ABSTRACT
There is an interest in context that characterizes much LSI work generally, as mentioned in numerous places in this volume. In the area of ethnography, the context of particular relevance is culture. Despite the centrality of culture to the various kinds of work that comprise ethnography, the nature and definition of culture are matters to which ethnographers have quite distinct orientations. Defining culture has, in fact, been more a matter taken up implicitly, through method and theory, than one addressed directly as a question to which a definitive answer might be offered. The common ground of those distinctive orientations might be an assumption that when people engage in social interaction with one another, they draw on systems of meaning that are specific, to some degree, to either the situation in which they are interacting (a classroom lesson, navigating a ship, speaking in front of a group), or to the group itself (defined by ethnicity, class, gender, organizational membership, perhaps only one of which is salient, perhaps all of them), or to a combination of situation and group specificity.
