Spradley should be read by anyone who wants to gain a true understanding of the process of participant observation. This text is a follow-up to his ethnographic research handbook, The Ethnographic Interview, and guides readers through the technique of participant observation to research ethnography and culture. Spradley shows how to analyze collected data and to write an ethnography. The appendices include research questions and writing tasks.
While it documents a remarkable career, Participant Observer is also a personal chronicle in which William Foote Whyte reflects on his childhood, his education, his courageous struggles with polio and with the crises of family and academic life. Beginning with the study of gangs in Boston's North End recorded in Street Corner Society, Whyte listened to what working people had to say, becoming a powerful voice for worker participation and workplace democracy. His career is a model for the social sciences, and his story should be read by any serious student of them.
Participant observation is the foundation of ethnographic research design and supports and complements other types of qualitative and quantitative data collection. Qualitative research in such diverse areas as anthropology, sociology, education, medicine draws on the insights gained through the use of participant observation. The authors have written a guide to the collection of systematic data in naturalistic settings - communities in many different cultures - to achieve an understanding of the most fundamental processes and patterns of social life. This book serves as a basic primer for the beginning researcher and as a useful reference and guide for experienced researchers in many fields who wish to reexamine their own skills and abilities in light of best practices of participant observation. This new edition includes discussions of participant observation in nontypical settings, such as the Internet, participant observation in applied research, and ethics of participant observation. It also explores in greater depth the use of computer-assisted analysis of textual data in issues of sampling and in linking method with theory.
While providing an introduction to basic principles and strategies, Participant Observation also explores the philosophy and methodology underlying the actual practice of participant observation. Taking a thoroughly practical approach to the methods of participant observation, Danny L. Jorgensen illustrates these methods with both classic and current research studies. By using the materials in this book, the reader can begin conducting participant observation research on their own.
Some engage in politics; others observe it, but the author of this political memoir is among the few that have had the chance to do both. In these pages, Henry Milner shares his experiences as a student and community activist, an anglophone insider and strategist in the Parti Québécois, and a close observer over several decades of social democracy in practice in Scandinavia and beyond. Milner was born in a bunker in American occupied Germany. His parents, who had survived the war in the Soviet Union, moved the family to Canada, where they settled in Montreal. Earning a BA from McGill and his MA and PhD at Carleton, he spent his teaching career first at Vanier College and then based at the University of Montreal. He has also taught extensively in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand. Participant/Observer is Milner’s eleventh book. His writings, notably in Inroads, the Canadian Journal of Opinion, which he and John Richards founded in 1991, have led to opportunities to teach and conduct research in Scandinavia, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Findings from these experiences have found their way into public policy discussion in Canada through the media and public forums. Milner’s recent focus has been on civic literacy, on the democratic institutions that underly social and economic progress, working closely with the movements seeking to reform the voting system in Canada and a number of provinces. He and his wife, Frances Boylston, divide their time between Montreal and the Dominican Republic, where they are closely involved with the Meeting Place, a not-for-profit International Resource Centre they founded to help “snowbirds” to get to know the country and to provide locals and Haitian migrants with English-language and other resources to be better equipped for employment in a tourism-oriented economy. Participant/Observer is a political autobiography of a generation, one that reached maturity in the 1960s and 1970s, told through one person’s story. In concluding, Milner holds out hope that this account of his generations’ successes—and failures—can be of use to current generations as they face the threat posed by populist and authoritarian forces, most dramatically to the capacity of contemporary democracies to meet the challenge of climate change.
How can you establish a customer-centric culture in an organization? This is the first comprehensive book on how to actually do service design to improve the quality and the interaction between service providers and customers. You'll learn specific facilitation guidelines on how to run workshops, perform all of the main service design methods, implement concepts in reality, and embed service design successfully in an organization. Great customer experience needs a common language across disciplines to break down silos within an organization. This book provides a consistent model for accomplishing this and offers hands-on descriptions of every single step, tool, and method used. You'll be able to focus on your customers and iteratively improve their experience. Move from theory to practice and build sustainable business success.
An excellent introduction to real-world ethnography, this book covers short- and long-term participant observation and ethnographic interviewing and uses diverse cultures as cases.
While providing an introduction to basic principles and strategies, this volume also explores the philosophy and methodology underlying the actual practice of participant observation. Taking a thoroughly practical approach to the methods of participant observation, Jorgensen illustrates these methods with both classic and current research studies. By using the materials in this book, readers can begin conducting participant observation research on their own.
