This book persuasively argues the case that ethnography must be viewed as a full theoretical system, rather than just as a research method. Blommaert traces the influence of his reading of classic works about ethnography on his thinking, and discusses a range of authors who have influenced the development of a theoretical system of ethnography, or whose work might be productively used to develop it further. Authors examined include Hymes, Scollon, Kress, Bourdieu, Bakhtin and Lefebvre. This book will be required reading for students and scholars involved in ethnographic research, or those interested in the theory of ethnography.
Ethnography must be seen as a full theoretical system, not just as a method. In this book, a range of authors are examined, whose work was either instrumental in creating this theoretical system, or might productively be used in developing it further. Authors discussed include Hymes, Scollon, Kress, Bourdieu, Bakhtin and Lefebvre.
Major figures in contemporary anthropology present a dialogic critique of ethnography. Moving beyond sociolinguistics and performance theory, and inspired by Bakhtin and by their own field experiences, the contributors revise notions of where culture actually resides. This pioneering effort integrates a concern for linguistic processes with interpretive approaches to culture. Culture and ethnography are located in social interaction. The collection contains dialogues that trace the entire course of ethnographic interpretation, from field research to publication. The authors explore an anthropology that actively acknowledges the dialogical nature of its own production. Chapters strike a balance between theory and practice and will also be of interest in cultural studies, literary criticism, linguistics, and philosophy. CONTRIBUTORS: Deborah Tannen, John Attinasi, Paul Friedrich, Billie Jean Isbell, Allan F. Burns, Jane H. Hill, Ruth Behar, Jean DeBernardi, R. P. McDermott, Henry Tylbor, Alton L. Becker, Bruce Mannheim, Dennis Tedlock
Practicing Ethnography in Law brings together a selection of top scholars in legal anthropology, social sciences, and law to delineate the state of the art in ethnographic research strategies. Each of these original essays addresses a particular set of analytical problems and uses these problems to explore issues of ethnographic technique, research methodology, and the theoretical underpinnings of ethnographic legal studies. Subjects explored include the relationship between legal and feminist scholarship, between law and the media, law and globalization, and the usefulness of a wide variety of research techniques: comparative, linguistic, life-history, interview, and archival. This volume will serve as a guide for students who are designing their own research projects, for scholars who are newly exploring the possibilities of ethnographic research, and for experienced ethnographers who are engaged with methodological issues in light of current theoretical developments. The book will be essential reading for courses in anthropological methods, legal anthropology, and sociology and law.
Expressions of Ethnography embraces the idea that alternative genres may be used to express culture. Using examples of a wide variety of cultural phenomena, contemporary ways to practice ethnography, and novel forms of expressing the cultural experience, the book offers an eclectic mix of short stories, novels, and poetry, as well as traditional scholarly reports of poignant, provocative, and powerful cultural phenomena. Included are accounts of recovery following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, life as a prison guard, surviving child abuse and coping via an eating disorder, dealing with disabilities, living the gay life, birthing babies, as well as searching for birth mothers. Special attention is given to dialogue, from dialogue with families and friends to American ethnographers interviewing Thai managers.
Sensing the Everyday is a multi-sited ethnographic inquiry based on fieldwork experiences and sharp everyday observations in the era of crisis. Blending sophisticated theoretical analyses with original ethnographic data, C. Nadia Seremetakis journeys from Greece to Vienna, Edinburgh, Albania, Ireland, and beyond. Social crisis is seen through its transnational multiplication of borders, thresholds and margins, divisions, and localities as linguistic, bodily, sensory, and performative sites of the quotidian in process. The book proposes everyday life not as a sanctuary or as a recessed zone distanced from the structural violence of the state and the market, but as a condition of im/possibility, unable to be lived as such, yet still an encapsulating habitus. There the impossibility of the quotidian is concretized as fragmentary and fragmenting material forces. Seremetakis weaves together topics as diverse as borders and bodies, history and death, the earth and the senses, language and affect, violence and public culture, the sociality of dreaming, and the spatialization of the traumatic, in a journey through antiphonic witnessing and memory. Her montage explores various ways of juxtaposing reality with the irreal and the imaginal to expose the fictioning of social reality. The book locates her approach to ethnography and the ‘native ethnographer’ in wider anthropological and philosophical debates, and proposes a dialogical interfacing of theory and practice, the translation of academic knowledge to public knowledge
Summoned by an anonymous Prosecutor, ten contemporary ethnographers gather in an aging barn to hold a trial of Alice Goffman’s controversial ethnography, On the Run. But before the trial can get underway, a one-eyed wolfdog arrives with a mysterious liquid potion capable of rendering the ethnographers invisible in their fieldsites. Presented as a play that unfolds in seven acts, the ensuing drama provides readers with both a practical guide for how to conduct immersive participant-observation research and a sophisticated theoretical engagement with the relationship between ethnography as a research method and the operation of power. By interpolating "how-to" aspects of ethnographic research with deeper questions about ethnography’s relationship to power, this book presents a compelling introduction for those new to ethnography and rich theoretical insights for more seasoned ethnographic practitioners from across the social sciences. Just as ethnography as a research method depends crucially on serendipity, surprise, and an openness to ambiguity, the book’s dramatic and dialogic format encourages novices and experts alike to approach the study of power in ways that resist linear programs and dogmatic prescriptions. The result is a playful yet provocative invitation to rekindle those foundational senses of wonder and generative uncertainty that are all too often excluded from conversations about the methodologies and methods we bring to the study of the social world.
In Writing Anthropology, fifty-two anthropologists reflect on scholarly writing as both craft and commitment. These short essays cover a wide range of territory, from ethnography, genre, and the politics of writing to affect, storytelling, authorship, and scholarly responsibility. Anthropological writing is more than just communicating findings: anthropologists write to tell stories that matter, to be accountable to the communities in which they do their research, and to share new insights about the world in ways that might change it for the better. The contributors offer insights into the beauty and the function of language and the joys and pains of writing while giving encouragement to stay at it—to keep writing as the most important way to not only improve one’s writing but to also honor the stories and lessons learned through research. Throughout, they share new thoughts, prompts, and agitations for writing that will stimulate conversations that cut across the humanities. Contributors. Whitney Battle-Baptiste, Jane Eva Baxter, Ruth Behar, Adia Benton, Lauren Berlant, Robin M. Bernstein, Sarah Besky, Catherine Besteman, Yarimar Bonilla, Kevin Carrico, C. Anne Claus, Sienna R. Craig, Zoë Crossland, Lara Deeb, K. Drybread, Jessica Marie Falcone, Kim Fortun, Kristen R. Ghodsee, Daniel M. Goldstein, Donna M. Goldstein, Sara L. Gonzalez, Ghassan Hage, Carla Jones, Ieva Jusionyte, Alan Kaiser, Barak Kalir, Michael Lambek, Carole McGranahan, Stuart McLean, Lisa Sang Mi Min, Mary Murrell, Kirin Narayan, Chelsi West Ohueri, Anand Pandian, Uzma Z. Rizvi, Noel B. Salazar, Bhrigupati Singh, Matt Sponheimer, Kathleen Stewart, Ann Laura Stoler, Paul Stoller, Nomi Stone, Paul Tapsell, Katerina Teaiwa, Marnie Jane Thomson, Gina Athena Ulysse, Roxanne Varzi, Sita Venkateswar, Maria D. Vesperi, Sasha Su-Ling Welland, Bianca C. Williams, Jessica Winegar
