Reading Ethnography

This book presents a model for analyzing and evaluating ethnographic arguments. It examines the relationship between the claims anthropologists make about human behavior and the data they use to warrant them. Jacobson analyzes the textual organization of ethnographies, focusing on the ways in which problems, interpretations, and data are put together. He examines in detail a limited number of well-known ethnographic cases, which are selected to illustrate basic theoretical frameworks and modes of analysis. By advancing a method for assessing ethnographic accounts, the book contributes to the current debate on the role of rhetoric and reflexivity in anthropology.

How to Read Ethnography is an essential guide to approaching anthropological texts. It helps students to cultivate the skills they need to critically examine and understand how ethnographies are built up, as well as to think anthropologically and develop an anthropological imagination of their own. The authors reveal how ethnographically-informed anthropology plays a distinctive and valuable role in comprehending the complexity of the world we live in. This fully revised second edition includes fresh excerpts from key texts for analysis and comparison along with lucid explanations. In addition to concerns with argument, authority, and the relationship between theory and data, the book engages with the purpose, value, and accountability of ethnographic texts, as well as with their reception and usage. A brand new chapter looks at the kinds of collaboration between informants/consultants and anthropologists that go into the making of ethnographic writing.

The Urban Ethnography Reader assembles the very best of American ethnographic writing, from classic works to contemporary research, and aims to present ethnography as social science, social history, and literature, rather than purely as a methodology.

This book presents a model for analyzing and evaluating ethnographic arguments. It examines the relationship between the claims anthropologists make about human behavior and the data they use to warrant them. Jacobson analyzes the textual organization of ethnographies, focusing on the ways in which problems, interpretations, and data are put together. He examines in detail a limited number of well-known ethnographic cases, which are selected to illustrate basic theoretical frameworks and modes of analysis. By advancing a method for assessing ethnographic accounts, the book contributes to the current debate on the role of rhetoric and reflexivity in anthropology.

"A very satisfying, diverse treatment of a topic that has been ignored because it has been hard to treat."—George E. Marcus, Rice University

Ethnography centers on the culture of everyday life. So it is ironic that most scholars who do research on the intimate experiences of ordinary people write their books in a style that those people cannot understand. In recent years, the ethnographic method has spread from its original home in cultural anthropology to fields such as sociology, marketing, media studies, law, criminology, education, cultural studies, history, geography, and political science. Yet, while more and more students and practitioners are learning how to write ethnographies, there is little or no training on how to write ethnographies well. From Notes to Narrative picks up where methodological training leaves off. Kristen Ghodsee, an award-winning ethnographer, addresses common issues that arise in ethnographic writing. Ghodsee works through sentence-level details, such as word choice and structure. She also tackles bigger-picture elements, such as how to incorporate theory and ethnographic details, how to effectively deploy dialogue, and how to avoid distracting elements such as long block quotations and in-text citations. She includes excerpts and examples from model ethnographies. The book concludes with a bibliography of other useful writing guides and nearly one hundred examples of eminently readable ethnographic books.

Max grapples with the outrageousness of divorced parents beginning to date — and other mysteries of evolution — in his third quirky notebook. Welcome to Max’s book of inventions, experiments, comic strips, and random thoughts about school, the universe, evolution, and parents who definitely don’t act the way parents are supposed to act. Luckily for Max, he has a place to jot down his biggest questions and most amazing discoveries. This zany mix of comics, concoctions, and contraptions helps Max tells the story of his topsy-turvy life and how he comes to terms with a changing family.

Provides a practical guide to the critical reading of ethnographic studies: discussing in detail how to identify the main arguments and what is involved in making an assessment of such studies.

Brimming with examples, this book demonstrates how qualitative researchers can use autoethnography as a method for qualitative research. Topics include a brief history of autoethnography; the purposes and practices of doing autoethnography; interpreting, analyzing, and representing personal experience; and evaluating autoethnographic work.

First Published in 2013. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.