Qualitative Research: Ethnography

Being Ethnographic is an essential introductory guidebook to the methods and applications of doing fieldwork in real-world settings. It discusses the future of ethnography, explores how we understand identity, and sets out the role of technology in a global, networked society. Driven by classic and anecdotal case studies, Being Ethnographic highlights the challenges introduced by the ethnographers′ own interests, biases and ideologies and demonstrates the importance of methodological reflexivity.

 What is critical ethnography? How do we use theory to interpret research data? What is performance ethnography? Readers can find answers to these fundamental questions in D. Soyini Madison′s engaging and highly multidisciplinary Third Edition of Critical Ethnography: Methods, Ethics, and Performance.  The book presents a fresh new look at critical ethnography by emphasizing the significance of ethics and performance in the art and politics of fieldwork. The productive links between theory and method are celebrated in this title. Theoretical concepts range from queer theory, feminist theory, and critical race theory to Marxism and phenomenology. The methodological techniques range from designing and asking in-depth interview questions and developing rapport to coding and interpreting data.

Doing Ethnography is invaluable reading for anyone collecting data through observation. Innovative and thought provoking, it is a refreshing take on ethnography stressing both academic rigor and practical necessity. It combines theoretical perspective with tangible action plans and walks you step-by-step through designing, conducting, and evaluating ethnographic research.The book skilfully introduces the varied tasks and decisions you need to consider before entering the fieldhelping you to avoid common mistakes and to conduct safe, ethical research.The redesigned Second Edition has cutting edge case studies and examples from across the social sciences and has an embedded awareness of the importance of digital research tools and social media.

Ethnography familiarizes readers with ethnographic research and writing traditions through detailed discussions of ethnography's history, exploratory design, representational conventions, and standards of evaluation.Responding to the proliferation of ethnography both within and outside of academia, in this book, Anthony Kwame Harrison grounds ethnographic practices within the anthropological principles of cultural awareness, thick description, and embodied understanding.

Now in its fourth edition, this leading introduction to ethnography has been thoroughly updated and substantially rewritten. The volume offers a systematic introduction to ethnographic principles and practice, and includes a new chapter on 'Ethnography in the digital world'. The authors argue that ethnography is best understood as a reflexive process. This requires recognition that social research is part of the world that it studies, and demands that researchers reflect on how they shape both data and analysis. Starting in Chapter 1 with an outline of the principle of reflexivity, against the background of competing research philosophies, the authors go on to discuss the main features of ethnographic work, including: the selection and sampling of cases the problem of access field relations and observation interviewing the use of documents recording and organizing data the process of data analysis and writing research reports.

Ethnography in Social Science Practice explores ethnography's increasing use across the social sciences, beyond its traditional bases in social anthropology and sociology. It explores the disciplinary roots of ethnographic research within social anthropology, and contextualizes it within both field and disciplinary settings.

This major book from one of the world's foremost authorities recaptures the classic inspirations of ethnographic fieldwork in sociology and anthropology, reflecting on decades of methodological development and empirical research. It is part manifesto, part guidance on the appropriate focus of the ethnographic gaze.Throughout Atkinson insists that ethnographic research must be faithful to the intrinsic and complex organization of everyday life. An attempt to rescue ethnography from contemporary 'qualitative' research, the book is a corrective to the corrosive effects of postmodernism on the analysis of social organization and social action. Atkinson affirms the value of fieldwork, while incorporating contemporary perspectives on social analysis.

In turn creative thinker and street flâneur, careful planner and adventurer, empathic listener and distant voyeur, recluse writer and active participant: the ethnographer is a multifaceted researcher of social worlds and social life.  In this book, sociologists Sarah Daynes and Terry Williams team up to explore the art of ethnographic research and the many complex decisions it requires. Using their extensive fieldwork experience in the United States and Europe, and hours spent in the classroom training new ethnographers, they illustrate, discuss, and reflect on the key skills and tools required for successful research, including research design, entry and exit, participant observation, fieldnotes, ethics, and writing up.

The social sciences have seen a substantial increase in comparative and multi-sited ethnographic projects over the last three-decades. Yet, at present, researchers seeking to design comparative field projects have few scholarly works detailing how comparison is conducted in divergentethnographic approaches. In Beyond the Case, Corey M. Abramson and Neil Gong have gathered together several experts in field research to address these issues by showing how practitioners employing contemporary iterations of ethnographic traditions such as phenomenology, grounded theory, positivism,and interpretivism, use comparison in their works. The contributors connect the long history of comparative (and anti-comparative) ethnographic approaches to their contemporary uses. By honing in on how ethnographers render sites, groups, or cases analytically commensurable and comparable, Beyondthe Case offers a new lens for examining the assumptions, payoffs, and potential drawbacks of different forms of comparative ethnography.

Ethnography is now a fundamental feature of design practice, taught in universities worldwide and practiced widely in commerce. Despite its rise to prominence a great many competing perspectives exist and there are few practical texts to support the development of competence. Doing Design Ethnography elaborates the ethnomethodological perspective on ethnography, a distinctive approach that provides canonical 'studies of work' in and for design. It provides an extensive treatment of the approach, with a particular slant on providing a pedagogical text that will support the development of competence for students, career researchers and design practitioners. It is organised around a complementary series of self-contained chapters, each of which address key features of doing the job of ethnography for purposes of system design.

Essential reading for anyone wishing to engage with images, technologies and society, Doing Visual Ethnography is a milestone in ethnographic and visual research. The Third Edition of this classic text includes new chapters on web-based practices for visual ethnography and the issues surrounding the representation, interpretation, and authoring of knowledge with the rise of digital media.   The book provides a foundation for thinking about visual ethnography and introduces the practical and theoretical issues relating to the visual and digital technologies used in the field.   Drawing upon her original research and the experiences of other ethnographers, author Sarah Pink once again challenges our understanding of the world and sets new agendas for visual ethnography by: Helpfully illustrating key concepts within real world contexts Introducing examples from both analogue and digital media Exploring material and electronic texts Setting out the shift towards applied, participatory and public visual scholarship.   This book is a must-have for students and researchers across the social sciences who are interested in incorporating audiovisual media into their research practice.

This book argues that qualitative methods, ethnography included, have tended to focus on the human at the cost of understanding humans and animals in relation, and that ethnography should evolve to account for the relationships between humans and other species. Intellectual recognition of this has arrived within the field of human-animal studies and in the philosophical development of posthumanism but there are few practical guidelines for research. Taking this problem as a starting point, the authors draw on a wide array of examples from visual methods, ethnodrama, poetry and movement studies to consider the political, philosophical and practical consequences of posthuman methods. They outline the possibilities for creative new forms of ethnography that eschew simplistic binaries between humans and animals.

Ethnographic research in higher education is gaining momentum. In the last 10 years, we saw a great increase in publications, and more and more researchers endorse ethnography because of its distinctive qualities and its productivity for research in higher education: Ethnography is commended for its unique approach to social practices through continuous and immediate experience in field work, and its unfragmented methodical attention to situations, interactions, and experiences. This unique approach is explored in the present book, which brings together researchers from Europe, America, and Australia, and includes current ethnographic studies on higher education, reflections on teaching ethnography, and innovative approaches in ethnographic methods.

What is feminist ethnography? What is its history? How can its methods be applied? How is feminist ethnography produced, distributed, and evaluated? How do feminist ethnographers link their findings to broader publics through activism, advocacy, and public policy? Investigating these questions and more, this cross-cultural and interdisciplinary new text employs a problem-based approach to guide readers through the methods, challenges, and possibilities of feminist ethnography. D na-Ain Davis and Christa Craven tease out the influences of feminist ethnography across a variety of disciplines including women's and gender studies, critical race studies, ethnic studies, education, communications, psychology, sociology, urban studies, and American studies.

In this comprehensive review of urban ethnography, Steven Lubet encountered a field that relies heavily on anonymous sources, often as reported by a single investigator whose underlying data remain unseen. Upon digging into the details, he discovered too many ethnographic assertions that weredubious, exaggerated, tendentious, or just plain wrong. Employing the tools and techniques of a trial lawyer, Lubet uses original sources and contemporaneous documentation to explore the stories behind ethnographic narratives. Many turn out to be accurate, but others are revealed to be based onrumors, folklore, and unreliable hearsay.Interrogating Ethnography explains how qualitative social science would benefit from greater attention to the quality of evidence, and provides recommendations for bringing the field more closely in line with other fact-based disciplines such as law and journalism.

Ethnography is a qualitative research design that focuses on the study of people to explore cultural phenomena. This concise, "how to" guide to conducting qualitative ethnography research spearheads a new series, Qualitative Designs and Methods, for novice researchers and specialists alike focusing on state-of-the-art methodologies from a nursing perspective. Scholars of qualitative ethnography research review the philosophical basis for choosing ethnography as a research tool and describe in depth its key features and development level. They provide directives on how to solve practical problems related to ethnography research, nursing examples, and discussion of the current state of the art. This includes a comprehensive plan for conducting studies and a discussion of appropriate measures, ethical considerations, and potential problems. Examples of published ethnography nursing research worldwide, along with author commentary, support the new researcher in making decisions and facing challenges. Each chapter includes objectives, competencies, review questions, critical thinking exercises, and web links for more in-depth research.

A state-of-the-art reference on educational ethnography edited by leading journal editors This book brings an international group of writers together to offer an authoritative state-of-the-art review of, and critical reflection on, educational ethnography as it is being theorized and practiced today--from rural and remote settings to virtual and visual posts. It provides a definitive reference point and academic resource for those wishing to learn more about ethnographic research in education and the ways in which it might inform their research as well as their practice.