Journeys through ethnography

A wonderful text that I have returned to recently is Laureau, A. & Shultz, J. (1996). (eds.). Journeys through ethnography: Realistic accounts of fieldwork Boulder, Co.: Westview Press. This text brings readers back to early conversations by scholars such as William Whyte, author of Street Corner Society and Suan Kriefer, author of Beyond Subjectivity. The focus is on the social... Read More

Writing Fieldnotes

In chapter 4 of Emerson, Robert M., Fretz, Rachel I., & Shaw, Linda L. (1995). Writing ethnographic fieldnotes. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, entitled writing up fieldnotes II: creating scenes on a page, we are reminded: To view writing fieldnotes simply as a  matter of putting on paper what a field researcher has heard and seen suggest that it is a transparent... Read More

The lived experience of the ethnographer

Try writing an ethnography of something very close to you. A story from the beginning of your life that takes you to the present moment. A family, silence and secrets, a few spoken words, a death, memory and love. An intimate culture to be certain. This will take you beyond questions of participant-observation, unstructured data, case size, and interpretation. It will encompass... Read More