to audience. Voices of culture includes various narratives of indigenious people and the voices of researchers: the way Agha Shah-Bolbol narrative and the way Agha Shah-Bolbol sensed.

Street ethnography is a recent jenere of ethnography which tries, with movement of ethnographer in urban public and open spaces, to explore cultural matters in motion. My ethnographic research about “Muharram Cars” in Tehran shows a special type of stret ethnography in that ethnographer explore about cars with his or her car. I made the term “Cargraphy” to express theoretical and methodological features of this type of ethnographic research. This cargraphic research shows how individuls use cars as a emcaried experience in everyday and ritualistic contexts, how cars became secondary bodies, and how thoughts and feelings conveyed through manipulations of cars.
My ethnographic research about “Muharram Cars” in Tehran shows a special type of stret ethnography in that ethnographer explore about cars with his or her car. I made the term “Cargraphy” to express theoretical and methodological features of this type of ethnographic research. This cargraphic research shows how individuls use cars as a emcaried experience in everyday and ritualistic contexts, how cars became secondary bodies, and how thoughts and feelings conveyed through manipulations of cars.

Autoethnography is an emerging approach in ethnography which falls under the qualitative methodology and interpretive paradigm. Although this approach has been used in various fields of study in recent years and is expanding to other disciplines, it has been very limited in urban studies. Today's cities are diverse subcultures mosaic of which researchers in this field can use to understand the deep layers through their lived experience. This study mainly aims to describe the major features of this approach and subsequently to link it with the field of urban studies to culturally understand the urban contexts. Accordingly, to understand the philosophical, epistemological and methodological principles of auto ethnography library research and documentary analysis has been used and for the application of auto ethnography in urban studies a field study has been conducted and urban auto ethnography is then explained at the intersection of four main turn ("cultural" turn, "narrative" turn, "spatial" turn and "auto" turn). Cultural diversity in Iranian cities and the need for a deep and indigenous understanding of its inherent characteristics among actors who experience it directly adds further importance to the application of urban autoethnography in research in this area.

In this paper, ethnography and ethnomethodology are compared as two research methods to investigate culture. Ethnography as a well-established method in anthropology sometimes is applied inappropriately and ethnomethodology has not been used very often in Iran as a research method. Descriptions of the two research methods include a review of their definitions, characteristics, presuppositions, theoretical frameworks, practical principles, methods of data collection, and diverse types of them. On the other side, our comparison between these methods includes an exploration on their similarities and differences, different attitudes toward them, as well as the status of each of them in the context of historical-epistemological traditions that are considered as their cultivating conditions. At the end of the paper, some examples of Ethnomethodological Ethnography are presented to manifest the Proximity of these two research methodologies. In the study of research methods, it is very important to go beyond stereotypes and do a close study of various aspects of them in order to pay attention to their inextricably and reciprocal effects. Ethnography and ethnomethodology are related to each other in complex ways. Ethnomethodology seems to warn ethnography to be careful about its descriptive ambitions. Ethnomethodology will also need ethnography, verbal depictions and characterizations of events in particular places and at particular times.

In the last two decades, the debate on the dimensions and issues of ethnic studies in Iranian society has been growing. As can be seen, we have various intellectual debates and the publication of specialized papers in scientific journals. But what has received less attention in this field is the explanation of the methodological foundations of ethnic studies and the understanding of recent theoretical-methodological developments in this era. It is necessary to study this issue because if we don’t learn the basics and methodological principles of ethnic studies, we will not be able to properly represent ethnic identities and understand and analyze their issues. The main question of the present article is what is the nature of the methodology of ethnic studies and how can we systematically understand the intellectual and cultural backgrounds of different ethnic groups? The main hypothesis is that a deep description and qualitative understanding of ethnic life will be possible through the documentation of human interactions and relationships in everyday life in the ethnographic method. The author’s main goal is to prioritize the study of the methodological foundations of ethnic studies and to propose new methods such as critical ethnography, visual and virtual ethnography, digital ethnography, postmodern ethnography and ethnicity, and Post-humanism ethnography. I hope we can better understand the theoretical-methodological perspectives of this field in light of the profound and rapid developments that have taken place

Giving a comparative theoretical and documental discussion about the different approaches to ethnography from academic emergence of anthropology up to now, is the goal of the present article. The classification of ethnographical approaches and evaluation of the change route is discussed from their ontological and epistemological bases up to their more overt characteristics and every approach is exemplified with some parts of the authentic classic or recent ethnographies that exist in anthropological literature. Realism, interpretivism, applicability for peoples (not for powers), moralism and criticalism are the most important discussed concepts that have reach to their highest level in the fourth approach, i.e. militant anthropology / ethnography. The most important result is: philiosophy and biology have been able to give a defensible base for the moralism and criticalism of recent (fourth) approach. The necessity of this discussion is clarifying the most intensive differences between the realist and postmodernist approaches that can be ongoing in the field of social science and at academic level.