The contribution focuses on ethnography in the Czech lands and its application as a research method. The concept of ethnography used for this purpose sees ethnography as one of the major methods of qualitative research, transformed and modified by development in the field and changes in the society. The author reminds of the fact that ethnography was widely used as a research instrument already in 20th century under different names not only within ethnology and social anthropology but also within other disciplines and that at present it is a favourite research instrument of a number of branches of social science which emphasize qualitative research. Thus ethnography is not the sole property of ethnologists and social anthropologists and they cannot be sure that this method will remain typical and characteristic exclusively for them. Although the text is historically retrospective, it mainly focuses on transformations of ethnography in the late 20th and at the turn of 20th and 21st centuries.